Spawning time fun

Week 1 of Spawning is over already! Today is my "Saturday"...

I don't really have anymore tales of spawning... it's really the same thing everyday. Spawn like crazy... though we've been running out of fish early the past few days. The other day I was carrying buckets of eggs into incubation and trying to be all beasty like... carrying 3 or 4 buckets at a time. Bad idea cause now my right wrist hurts pretty bad... makes it hard to do alot of other stuff sooooo... I'm hoping this "weekend" rest will help out. I just washed my smelly clothes and guess what!? Still smelly... that'll be nice. HA

Anyhow, I have some pictures... *NOTE* Clicking the pictures to enlarge them would be a good idea... I had to make all of them alot smaller, so you won't see stuff as good!


I'll start off with a funny one. Adam said when he had a friend come one year, the friend said this waterfall looked like Mr. Peanut. After he said that, I kinda agreed. What do you think!?


A bald eagle eating a piece of fish. They have been ALL over the place lately... I think I counted 10 or 11 at once one day!


The chum are pushing at the weir pretty hard... THEY WANT IN! There are alot right there...


I stood here at the outflow of the weir for quite a while trying to get a picture of these darn chum jumping! They are always jumping but it was really hard to catch them on camera!


The fish ladder... I've showed you guys this before but now it's running. It just creates a series of rapids for the fish... Each rapid is created as the water hits each metal wall... there is a small opening so I'm not sure if most of the fish push thru the opening or if some of them jump over the wall. Seems like alot of work to me... (this is just 1/2 the ladder... there's another part along side the raceway.)


Into the spawning shed! "WHACK!" as Scott is about to hit a female chum... See all the stuff on the table... that milky coloring... some eggs... all those flapping fish splash that stuff up in your face!


The whole operation at work...


Andy is cutting opened females on the left, the eggs slide down into the pan, then Jess (the bucker of the day) fertilizes them with the males. This picture actually shows her squirting into the bucket but she will do it into the pan next.


Fresh eggs...


(This wasn't from today... but I figured you'd rather see ME in a picture!) So after there are 4 pans of eggs all poured into a bucket, we take them to incubation where they get poured into the egg washer and they are drained down into an R48 incubator. This was me from the other day...


Pretty, right!?


So far we have filled about 14 of these things... they are quite large! About 5 feet tall... probably 3 feet in diameter. There are a few MILLION eggs in each.


Come on! I had to give you atleast ONE picture with some blood and gore! HA HA Ok so we don't have a ton of these bloody fish just laying around. This one just didn't make it down the shoot. All the fish get ground up and piped to the middle of the ocean or something. I know, that's kinda gross too. This is a cut up female, by the way. Chum get that striped coloring... and you should see their teeth!

Up close and personal

Spawning... Day 2

Tired again... more pain but less SMELL! Scott posted some information about yesterday on the bulletin board. We took something like 7.6 million eggs yesterday... if we keep up at that pace, there would be 17 more days of spawning. That's not TOO bad. Today, it didn't seem like we were really going AS fast but we had only a few hundred thousand less eggs.

This morning, Tim and I worked the table again. I made sure to wear my bandana today... :-) Keep the hair out of my face is the new goal! Scott and Adam were taking eggs so again we were flying! I've realized... actually I realized this yesterday but forgot to write it... this is proof that it takes a SPECIAL kind of person to do this job. If you are the least bit squeemish (sp?) about stuff, you wouldn't last! I mean, first of all, those fish are BIG... they are slimy... you have to whack em! I wasn't sure if I'd really be all that decent at that part... whack a fish!? Come on... nope, I highly enjoy it actually! HA HA So you get past the "whack the big slimy fish" part and then you have to deal with the fact that there are like 40 fish on the table... you whack a female and eggs pop out! You don't even have to whack a male for... yeah. So you have 40 fish partially flopping around... slapping their tales on the wet table splattering stuff up at your face and in your EYES that you KNOW is not just water! That's pretty gross if you really think about it. Then if you are squeemish about blood... ughh forget it! You're done! The hands of the egg takers are COVERED in blood. Yeah... it's a dirty job... someone call up Mike Rowe!

