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, March 31, 2008

Random pictures

Hey guys, so I promised another blog with some more pictures. Just some random interesting things I thought you'd like to see.

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When we first got to Takatz, Adam noticed there were a ton of little fish and stuff swimming around at night where the light from the house was shining down into the water. So the next night we fished some out with the net and found this guy... that's what most of the fish looked like. It's on the orange glove so you can see that it's completely see-thru. Pretty cool!


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So you've see the shrimp before... they are huge. But half of them is just head. Here's just a close up on a shrimp head. I wanted to get a picture because of it's nose spike thing. It's probably the longest one I've seen... also pretty cool! And sharp!

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So you might not know this but the female shrimp just carry the eggs around with them. Sometimes you get shrimp with the eggs still attached... thought you might find it cool to see. Also, if I do send shrimp home, I didn't want anyone to be completely surprised if they found one like that.


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Eggs again. This is a Coonstripe shrimp, which is alot smaller than the normal kind we get. We don't usually keep them but I had never seen this color of eggs before.


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Adam with some Yelloweye Rockfish that he caught.

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Yelloweye is mostly head! This is how much is left after he cleaned the meat off... ALL of it almost!

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So a little while after he threw those two Yelloweye carcasses into the water, a Bald Eagle tried to get it. It was a BIT too big for the eagle to carry but he wasn't giving up. I had NO idea they would even do this but he landed in the water and literally swam the carcass to the rock.

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It took him about 10 minutes but he made it. Seems to be enjoying his find!

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I have no idea what this is... kinda looks like a lobster though right? Anyhow, Adam found it somewhere... fishing or in a crab or shrimp pot. I dunno... it's cool though. By the way, it's fairly small. We had the goofy idea to superimpose something in there to make it look HUGE but it didn't work too well. It was only a few inches long.

Well enjoy the pictures! I'll be back to the hatchery Friday night if all is well with the weather. I'm about to head out now.

Sunday, March 30, 2008

Feeding begins

After a long stay at Takatz just babysitting the house, we FINALLY have fish and Adam and I finally have a “weekend” back at the hatchery. Grant and his boat “Heron” started delivering fish to us on Tuesday, March 25th. That day and the next day, he made 3 trips each day, each trip filling one pen. Unfortunately, both days, we were battling ice and slush on the top of the water. The weather on Tuesday was pretty crappy with lots of fat snowflakes creating a lot of slush on the top of the water and Wednesday it was more of an ice layer. If there is ice or slush in the pen when you pipe the fish in, the fish tend to jump on top of it since they are hitting saltwater for the first time, thus causing possible death. Thankfully, we’ve managed to clear the pens out pretty good before the boat comes. Wednesday, the weather turned for the better. The sun came out and helped to melt a lot of that ice. Thursday and Friday had only two trips and the weather was good so we didn’t have to worry about anything at all! We woke up Saturday to a bit of ice in the pens again but nothing too bad. We finished off the transfers with the last 4 pens and then we rode the boat back to the hatchery for our weekend.

Really we haven’t been doing much of anything though. We feed the fish the day AFTER they show up. So nothing on the first day (since the first 3 pens were filled), 3 pens to feed on the second day (but 3 more were filled), 6 pens to feed the next day, etc. It’s only a bag of food a day, seven times a day. The fish are barely eating now but we are giving them food for when they are ready to eat it. Thursday after work, the weather was really nice so we decided to head to the Hot Springs. They still have quite a bit of snow there but we still hiked up to the pools. They were the perfect temperature! It was really nice.

Besides that… humm…. I have pictures and that’s it!? I think I’m going to have to post another post tomorrow maybe because I have quite a few, mostly random, pictures. But first, let me introduce you to the brand new Takatz house! :-)

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Alright I’ve decided to start a new section… it’s going to be my RECOMMENDATION section. Just because I have a few things I want to recommend to you.

RECOMMENDATIONS – First I have a few movie recommendations. Some of you might have seen one or both of these but I just saw them.

DAN IN REAL LIFE
– I can’t remember the rating… PG-13 I think but it’s a great movie. It’s pretty funny, kind of reminds me of my family because it’s a family setting the whole movie, and has a very good cast. Definitely go rent that.

