I don't really have anymore tales of spawning... it's really the same thing everyday. Spawn like crazy... though we've been running out of fish early the past few days. The other day I was carrying buckets of eggs into incubation and trying to be all beasty like... carrying 3 or 4 buckets at a time. Bad idea cause now my right wrist hurts pretty bad... makes it hard to do alot of other stuff sooooo... I'm hoping this "weekend" rest will help out. I just washed my smelly clothes and guess what!? Still smelly... that'll be nice. HA
Anyhow, I have some pictures... *NOTE* Clicking the pictures to enlarge them would be a good idea... I had to make all of them alot smaller, so you won't see stuff as good!
I'll start off with a funny one. Adam said when he had a friend come one year, the friend said this waterfall looked like Mr. Peanut. After he said that, I kinda agreed. What do you think!?
A bald eagle eating a piece of fish. They have been ALL over the place lately... I think I counted 10 or 11 at once one day!
The chum are pushing at the weir pretty hard... THEY WANT IN! There are alot right there...
I stood here at the outflow of the weir for quite a while trying to get a picture of these darn chum jumping! They are always jumping but it was really hard to catch them on camera!
The fish ladder... I've showed you guys this before but now it's running. It just creates a series of rapids for the fish... Each rapid is created as the water hits each metal wall... there is a small opening so I'm not sure if most of the fish push thru the opening or if some of them jump over the wall. Seems like alot of work to me... (this is just 1/2 the ladder... there's another part along side the raceway.)
Into the spawning shed! "WHACK!" as Scott is about to hit a female chum... See all the stuff on the table... that milky coloring... some eggs... all those flapping fish splash that stuff up in your face!
The whole operation at work...
Andy is cutting opened females on the left, the eggs slide down into the pan, then Jess (the bucker of the day) fertilizes them with the males. This picture actually shows her squirting into the bucket but she will do it into the pan next.
Fresh eggs...
(This wasn't from today... but I figured you'd rather see ME in a picture!) So after there are 4 pans of eggs all poured into a bucket, we take them to incubation where they get poured into the egg washer and they are drained down into an R48 incubator. This was me from the other day...
Pretty, right!?
So far we have filled about 14 of these things... they are quite large! About 5 feet tall... probably 3 feet in diameter. There are a few MILLION eggs in each.
Come on! I had to give you atleast ONE picture with some blood and gore! HA HA Ok so we don't have a ton of these bloody fish just laying around. This one just didn't make it down the shoot. All the fish get ground up and piped to the middle of the ocean or something. I know, that's kinda gross too. This is a cut up female, by the way. Chum get that striped coloring... and you should see their teeth!
3 comments:
Fantastic pictures Rebecca! SOO many fish! And soo many EGGS! I'll bet you're seeing this in your sleep. Pictures definitely say it better than words do. I was wondering what was up with that one fish laying on the floor, lol.
Mom
I wish I had known you don't work on Tuesday... I would have logged into AIM to talk! Will you have Tuesday off next week too?
Melissa
Nice informative pictures Becky, but sure does look like Jess is taking a "whizz" into that bucket! Must be a little short on "facilities" in the great big boonies! Love, DAD and Zeke!
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