So anyhow, this morning I was up at the table. Part way through the morning, my finger started to hurt for who knows what reason... When I came in at lunch, I realized it was kinda swollen... my left pointer finger. I can understand my left thumb being bruised (cause it is)... that's from gripping the tails of the fish. But my pointer finger? I don't know... the only thing I can come up with is that maybe I whacked my finger with a bat... but you'd remember something like that right?? Cause I don't. It's swollen and bruised... I don't know...

We've been getting some random people coming to the back and watching us for a little bit... seiners... fisherman... tourists. Well today we got a big group of tourists... with a bunch of little kids! I was back whacking fish thinking "Oh yeah I'm sure this is gonna be GREAT for a bunch of little kids to see! Here I am beating fish with a bat... Scott and Adam are up in front cutting open the stomachs of fish... I can hear it now! "Mommy... what is the fish squirting out?"" I guess they looked interested but who knows... I was in the back laughing to myself.

After lunch, I got up close and personal with the fertilized eggs. :-) I was in charge of running the buckets of eggs to incubation. Man, I felt the pressure! You are in a hurry... you can't let them sit too long. But you have to pour them into the egg washer slow otherwise you will loose some. Then you hurry back so you can wash up your buckets and take some more. It is kind of neat to see the incubators though. We are filling up those R48s full with eggs... those are the big blue vats basically. So we fit like... 65-ish buckets of eggs into each. Each bucket contains eggs from 20 fish. That's something like 40,000 eggs in each bucket I think... I thought that's what Scott said but who knows. That's a few million eggs (2.5 mil-ish?) in each incubator. Crazy... that's not that fun of a job but it's cool to see the R48s FULL with salmon colored eggs.

Anyhow... so to me, this feels like "all-days" from drum corps, but a bit easier I guess! You work super hard... you hurt at the end of the day... and you know you still have a few more WEEKS of it... but it's all for a good reason. I should do a "bruise count" because I can think of atleast 8 right off the top of my head! I did that in drum corps too sometimes! ha

Well... yep that's about it I guess... Wow two postings in a ROW! WOW... ha ha Hey feel free to email me or comment more... geez! Gotta go eat dinner... I'm STARVING! Oh, shower first! ha ha Atleast I don't smell as bad as I did yesterday! Man, I had to scrub my arms TWICE in the shower... then I got out and STILL smelled like fish. I had to mask the smell with some lotion. My bracelet still smells... I'm sure it's never going to go away either!

Is that hair spray in your hair?

So you know how I said that come spawning season, I might be too tired to post? Well it might be "my hands won't LET me post because I can't type!"

Day 1... Spawning

Let's just say... my hair feels like I've hair sprayed it... but... umm... I don't own any hair spray!? My fleece smells like I rolled around in a vat of fish... and I have a weird crusty substance all the way up my arms?

HA yeah... it was an interesting day. I spent the morning working the sorting table with Tim. He worked the shock box and sorted fish for his side... and I tried to keep up with Scott, who was getting eggs, on my side! Like I said yesterday, males in the middle, females go in the slots on each side. Oh... but you have to WHACK em first! A few times... on the top of the head. Sometimes eye balls fly... or just bug out... sometimes you miss and whack the table real hard. It was actually kinda fun but my back was aching afterward. But like I said, I was working realllllly fast to try to keep up with Scott! The whole operation is in super fast speed! It's amazing really.

