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, May 18, 2007

Otters & Box Crabs & Bears, OH MY!

Hey everyone! Well it's been a good week... Very good I'd say.

I'm gonna start off by saying I am excited to show you my very first BEAR PICTURE! :-D Please, no comments about "oh be careful!" or "yikes... scary!" I never get close to any bears... I'm not dumb. The amount of bear sightings has raised... though I think it's the same few bears every time. This guy was across the lagoon.

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He was probably checking out Waylon, the dog, who was barking at him.

Yesterday, Sarah and I took care of the chum here at the hatchery, but before our last feeding, Scott asked us to go out and feed the 5 pens of Coho. The Coho pens are right near the chum pens but a little closer to the shore. Well, as we were feeding, a bear down the hill onto the shore. It was really cool! I was mad I didn't have my camera because I could have gotten some amazing pictures because we were really close to him. Again, please... I know. We were separated by water and plus, he could have cared less we were there. Ada, the dog, was out there and didn't see him at first but once she did, she wouldn't stop barking! Even when she was going nuts, the bear could STILL not care less!

Anyhow, another good week at Takatz. For a few days, we kept ourselves pretty busy pulling and then dropping the nets. We pulled the nets up on one side to just dry out the algae growing on them, like what I did a few weeks ago at the hatchery. Then we dropped the nets. This is just where we dropped the nets down to the level of the deck to give the fish more net room since they are growing alot. They fish around probably around... uhh... 1.3-ish grams maybe. Last week when they sampled them, they ranged from 1.05 to 1.17 grams so I guess 1.3 is a guess. We are now feeding 3 times a day and it feels like it takes forever. They are eating alot now so we are trying to fill them up more at each feeding. I know you guys are probably thinking "I don't even know how big a 1 point something gram fish looks like..." Well I have a picture... :-)

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These fish were probably about 1.1 grams-ish. As I've seen them grow from the tiny tiny things they were when they came out of the incubators, they look so big to me, but I know to you, they still look pretty small. Yesterday, Sarah and I morted a pen and among the dead, there was this huge baby that we both immediately knew we had to save cause he was big! A fat little thing... quite a bit larger than these... but again... probably only about 1.4 grams! Sorry it's a little blurry... lemme tell ya, these guys didn't want to lay still for my picture! :-D he he

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This is what it looks like now that the nets are dropped to the deck. You can see all the way to the end now.

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This is the view standing on the Takatz house balcony.

Anyhow, Adam and I decided to pull some pots the other day, and the shrimp pot was one of them. Though I say "shrimp pot" loosely because I think there was more OTHER stuff in the pot than shrimp! It was a pretty sad catch but we got some cool stuff. There were a ton of snail and box crabs, which I'd never see and found pretty SWEET!

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That was our catch... minus some tiny shrimp I had already picked out.

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Box crabs. That little one down on the bottom is all closed up and pulled in. Some of them had these cool orange spots on them... maybe sponges growing? They closed up to be this real tight rock looking thing.

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This is one of them closed up. They looked so cool because of those holes on the front. However he folded up created these holes.

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Adam and his pet box crab. He wanted to keep this guy because it just hung out on his shoulder. The other one in his hand wouldn't let go and for being small, they're pretty strong monsters! We decided we needed to get an aquarium so we could keep all the cool things we find. But he let him go. A few minutes later, Adam came up with the idea that would should have kept him in the back of the toilet because it gets a steady flow of saltwater! (It's a saltwater toilet.) Maybe next time Adam... Chris and I were entertained one afternoon by some umm... mating otters. ha ha Atleast we thought they were otters... we weren't sure what else they were but we were pretty sure they were mating.

Anyhow, last week I talked about the large boat that anchored up in Takatz and the small boats that accompanied it. They were the NOAA crew doing the surveying. Well they came back to the bay. It must have been lunch time for the crew because the big boat came in to pick up the little one. It was like Daddy boat picking up the kids... ;-D ha ha

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The Davidson...

We also had a real nice looking yacht come into the back of the bay. I'm not sure how long it stayed because we didn't see it leave but about 30 minutes after it got back there, the smaller boat it was towing came cruising out pulling something... like someone was in the back tubing! You could hear shouting and stuff. EHH I sure hope they were wearing a wetsuit because the water is only like 45 degrees!

At about 2 in the morning one night, there was alot of Coast Guard activity on the radio. Some 300 person cruise ship ran aground and was taking on water. I ended up getting up to turn the radio down but yesterday I found a picture about this incident.



Things seems to be going alright here at the hatchery. Though I'm still not sure about the food situation. I know I reported that our food wasn't effected by the melamine contamination but I guess they found out some of it might have been after all. We had to get some inventory at Takatz of certain food, but a few of us were still confused at what was going on with that so I'm not sure. When I was in Takatz, Branden released all of his chinook... remember those big guys that I said were fun to feed? Yeah, those. Now as we speak (type? heh) Angie and Branden are out IN the round ponds sending the rest of the Coho out to saltwater.

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That's Angie in the waders and that's Branden's head sticking up... he's standing inside the super slippery pond, probably pushing out the very last of the ones left in that pond down the drain.

Well, when I got back to the hatchery on Wednesday, a few things put me in a good mood. I think you'll find one of those interesting. SOOO last weekend when I was bored, I decided to send in a few pictures and a little story about how I'm working in Alaska to the drum corps website, DCI.org. They do this "picture of the day" thing and since Alaska isn't one of those states that anyone gets to see because of drum corps, I thought people would find it interesting. I called it "The state untouched by drum corps." Well upon my return, I got an email back about my submission from someone who works there (he happened to be a former drum major for The Cavaliers and I used to be a FAN of his...;-) he he) He said that instead of putting it on Forzato, "the picture of the day" thing, he'd like to write an article about it... that they are always looking for stories about cool things people are doing after they age out from drum corps. I had a good laugh about that! That's not what I was expecting at ALL! But I agreed... he said he was going to send me some questions for me to fill out. HA I still find it funny.

Well I guess that's all for this week. I'm happy to report there was NO push cart accident this week. Thankfully Dan pushed it up back to the shop this week. Alright, how about that American Idol though!? Mom, what'd I tell ya!? Blake would win or atleast be in the Top 2! I personally still think he'll win... Jordin's good... Melinda was good and so was LaKisha but... I still think I'll be Blake. What do you all think? Speaking of tv... anyone watch Grey's Anatomy?? Heck of a Season Finale... and this new show "Private Practice"... I knew it was coming. Well, if anyone wants to talk tv, lemme know! :-D Have a good week!

SHOUT OUT OF THE DAY - To Traci and Lee, heck of a Mother's Day present ya got there! :-D Congrats! Now when do I get to see some pictures!?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Well, my comcast kicked back in randomly so I finally got to read your blog!

It was good to hear from you yesterday!

<333