I'm working as a Fish Culturist at Hidden Falls Salmon Hatchery in a remote spot near Sitka, Alaska! AM I CRAZY!? I'm starting to think so...

Friday, February 16, 2007

It ain't that bad.....

So as alot of you know, when I was home preparing for this crazy thing, I was worried about the weather and worried I would freeze! Well it isn't that bad. My hands got a bit cold before lunch but I think that's because I left my gloves outside on our break. DUMB ME.

Anyhow, so today was my first day of work! YAY! I spent the day working with Angie, who's a fish culturist, and who I met last Friday when she flew into Sitka and stayed at the apartment with us the whole time we were there. There's not much "fish" stuff to do now but I think they are thinking in about a week or so, the babies can come out of the incubators and get "ponded" (aka put into the big round ponds.) So we did a few odd jobs, though she did have to feed 2 ponds of some little Chinook Salmon all day. I fed one of the ponds twice (she fed each pond 6 times) which was kinda fun. Guess that's a good thing though because I'll be doing my share of feeding fish in the coming months.

So odd jobs... Odd job #1, shovel snow. What!? Am I back in Michigan!? HA Ok it wasn't that bad. So I donned my brand spankin new orange fisherman's suit (it WAS raining BTW) and went out. We had to get some metal panel things out to go into one of the fish raceways, and they just so happened to be buried in 6 feet of snow. YEAH, 6! Maybe more. Really that didn't take long. Then we went out to the outdoor circle ponds (the other ones I was talking about have a roof over them.) to pick up these alarm things that each pond had. Not sure what they were for. We finished that fast and Angie was like "Man, we're 3/4 done with our jobs for the day... we're fast! Very efficient." I laughed and thought of how many times we were told that at the station this past year. It wasn't even 10am yet. Then we went to tackle the next job that ended up taking the rest of the day.

We had this fence which ran along one of the raceways, and Scott, the manager, wanted us to take it down so we could figure out how to reassemble it into a few smaller, more manageable pieces? Make sense? Sounds easy I guess but it wasn't. The top and the bottom pieces didn't match up... 1/2 the fence was crooked and bent from snow. We managed to get it out though, in 2 smaller pieces and 1 really long piece cause we couldn't get it apart. The rest of the day working on this fence consisted of hack-sawing, Shannon, the maintenance guy, welding pieces together, bending pieces, hammering pieces together... AND APART! It was interesting... and I'm not too bad with a hack saw! :-)

Anyhow, now I am off until Tuesday. What on EARTH am I going to do!? Watch my many channels on the tv. Definately laundry!

I forgot that I was going to include a weather report on each post... mostly for my uncle! I forgot yesterday though I think I said in the blog... but it rained ALLLL day. HA I'm not too good with the temperatures... I've gotta get a thermometer to put on my window. HINT HINT Care package!? OK, I don't want 8 of them though. Whatever the temperature says on the side, it's probably really close. I think they said it was a bit cooler in the winter here, but drier in the summer here than in Sitka. I THINK?

WEATHER - Rain in the morning. I swear I saw a hint of sun when we first walked out!? Cleared up in the afternoon until around 4, when it started again. Really it's not THAT cold. Somewhere in the lower 40s I'm guessing.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

So, what's a raceway? I can't imagine ponds with roofs over them. Must not be too big. When you feed the fish, what is it that you feed them? Sounds like you'd be doing A LOT of feeding the fish! How much snow do they have on the ground? (Not actually 6 ft, do they?
Mom