So after lunch, Tim and I switched with Jess and Andy. They worked the table. Tim starting taking eggs but Scott took over so he was running eggs to the incubation room. I was "bucking." Squeezing male fish... At first I had a hard time getting used to it but then I got into a good rhythm. Man, talk about fast! I thought we were going fast on the table but whew... this was faster! There are two egg takers and me so I have to work both of them. They put eggs from 5 fish into a pan, and I squeeze 3 males. Yeah I'm not going into all the... ya know... details and stuff. ;-D Anyhow, I was going FAST trying to keep up with two very experienced egg takers... Scott and Adam. Of course the males are BIG so my left thumb hurts from gripping tales. We wear gloves that keep our hands from slipping... easier to grab the fish.

But yeah... when you are covered in a little bit of blood and umm... male fish... uhh... contents... and your hair gets in your face... not really a great idea to push it back with your fingers. Just a tip... in case any of you are in that situation! HA HA Note to self... wear a bandana tomorrow or something! Not gonna lie though, if I didn't think about the pain, it was oddly sort of fun! And of course, when you get a bunch of young people together, vulgar comments fly! :-D

All and all, a good day, though my head hurts, my back aches and I'm a bit tired! I just sorta volunteered to help do some fish samples later too... apparently it'll only take an hour. Then back to the grind tomorrow! Scott said today was the "Best 1st day ever!" :-D Not like "yeah great job" but like literally, we took the most eggs that have ever been taken on a 1st day. I know it was something like 3 million this morning... I think maybe 7 million total? :-D

BTW, who's Zeke!?

It's about that time...

What time, you ask??

SPAWNING TIME!!!!!!!!

Today I had the day off (because of spawning, our schedules have been changed around) but I had to come in at 4 so we could all talk about spawning. The time has come folks... tomorrow we will start spawning! I'm a little freaked out... ok not FREAKED out but just nervous sorta... I'm so self concious about doing things I have never done before in front of people... like "I wanna do this but don't watch me... I don't want to look stupid if I screw up!" That's the reason...

Anyhow, I guess it all does look easy enough... I'll walk you through it. (BTW, on my days off, I'm going to try to get pictures of people spawning so you can SEE it...)

So apparently there are about 96,000 chum inside the barrier net, and they are pushing HARD to try to get into the inner lagoon! There are always SOOO many right in front of the weir (that's that concrete walkway looking thing that the fish have to jump up). They have some gates that they open and close so ALL the fish don't come in at once but they have been letting alot into the inner lagoon and they are chompin at the bit! And I say "chompin" in literal terms because the male chum have got some MAJOR teeth on them! They ain't nicknamed "dogs" by coincidence! So anyhow, they turned on the water in the two raceways, which causes water to flow down the fish ladder. The fish ladder just simulates a series of rapids for the fish to jump basically... like in a real river. I'll have to also get some pictures there too because there are alot of fish there too... ok there are just alot of fish EVERYWHERE!

Basically we spawn until all the fish are out of the two raceways (for the day)... then we drop the crowders in the back and when we come back in the morning, both will be full of fish again! I asked Adam about how many fish would fit into the raceways and I think he said like 4000 (not sure if that was BOTH or just one... ALOT) So we fill up the "shock box" with fish... shock them so they are dead and dump them on the table. If they aren't dead still, we have to hit them on the head with a "fish bat." (I don't want to hear any "owws" and "oh that's terrible"s PLEASE... they are going to die anyhow.) Then they get sorted, males go down the middle of the table, females get placed in the slots on either side. Males you literally just squeeze... Females you have to cut open and basically the eggs just pour out onto this little table thing that slides them into the tray. Think a slip and slide... ha ha

That's basically it... getting the eggs is a bloody job but the male part is fairly clean... not including all the fish slime, which apparently doesn't really wash off very well in the shower even! I'll tell ya how it goes tomorrow... it looks like once I get the hang of it, it should be kinda fun. Though we will be doing it for a month (or more) straight so it'll get tedious but it might be fun for a little bit atleast. And I like the people I'm working with so it should be ok.

