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...

Monday, October 19, 2009

Bear Madness

It’s getting to be that time of year again when the bears start to give us problems. A few weeks ago, we let all of the coho into the lagoon, let them come up the fish ladder, sorted them and they are hanging out in the raceways now. There are still some extra coho in the lagoon but there aren’t many on the saltwater side, where the bears like to fish. This causes the problem. They are really scrounging for food so they are all over the place these days. During the day, lately, they can be found in the back of the hatchery in the lagoon where some fish must have escaped to. However, they have realized that we keep the fish in the raceway. Every year we deal with fish breaking in and this year is no different. There is a fence all around in with an electrical wire but that doesn’t stop them. One way or another, they break in and fish out of the raceway and always cause some kind of damage. The day after the first break-in, Adam noticed. The fence on the side was opened and the fence that we have IN the water (our fish crowder) was bent, probably from a big bear butt! That was a week ago. This Sunday, as I was walking into work, I saw a bear standing on the walkway over the raceways! So I ran home, got my camera, and snuck up on him.


Photobucket
Right after I snapped this picture, I yelled at him and startled him. At first, he went to run straight (based on how he is in the picture) which would lead him down a concrete walkway between the raceways and RIGHT INTO ME! I realized that right as he did! As I took off to get the heck out of his way, he turned around and jumped (or fell) into the trough behind the raceways, right into the water. He scrambled out of the water and back onto the walkway. Then he climbed, ever so agily, over the fence. (It’s the same kind of fence as the fence on the right side of the picture.) They are not very sturdy, but somehow he managed to not bend the fence despite his 600-700 pounds! Later on, I went to clean up the mess of salmon bits he made on the walkway. I found the gate down the concrete walkway opened and a chunk of bear fur stuck to a zip-tie. I’m no cop, but I’d say that is suspicious! I saved the bear fur too… who wants it!?

Photobucket

BOO!

The other damage that has been done around the site happened a few weeks ago. Somehow, they broke into a feed van (a huge box that you’d see a train carrying.) We are pretty sure it was closed all the way but somehow they broke it. The pulled out a few bags of food and spread it over the ground, along with a bunch of empty bags. There were probably 15 bags of food in there, so they could have done more damage but it also could have been WAY worse! I cleaned up as much food as I could, but they cleaned it up that night. I was feeding out front the morning after and the two guilty bears were sitting up on the hill near the van, just waiting for me to leave. They broke in again that night but thankfully it had been cleaned out. They must have got the hint, or we’ve closed the van better, because they haven’t been broken into again. That is good because the van has been filled up with more food a day later. THAT could really cause some damage.

Photobucket

Anyhow, in more work related business, we seeded our Hidden Falls chum eggs. That means we’ve put them into their incubators that they will hatch in. Of course, that isn’t without some drama! A few weeks ago, Ben tried to smooth out some eggs in one of the R48s that have housed the eggs since spawning. Somehow, in doing this, something changed in the incubator and loosened up the eggs… maybe? We aren’t really sure WHAT happened but this is the best I can do. Since the eggs have been in the incubator, untouched, for a few months, they form almost a solid block. The eggs started to move around a bit with the water and started getting higher and higher in the R48. Most R48s full of eggs have 8 inches or less of room above the eggs, but the water comes up to about 2 inches from the top. The most full incubators have a screen that sits in front of the water outflow so we don’t lose eggs. The eggs just kept getting higher and higher, causing the water to change it’s height also. I tried to pull some eggs out and put them in the next incubator but that didn’t work. There were still eggs coming out of the water. Then Adam and I put this cover plate on the top of the eggs to hold them down. We figured it would be fine after this. Well, a few days went by. We were getting the incubators ready for seeding. I was taking Melissa into incubation to show her what we needed to do, when we caught a glimpse of that incubator! “OH MY GOD!” I gasped and turned around and ran for Adam. The boss happened to be gone.

