Fish who have never known the river graduated to the wild on Wednesday, when the Albuquerque BioPark and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service released 18,000 captive-spawned endangered Rio Grande silvery minnows.

Patrick Horley, the BioPark’s Aquatic Conservation Facility curator, scooped the minnows from a metal tank resting in a truck bed. Then he gently deposited the net of wriggling minnows into buckets full of muddy river water. BioPark and Fish and Wildlife staff dressed in waders carried the heavy buckets into the Rio Grande before tipping them slowly into the water and allowing the small, silver fish to swim away.

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