Well... that's all I've got for you today. I was out trying to get some pictures of the salmon trying to jump up the flow of water at the weir but... that's not as easy as it sounds. You'd think you'd get atleast ONE jumping because there are alot of fish just constantly jumping but it's hard to catch. Anyhow, pictures will come... be patient. I should hold my pictures ransom until I get some mail though! GRRRR... Thanks for the mail though Melissa! I got that today... yay! Remember, no food please. But MAIL!

SHOUT OUT OF THE DAY - Lee, Happy Birthday yesterday! ;-D

Collecting Chum and... Baby Chinook!? Oh my...

Yep leave it to all of you guys to comment on the picture with the BOY in it. No "Oww nice fireworks" or "Oww a beach in Alaska! Fun!" Every single comment is about the boy. GEEZ folks! ha ha It's alright... I knew it was coming.

Sooo a few interesting things the past few days... 1) We started collecting "broodstock" for spawning. That means just the fish we are going to use for spawning... though there are SOME fish in the lagoon, we have a barrier net way out front to keep any fish from coming in. So to collect broodstock, a seiner boat catches a set of fish and they put them in a pen that we have along side the barrier net. Then we end up letting the net down on the pen so the fish swim into the lagoon. I know, it sounds kind of weird... I'm not sure if they said they got 30,000 chum yesterday or if there are that many IN the lagoon... all I know is that Adam said we are only about a quarter of the way there. We need like 125,000 chum or something. I went out and helped Adam and Steve on that a few times yesterday and woke up sore today. When there are 10,000 chum in a seine net, there's alot of weight pulling in all directions! (BTW, Steve is the main guy in charge of NSRAA... he's out here for a month or so.)

Well I guess the most interesting thing of the week... or biggest "OH SHIT!" moment happened on Monday. Branden and Sarah were transferring the chinook that were in the back round ponds into the round ponds out front. WELLLLLL... from what I heard, there are two valves of some kind... one going into the round pond and one going into the lagoon... apparently both of those were opened causing some of the fish to go into the round pond (where they should be!) and some of the fish to go into the lagoon (aka "FREEDOM!!" for the fish... "OH SHIT!!" for Branden and Sarah!) So we spent a few extra hours after work on Monday trying to recover 2 inch long chinook out of the lagoon and the WHOLE day yesterday doing the same thing. We did end up recovering alot of fish but they are still trying to figure out how many they lost. Plus, we were just taking all the fish we could find meaning there are baby Coho in there... baby chinook... baby anything that happened to be in the lagoon.

YEAH... nothing ALL that new here. We've been doing alot of odd jobs around the place and getting the spawning shed ready. It's going to kick into gear pretty soon sooo I'll probably be quite tired! Not sure if I'll feel very motivated to post too often but I'll try. Just a warning... Hey, mail would be appreciated. I'm not saying food... geh don't really want any food actually! But mail is fun... anything really. Basically I'm set on stuff so yeah I don't want 100 bottles of shampoo and 1300 boxes of snacks... PLEASE not that!

Oh yeah, I made some FABULOUS brownies from scratch the other day that got RAVING REVIEWS! I was pretty happy. :-) They were so easy too... lemme know if you want the recipe. My first attempt to make lasagna the other day wasn't a super great one either... tasted good... turned out sort of weird though. Hey if you have any good recipes that are pretty easy and are good, SEND EM! I need ideas! Speaking of dinner though... I've gotta go and make something... I have no clue what though!

SHOUT OUT OF THE DAY - Hey Mike, I wore your Stamp Farms shirt today with some pride! Got it all dirty today... looks like a farmer wore it! :-D Though I did get a "Stamp Farms... How do you farm Stamps?" HA I'm not sure if she was joking or not but I laughed!

Pictures of the Week

Alright so I promised some pictures so here they are... though I STILL haven't gotten the picture with me and my Prize-Winning (for being the smallest!!) Halibut. It's funny... We went out fishing again yesterday and caught a TON of rockfish but not halibut.


