SO how strong is your stomach today?

OK before I get to how strong my stomach is, there's something more important to announce.

Yesterday, in the History of "Rebecca's stint in Alaska," was the warmest day of the year! Yeah I know... "so what... what does that mean!?"



Yeah, that's not just some random number... that's the temperature! 73.1 degrees... that means shorts baby! I went out with Adam on his boat... he fished... I sat and read in my shorts and a tank top. Dan and Deena were out fishing right next to us... I watched them all for a bit. Have I told you all about the momma bear and her 3 cubs that have been around? I saw them again... they're CUTE though I haven't seen them close up. It was a fabulous afternoon... Know what was even more amazing!? We got off work early. I knew it was going to be a great shiny warm day right in the morning when I looked at my window thermometer and it read...



HA Yeah... 80!? At 7:30am, that's not right. That's just real proof to me that thermometer doesn't really work... but yeah. We were in the spawning shed, just us weekend crew, working away at the chum when warm breezes kept blowing into the shed. We were listening to a fun CD... with warm breezes... I was bucking... and all I could help but think was "This is fun!" :-D he he he

SO... Yesterday was supposed to be the last day... but we ran out of fish... then today was supposed to be the last day... but we were short on fish... (Alot of chinook "King" salmon are coming up the ladder now so we were starting to keep them in one of the raceways, meaning we could only fish out of the other raceway.) Actually we've gotten a bunch of different kinds of salmon up the ladder. My favorites are the "humpies!" "THE WHAT!?" you say... the Humpies. The pink salmon... aka Humpies. Male pink salmon as they get ready to spawn grow a big hump on their back... they are pretty looking too.


That's a humpie... Pink Salmon


Chinook "King" Salmon... it's coloring was cool. We will be spawning them Thursday and Friday. Lemme tell ya! There are some HUUUUUGE ones coming up the ladder.


Chinook "King" Salmon... he was bigger than the last.


It's cute right!? HA HA Shockingly, this is also a king salmon! Just a little tiny male.


Coho "Silver" Salmon These guys shouldn't be coming up the ladder already but we are getting a few. SO instead of them going down the grinder, they are still good to eat.


This isn't a GREAT picture but it was the best of my attempts to get a picture of the crazy K-9 looking teeth that the male chum salmon grow. The other day when I was bucking, the males were acting all sorts of crazy and flipping themselves out of the shoot. Well TWICE I got hooked by some of these teeth, scratching my arms. Drawing BLOOD! EKK!

Alright... so spawning lasted only until 11am this morning. What else did we do? Well for an hour BEFORE lunch, we morted the lagoon.


Really there are no good pictures that can express this job... but here is one I took the other day. See, the chum that don't go up the ladder end up dying in the lagoon. Unfortunately, somehow alot of chum got BEHIND the net so they had no where to go. Because of these big teeth they have too, some tend to get wrapped up in the net and during a low tide, end up hanging from the net to bake in the sun! Most of the fish turn into mush basically... there's a boat we use in the lagoon to put the morts in and drive them over to the weir and let them just get flushed out the weir but... they've got to get IN the boat somehow right!? Today we had to lift up the net and get all the morts from behind it which were grouped up in the corner and up on shore... It's a puke-worthy job. I managed to hold it together, but a few of the other folks darn near almost lost it. Just breathe through your mouth and you are alright... try not to actually let the smell hit your nose! We did have some poker sticks to used but it was almost easier to just grab em by their tales with your hands. Gloves obviously! Plus, sometimes when you poke them with the stick, they pop... they don't exactly EXPLODE but some "juice" aka "crap you don't want spraying on you" comes out a little. It's not pretty! It's just all part of the hatchery job though... it's not just something we had to do this year. You know that smell when your dog rolls in something dead... that's what my rain pants smell like!


Some of the dead on the rocks underneath Adam's porch. Yeah... the smell of rotting chum wafts in the air around here. I wish I could bottle the smell and send you some! :-D You'd all love it!


So I know it almost seems kind of cruel when you think about how we shock them and then whack them over the head and stuff... well I've said it before, they will end up dying anyhow if they were left to spawn naturally. See this chum... with the weird white coloring. It's still alive... this is how they start to look eventually. They basically start to fall apart... when we were morting today, I stabbed a fish with my stick that was actually still alive, but it looked like this... it's eyes were holes... they were just gone... I don't even know how it was still alive but it was. They are looking pretty nasty! Spawning for the past few days has been tough and slow also because alot of the eggs are going bad. They get hard... alot you just dump the whole set, alot you have to pick through. But they only have about 20 more buckets to get tomorrow and chum spawning 2007 is OVER. I say "they" because I'm off tomorrow! YAY!

Work will resume for me on Thursday when we will start chinook spawning. This should be really interesting because there are some MONSTER chinook! But actually, I will be working in the Roe Shed. "HUH!?" Yeah... roe = eggs. Deena and I are in charge of that and it's her day off on Thursday so she talked me through it today and I have to run it on my own! EKK! Anyhow, that's where we take roe for caviar. Just strip the eggs out of the fish into buckets... but we have to be very sanitary about it. The eggs will either be loose... just like when we take them to put them in the incubators or they could be "skeined." Despite all the nasty bad fish we are getting, we are still getting "green" fish, meaning they aren't ready to spawn. So when you cut the fish open, instead of the eggs just dumping out, they are still all connected together in almost a pouch-looking skin... so you put out two big lumps of eggs. They are kind of cool actually. That's Thursday and Friday, and then we have to SPAWNING PARTY on Saturday!! YAYYYYY!!! I hear it's a major thing... people who hear about it come out... people from other hatcheries... people from town... Lots of food... they roast a pig! I love parties out here! :-D

Well not much else to tell I guess... my wrist is feeling better but it's not perfect. Still hurts doing certain things. OH, last week they replaced that crazy little ramp at the dock so if I drive the pushcart off it, it's my own damn stupidity! It's wood now and not some crazy bent metal grating. Much nicer! But I still don't trust myself! They have been working on the bunkhouse... painting it green and red like the colors of the permanent resident housing. Though, the bottom level of the front of the bunkhouse needs repairing so slowly they are getting to that. So instead of painting it all, they have the top level green, and only the few panels they have fixed on the bottom level green. The rest is still blue, so it looks a bit white trash. But I have a picture of the SIDE which includes Angie's new apartment that is all nice and green for you to see. It'll look really nice once the whole thing is done though.


That's that... I think I've said everything for now? Maybe... who knows...

SHOUT OUT OF THE DAY - To mom, thanks for the card. :-D Everyone else, WHERE'S MY MAIL!?