Spawning has been crawling by. The fish seem ready to go and there are alot in the ladder but... they don't want to come up into the raceways. So, instead of a full 8-hour day of spawning we are lucky to get 4 or 5 hours. Today, they got 5.1 million eggs and that is the highest we've gotten so far. Last year we had a 9 million day. Needless to say, it might take a little while if we don't get a full-days fish up in the raceway. But besides the fish, things are going well. The newbies have jumped into spawning with enthusiasm. I've been having a pretty good time, except my darn finger hurts. The same darn finger I hurt last year too... doing the same thing. A finger injury from bucking fish. Not an injury you hear very often!? :-D Anyhow, I just wrap some duct tape around it to immoblize it and I'm fine. I think it's just a strain on whatever muscle, tendon, ligament, something on the bottom part of my right pointer finger. On my left hand I have a few blisters that I noticed yesterday. Also from bucking I think but from where the spawning gloves rub on my hand in certain spots when I grab fish tails. Yesterday I worked the table sorting fish with Scott and, not gonna lie, I had a good time! It's fast paced... you are whacking things... I was even proud of myself to find a few partially popped out eyes on a few females. Creepy sounding, I know.
Today we had a bunch of tours walking around the hatchery. A big boat holding 100 people came and Scott, Adam, and Steve gave tours... 5 tours of 20 people each. We knew this boat was coming for a while though... I guess the company got some money for allowing these people to come in and check out the place. Scott said the cruise started in Japan and they visited Russia and I guess then came to Alaska... something like that. So I hung around the spawning shed for a while, talking to the spawners in between tours. Most of the tourists were older, 60s and 70s but there was a few in there 20s and a few in their teens. It was funny to see their reactions to what was going on and seeing the scenery. One lady was sort of standing back for a bit and then scooted closer to take a few pictures but when she moved back to the back, she was sorta making some faces like "eww gross." A few people asked me questions and things... the usual questions you get. "Do they feel pain?" What do you answer to that!? "How do you clean that stuff up!?" asking about the blood all over. Another lady walked up to me and was like "Alright, what the hell is going on up there!?" She was kind of funny, but seemed a little grossed out.
So what else is new? The bears... well... they seem to be off doing other things right now, despite what I said about them being crazy around here last week. We did have some fish that got past (or through) the barrier net in the lagoon, so I think the bears have been over there catching them. That's good though because otherwise we are just going to have to get them out when they are good and rotten in a few weeks. The weather the past few days has been really nice, and right now there is sun shining through the window as I write this. Hopefully it stays that way for a while. Earlier in the week, though, we had had alot of rain so the water in the lagoon was REALLY high and pouring over the concrete part of the weir. There was so much water pouring out of the opening in the weir, it looked like whitewater rapids! Especially at low tide.
I guess it's a little harder to see the water over the concrete in this picture but you can see it pouring down onto the rocks on the right side of the picture. And the tide isn't real low so the water doesn't look like it's raging.
The rest of my pictures I have are just the usual animal shot... Nothing real special.
Such a cute little guy!
OK so I guess this isn't a normal animal shot. We were eating lunch the other day and Adam looked out and said "Hey, a one legged sea gull!" So I snapped this picture, but I wondered if it really was, or if it was just on one leg. So I threw something at it to make it fly away and, boo... it had two legs.
Alright, well that's about all for me. Dad wins the award for the best blog comment from last blog when I was talking about all the different bears.
"Get yourself a paint ball gun and shoot the damn bears in the ass with a different color so that we really can know who all the characters in the bear stories are!"
HA I laughed at least. He wins the award for the longest email too! Anyhow, thanks for the emails back, in response to my "Neglected and Ignored" email that I sent to some of you. I was just bored and needed some stuff to read. Plus I wanted to make sure you guys read that blog. I know it's hard sometimes because I write sporadically. Would it help if I emailed you everytime I blogged?
Well, I guess that's about all.
SHOUT OUT OF THE DAY - Have fun in Brazil, Melissa! Also to you and Mike, Happy Anniversary!
1 comment:
The bear cubs sure are cute. It's hard to believe by the pictures you take that bears can be dangerous.
I wonder if the people coming to sight-see are told in advance that they're going to see blood and gore and fish eyes popping out of their heads from being hit. What a thing to walk into!
Love you,
Mom
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