Fireworks at the Hatchery... they were pretty impressive!


We finally made it to the back of the lake at the Hot Springs...


The stream coming out of the woods... it was really pretty back there.


No, he never caught anything... Nice scenery though, eh!?


Back at the Hot Springs... you've sorta seen a picture like this before. I was standing right on the edge of the rocks to take this.


After work on Thursday, we all decided to head to Sandy Beach for a fire and BBQ. YEAH, there's really a beach! The tide was really low right now... the water ended up coming all the way up to the rocks on the right of this picture.


Good times at Sandy Beach... (Left to Right) Angie, Deena, Andy, Tim, Jessica


Every now and then you see a BIG cruise liner in Chatham Strait...


Bald eagles... The closest one is an adult. The one behind it on the upper rock which doesn't really look like a bald eagle is a juvenile bald eagle. They are covered in alot of fluffy feathers and stuff so they, often times, look LARGER than the adults.


There are two young (probably 2 yrs. old) bears in this picture... look closely. One is in the water... you can only see it's head. The other is on the rocks... the one in the water was hanging around all day trying to catch some fish but he's not very good at it. We watched the poor guy for a long time but never saw him get anything. Then that other bear (on the rocks) came out. It was alot lighter in color but about the same size and age. They are both pretty skinny and gangly... long arms and legs! But pretty cute!


This is the lighter colored bear (the blonde one, as I will refer to him). He was looking for fish right at the weir and it looks like he's resting his head on the rocks. It's hard to tell but it really is kinda cute!


Yep... uh huh... say what you must. I'm just showing this to say... "LOOK... NO BEARD!" ha ha ha This was at Sandy Beach...

Fireworks, Fish, and Fun

Not gonna lie folks! I have been very UN-motivated in writing in this thing lately.

BUT... I said I would. And I did have a good weekend to write about so here goes... Sorry, I don't have enough motivation though to go to my computer and get pictures so that will have to be saved for tomorrow or something.

Well I last left you on 4th of July when I was about to join the festivities here on site. We had a cook out and it managed to stop raining and get a little nice for enough time, but as everyone's stomachs were nearing to a close, the rain returned. We took everything inside and hung out for a bit. As darkness came, Scott was intent on shooting off the fireworks he got, rain or not! And that he did! For a one-man show, he did a DAMN GOOD JOB! We were all really impressed! We stood in the heat of the fire pit, with some rain falling on us, and watched him shoot off some really good fireworks off the weir.

Anyhow, it was nice to be back with everyone having a good time! The next two days I worked... We started setting up the incubators for when spawning season begins and the eggs go in. It's all starting to come back full circle now... well not a FULL circle but it's gettin there. Back when we ponded, I remember taking these incubators all apart... now they are going all back together. Tim, Adam and I were flying thru that, but on Friday afternoon, Scott decided to give Jessica and Andy a break from the crappy work they were doing, so they took Tim and my place. Then we got put to work on some odd jobs... first one being "clean out the incinerator!" Yeah, sounds fun right!?!? Seriously! Clean out the incinerator!? What's there to clean!? A whole lot of ash is the answer. Actually, it ended up being kind of a fun job, probably cause Tim and I were cracking up and being crazy the whole time! Shoveling out ash... getting out any metal and glass. Just another dirty job... :-)

Well, my first weekend back and it was a really good one for a change! Adam and I decided to go halibut fishing on Saturday. First we had to catch bait of course... he hooked a King Salmon after alot of searching and I brought it in. Then we went out. Unfortunately, the water had gotten rough in the time we were trying to catch bait so it was a little rocky as we were sitting there. After sitting there for a while and not getting anything, he said we were going to move so we had to reel up all 150-200 feet of line (with a big weight on the bottom). That's always BLAH but I ended up having a fish at the end of mine! It was only a Silver Grey Rockfish... not a halibut. I asked him if I should have known I had that on my line, and he said "well probably not..." just cause it was rocky and it wasn't very big. That made me feel better! But hey, Becky 1 - Adam NOTHIN!