Photobucket

In a solid block and with that metal plate on top, the eggs had pushed up and about 3 inches OVER the rim of the R48! Thankfully, I don’t think we lost many eggs. Anyhow, Adam scooped out eggs and put them into a different empty incubator and we put the plate back on, just in case. It was all very shocking!

Last week, we took 3 days to seed 15 R48s full of eggs. It went very smoothly, until the crane we use stopped working at around 4pm on the first day. The crane is the key to seeding our eggs easily! Adam tried a few things, resetting it, etc. but nothing worked. However, as both of us walked back into incubation about 10 minutes after the crane stopped, something didn’t smell right. It was the smell of burning… electrical burning! There was no fire, but the box on the crane was definately smoking. Unfortunately, the crane couldn’t be used after that. We had to bring in the small forklift, and lift the egg box to fill each incubator box. It wasn’t as easy as it would have been with the crane, but it could have been worse. Here are some pictures from seeding…

Photobucket

Melissa and Dan siphoning eggs into baskets to be weighted.

Photobucket

Each incubator box had 2 baskets of eggs in it... 27.22 kilograms each... or Exactly 60 lbs. I weighed baskets the first two days... so I had to pick up lots of 60lb baskets.

Photobucket
We poured the baskets into a box with a hose connected to it. Gravity did the rest.

Photobucket

The eggs pouring into the incubator box.

Photobucket

Close up eggs... the dark spots in the eggs are fish eyes. It's very interesting to look at them up close and see there really are tiny fish in there! The light colored eggs are bad.

Friday and Saturday, we did the egg transfers for Medvieje. This year it is a few weeks earlier than the past years, so it was a lot nicer and less cold. My first year, I believe it was snowing. We also usually do it at 11 pm. This year, the boat didn’t come until about 10 am Friday so we got to do it in the daytime! I was in incubation with Melissa. We siphoned the eggs into this box, which had pipes connected to it and running all the way down to the dock, where they caught the eggs in baskets and dumped them into fish totes. It went very smoothly, on our side. On Saturday, the boat blew some kind of hydraulic line to work their crane so they had to change what they were doing. Lately it seems that there is always some kind of drama!

Adam went into town on the boat Saturday. He is heading to Seattle for some hatchery tours put on by one of the fish food companies. He will be back on Friday. So it’s just Tucker and me! Last weekend, I went into town to do some things. Jacquie was heading in also for a doctor’s appointment, so I decided to go with and get some things I needed for my house renovation projects. We were supposed to leave Thursday… but we got fogged in until SATURDAY! Blah… I hate fog. It was just the amount of time I needed though, to get what I needed.

The house renovations (aka putting up curtains in the kitchen) are going good. I’m doing some modifications to the kitchen valance (shortening it and sewing my two valances together). I am also planning on painting my white curtains for the kitchen. I hope they turn out! I got the fabric for my living room valances a few days ago and I like it a lot. Hopefully I can sew those valances up nicely! I’ll post pictures when I get things done.

Besides all that, not much else to tell. So far, we’ve had a low of 34. There was some fresh snow on the mountain but nothing has made it down yet. It’s been in the low 40s (at the most). Well, here are some pictures!


Photobucket
The bear on the right was trying to steal left bear's fish. They were growling at each other for a while. They weren't really fighting though. Here they were just putting their faces next to each other and growling.

Photobucket
Flying over the snow fields from Sitka to the hatchery. I thought this glacier looked cool.

Photobucket
Flying over the hatchery. My house is on the left, next to the round ponds.

Photobucket
Tucker's Halloween costume! A dishwasher!! HA ok not really... he just didn't want to move.

2 comments:

h'na said...

aoewfapweofj

your life is kind of fantastic, and i enjoy reading about it. :)

Anonymous said...

Good thing that bear knew to turn around and run away too! Your life is getting to sound more and more like "life on the farm!"--- something new every day. Think of the stories you can tell your children. Love DAD