Mexico, here I come!

Hey everyone!

It's been sort of a crazy odd week so sorry for the lack of posting. I went into town last Wednesday to Friday... ended up going back on Monday and stayed until Wednesday. As most of you know, I was trying to get a passport, but my birth certificate arrived too late so I had to go back. Anyhow, that's done... WHEW! (More on the trip later...) That took about 20 minutes on Monday and then I was left to wonder what the heck I was going to do for the next two days in town! Tim was in town (he worked at HF this summer... left to work at Salmon Lake) Well he asked me if I wanted to go out there to Salmon Lake for a bit and check it out... help them out a bit. So I decided "ehh what the heck!"

The Salmon Lake project is another thing run by NSRAA.... something about the efficiency of their weir. Anyhow, they drive a boat from Medveije Hatchery (which is on the very edge of Sitka) to some land near Salmon Lake. Then they have to hike about a mile to get to their camp. That doesn’t sound TOO bad until you realized… OHH that means they hike in their groceries or whatever they need at camp. They have been building a new camp out their meaning… they have had to hike in LUMBER TOO! Crazy… So I helped Tim hike in their groceries and whew… my back hurt a little afterward. It’s a pretty primitive site… the Takatz house is nicer than their camp. (By the way, we are getting a new Takatz house/barge and WOW, it’s gonna be HUGE and super nice! I’m excited!) Tim and Glenn showed me around a bit… the site is on a stream but you have to drive a little bit to get to Salmon Lake. We checked out the Forestry Service cabin that is out there and hung out a bit. They did some “recapture” studies… aka they fished a bit. If they caught a fish that wasn’t tagged, they tagged it and measured its length. If it was tagged, they recorded the tag number. Well I spent the night there and tried not to freeze (I didn’t exactly have the right clothing for staying out there… since I wasn’t expecting to go.) Glenn had to work at Medveije the next morning so I headed back there with him in the morning and just hung out in town for the rest of the day. So that was interesting.

Wednesday I headed back to the hatchery, helped unload all the groceries, and then jumped into work again (I got back about 1.) They were “seeding” the eggs in the incubation room. Last week, I think it was, we seeded the “Late Large” eggs. That was 12 incubators… Wednesday they did 18 incubators of the normal Hidden Falls eggs. The “Late Large” eggs are Hidden Falls eggs too but when we raise them, we are just going to keep them a bit longer and release them when they are a bit larger than the rest of the chum. These eggs are seeded into those metal stacked incubators… the “No-Pads” which are the ones that have 5 boxes stacked on each other. In each box (a while back), we put biorings, the substrate, and then we put this screen on top. The screen covers the whole box and we pour the eggs onto that screen. Then, when the fish hatch, the fish can fit thru the holes in the screen and settle down into the substrate, but the bad eggs that didn’t hatch are still left on top. None of the eggs that go into the No-Pads need to be sorted. The only eggs that do need to be sorted are the eggs that will be put into the R48 incubators. Apparently we are going to be getting another row of No-Pads in the incubation room, which will accommodate about half of the Takatz Bay eggs. So technically, we will only have to sort half of the Takatz eggs. You might be sort of confused about the R48 thing. Right now all of the un-seeded eggs are IN R48s. Those are the blue incubators… half of the Takatz eggs will go BACK into R48s BUT when they go back in there, the eggs will be separated into layers. Right now, the R48s are completely full of eggs… top to bottom. When they go back in, we’ll put down a layer of substrate and pour some eggs in, then but a really small meshed screen to separate the layer and repeat. I think there will be 5 layers. WHEW… sorry if that was confusing!? Lemme know if that even made sense and if you understand or if I’m just writing JIBBERISH!? :-)

Alright, so that is some of what is going on at the hatchery. We are still feeding Coho, which are in freshwater and will be all winter long. Tuesday, I think, they transferred the Chinook from freshwater out to the saltwater pens, where they will stay until we release them next season. Those are the fish that will be like 6 inches long by the time they are released. They are cool. We have some new faces here now too. Steve, who is the guy who arrived in Sitka the same day as me way back in February and was working for Medveije, is now in charge of the Chinook. Lora, his wife, is here too, but she is only working some because she is pregnant. Soon we will have a NEW LITTLE face too… But speaking of NEW LITTLE faces… we DO have one! Brandy, who is Josh’s wife, had her baby at the beginning of the month and arrived back on Saturday. He’s a cute little guy!

Well, I guess that’s about it for the hatchery happenings. Weather happenings… yesterday Adam looked out the window and was like “WHOA! Lots of snow!” Well he meant up on the mountain! The snow has officially reached the tree level. It’s still high up there but doom is coming. :-) Though I think Adam prayed for snow last night because he’s a hunter and snow means the deer will come down the mountain. Well thankfully, he DIDN’T get his wish. Still no snow on the ground BUT… I walked outside and there was frost. There is still frost on the ground at noon. It’s quite chilly out too so yeah… boo snow!

Well, I talked about the passport thing and most of you know what that’s all about. A trip… I decided I wanted to go on a trip and yesterday it became final! YAY… Adam and I booked a trip to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico for December. We found this hotel and it looked cool but when we got back from town the first time (me without a passport), it ended up being all booked up for the dates we wanted. Well, we ended up deciding that we still wanted to go there so we had to push the dates back. So we’re going from December 10th – 17th. I know it’s late…but I’ll be home for Christmas and then probably until early February but I’m still not positive yet. Anyhow, here’s the hotel… we got an all-inclusive package so food and crap is included. Should be fun! :-)

http://www.vallarta-dreaming.com

I think that’s all for now… yesterday was Alaska Day and everyone got the day off. Since Adam and I were already off, we get Monday off to “celebrate.” Anyhow, guess that’s it. BYE!

SHOUT OUT OF THE DAY – uhh… yeah I got nothing! Sorry.