Then we moved and after sitting for a little bit, sure enough, I had something! AND OH MUH GOD, it felt big! Or it was just the 200 feet of line causing resistance!? *Deer in the headlight stare at Adam* "Start reelin..." he says. Pulling up a fish that is 200 feet down plus a big fat weight is a little tough on your arm! He was laughing at me the WHOLE TIME! Cause he knew it wasn't anything big... probably a tiny halibut actually. It sure felt heavy but he was probably right. Sure enough, it was the tiniest halibut I have ever seen! Like 5 pounds... Not gonna lie, I was a little embarrassed that I had to struggle to pull it up so hard! It was so little! I do have a picture but I have to get it from Adam. Yeah, he laughed at me alot! But again... Becky 2 - Adam NOTHIN! I threw it back though... along with the other one. We moved and fished in another spot but got nothing.

Sunday, we decided, since it was nice, Adam and I head to Baranof Hot Springs in his boat. We decided to hike up to this lake just a little past the pools where we "commandeered" a vessel (a little red canoe) and took off. Adam brought his fishing pole too so he threw it out there and dragged it behind us. The lake ends up snaking pretty far back and we actually paddled our little boat all the way back there! It took a while... but it was really pretty back there. There was a little cabin (Forest Service or something) and a few water sources came in. The water right there was SO clear, it was really cool. So we walked around a little bit... canoed a little ways over to some rocky area that looked like a beach. He fished for a few... I walked around. He didn't catch anything... then we looked at some rocks and found this gold flakes in the water. It wasn't real gold we are assuming! HA Anyhow, it was funny because just the other day he said something about panning for gold somewhere... and then we found this stuff that really did look like gold. So as we were walking around a little, he looks over and goes "STOP... come back this way." He had spotted a bear probably a 100 feet away... he checked us out but must have gone away.

Well we had enough of that so we begun the trek back... of course, by then, the wind was now blowing a little... in the opposite direction we were heading so we got no help. It was about a 45 minute paddle to shore. Then we walked back to the hot springs. Remember the nice "changing area" sign? There actually is a changing area but it is just a little wood platform with a bench... no privacy but there IS an area. Well the water sure was warmer than last time! It was probably the temperature of a pretty warm hot tub... pretty HOT hot tub I guess. Adam though it was warmer than a hot tub but I didn't. It felt good for about 10 minutes then you started to sweat. The lower pools felt nicer because they were cooler of course. And there was this little tiny pool... almost like a little seat for one that felt really nice. (Picture to come...) We probably only stayed about 20 minutes maybe... (we were at the lake for a few hours.)

On the way back to the hatchery, I tried to call Grandma, because it was her birthday and we were in reach of the cell phone tower, but my phone didn't want to work. BOO... We kept going and watched one of the seiner boats pull up their catch, which wasn't much. Driving the boat through Chatham Strait these days is a little tough because you have to keep your eye out for seine nets. We almost ran right straight into one of them but spotted it at the last minute.

What these big ol boats do is they have a net with floats on top that they drop in the water. It's reallllly long and probably goes 20 feet down. Well the big boat holds one end... and this littler boat has the other end and pulls it out straight until the net is stretched. Then the little boat pulls it back around toward the big boat trapping the fish. When it gets back to the big boat, the net ends up getting a "purse" effect and pulls all the fish up and into the big boat. It was pretty interesting... I didn't know how they did it until Sunday. There are ALOT of boats out in the bay and Strait all doing the same thing... it was pretty cool to see so many big boats around when I first flew back to the hatchery. A bunch of them come into our bay too to hang out for the night and stuff. We have some shower and laundry facilities too that the seiners can use too, so there are usually atleast a few random people walking around.