INTO THE WILD – This movie is newly out on DVD and is rated R I believe. It’s about a guy who basically is tired of “society” and decides to get away from it all, backpacking across the country, but his main goal is Alaska. It’s a long one but it’s pretty good and based on a true story. *Note the Xtra Tuff Boots in the movie if you rent it. ;-)

Alright, my third recommendation may sound a little odd after two movies but I recommend trying some Yoplait Yogurt WHIPS if you haven’t! They are FABULOUS! Alright, they aren’t a new product but since I ate a great one this morning, thus putting it into my head to start this recommendation section, I had to give my opinion! I had Orange Crème this morning and it’s great… I had a Chocolate Raspberry Mousse one yesterday which was more like a dessert than yogurt, but did still have that yogurt taste. They have a few other chocolate mousse flavors, some fruit flavors… they are GOOD. Get some!

SHOUT OUT OF THE DAY – To the Grandmas, Grandma Czuba and Grandma Moser! Thanks for the mail!!

Sunday, March 9, 2008

And we're off!

QUICK POST!

I am leaving for Takatz in the morning (I will have already left by the time you all read this) Sorry for the short notice... we weren't even really sure when the house would go. Really the fish aren't ready to come to Takatz yet but our boss doesn't want to leave the new house down there alone. So that means Adam and I will be living in it for a while... 10 days maybe? I'm sure we'll be back here and there to get groceries and do random stuff so leave messages!

I'm pretty excited! :-D BYE!

Saturday, March 1, 2008

Pictures of the week

UGHH I don't like this thing sometimes. WELL, I had a short post about my fairly boring week but I lost it. It just talked about how I had a pretty busy day on Tuesday but the rest of the week was pretty slow.

Tuesday I had to:
1) feed 2 round ponds of babies 6 times a day
2) feed a raceway full of babies 7 times a day
3) feed 41 round ponds of Coho
4) mort the big chinook in the saltwater pens

It was a busy day! But a little cute seal made my day. Wednesday Adam came back though... YAY! Thursday was just "one of those days..." Friday was boring and we got out early.

The whole point of this blog today was just some very random pictures I have to show...


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I bought 3 amaryllis bulbs at home and brought them to Alaska. Finally I planted them a few weeks ago and two of them had already started growing IN the paper bag so I was worried that would stunt their growth. They were both the same variety, a salmon colored one. This was the day ONE bloom opened up all the way.

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I took this today. This is the other plant actually but it has 5 blooms! I thought they only got 4!? Anyhow, they are beautiful right now. The other one has 3 blooms right now, but could get a few more. The 3rd bulb I had will produce a dark red bloom. When I planted it, it hadn't started growing already like the others, but it has shot up FAST! It's currently a few inches taller than the other two right now, though it just has the two green stalks right now. Oddly though, it looks like it is growing a third stalk at the very bottom. It isn't just a leaf... it is fat on top like it could have a bloom. It's only about 2 inches tall so I'll let you know. Can that happen!? A 3rd stalk?

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Tuesday, I was talking to mom about my busy day and we were talking about raceways. She wasn't sure what a raceway looked like even so I said I'd take a few pictures. These pictures almost look connected if you put them side to side, but the top picture is of the two raceways that we fill up with fish during spawning season. In the building at the end of the far left raceway is the shock box that we shock the fish and dump them on the table. The second picture are of the other two raceways back there. One of them is empty but the other is full of the baby chinook.

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These are some of the baby chinook IN the raceway. They are pretty small right now.

AND NOW... The sad truth.... Just like in the human world, some fish babies are born with differences. While most of the fish are born normally, but some are born as....

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Siamese twins! You do see this quite often. Unfortunately, they probably won't make it.

OR...


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Two headed! Adam said he's never even seen this before so I felt lucky to catch a picture of it. Pretty crazy right!?

Here are a few other pictures too... I was basically walking around looking for random stuff to take pictures of after those pictures. So how about showing you some fish food...

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This is some pretty small food we feed to the babies. It's .3 mm food. About like grains of sand.

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Then there's this food... it's 2 mm food. We feed this to the Coho right now. They are pretty big fish... about 3-4 inches long. Not very exciting but though it would be interesting to show you the different sizes of food.

Alright, well that's all I have today. I suspect I'll get alot of comments about those "poor babies!" They are pretty crazy looking. You see some with one eye or none... those are usually blue. Some that are just shaped weird. Deformities in tails. The awesome orange albinos too! Its a part of life I guess! :-)