Well, that's really about all. The past few days have still been spent in incubation, getting things set up good. There are a few bears starting to walk around, though I haven't seen them quite yet. I've heard that they are walking around alot pretty close... Finally the other day I saw the Mama bear and cub! SOOO CUTE! Those are the ones I need to be careful of as I walk over to the duplex alot (Adam's house...) Yesterday, we were both walking over there and there was a bear on the rocks down by the weir (which is down the hill from the duplex). We stopped and looked... he spotted us and sort of freaked out. He turned and went to run away but ended up jumping into water over his head... he swam over to shore and we just kind of laughed at it! It was kinda cute though. Well... THAT is about it now. Check back in for some pictures tomorrow or something... I'll try to get the motivation I guess to post them. :-\ I guess I'm just having too much fun! *WINK*

SHOUT OUT OF THE DAY - To my Grandma, I always remember your birthday, you know that! I didn't forget... :-)

Greetings from the 49th state!

Happy 4th Everyone!!

As you can see, I made it back alive! My flights back went good. I spent a day and a 1/2 in Sitka and now I'm back at the hatchery, preparing for our 4th of July festivities. We did get to see some fireworks last night in Sitka. We being 3 other NSRAA people who live in town at the apartment (Chris, who worked in Takatz with me, Anna, who will be coming out to HF soon and was here some last year, and Glen, who works in Salmon Lake but worked at HF a few years ago)

I was a little worried that the flight wouldn't make it to HF today because it was pretty cloudy but we made it. Now I'm back with all these crazy folks that I did miss and we are kickin up the BBQ. The weather has cleared up some so hopefully we get our BBQ in and light off some fireworks later to end off the night.

Well, better go join the crew. I miss you all but it's good to be back. :-) Thanks for a great vacation home!

SHOUT OUT OF THE DAY - To Valerie, guess what... I came home! HA HA Now I can say it...

Fish and Nets for days!

Huhh... I guess it's been a while. Haven't had all that much to talk about I guess...

Today is a BEAUUUUUUTIFUL day here in Alaska... it could be about 60 degrees and sunny. Right after I get done with this, I'm going to track down Deena and see if she'll go fishing with me. I've been giving the mission to catch a King Salmon for a party.

What is the party, you ask!? A fish RELEASE party that we are having tomorrow... for the obvious point that we have RELEASED all our fish! Today Dan is releasing his 4 pens of the "late large" chum that he still has out front, which he is gladly saying goodbye too! All the fishing being gone is a good enough reason to party around here so there is going to be steaks and fish galore! I'll get to the fish galore in a minute!

What have I been doing lately? Ehh boring work. Since most of the fish are gone except Dan's chum, it's starting to be maintenance work time at the hatchery. I have helped feed his fish out there some... but for the past few days, it's been net mending. This is where we spread out the nets that the fish have been living in which have been "cleaned!" (I say that loosely cause some aren't cleaned very well... we got one with a rotting chinook in it, maggots included! Ya know when your dog rolls around in poop... yeah it smelled kinda like that... but AMPLIFIED!) Then we hoist them up by the corners so they are somewhat spread out and hung and just sew up holes. This part isn't too bad but when we have to go folding them up at the end is what kills me! Some of the nets are HUUUUUUGE so it's tough... I just went into the incubation room and tried to take some pictures. I'll show them later. I also got some pictures of the incubators that I talked about a while ago... A few days ago, a few of us helped paint in the apartment that is getting built here for Angie, a permanent employee. That was kinda fun and gave me a little extra money. :-)

Anyhow, besides that, there's been alot of fishing going on. Not so much by me, but by everyone else. Lots of fishing by a pole and lots of long line action. The guys like to set this long line that goes 600 feet or something... depending on what they want to do. I THINK it lays on the bottom but I'm not totally sure. Anyhow, they catch alot of rockfish and halibut and some other stuff on those. Well, this construction dude that was here set one and ended up pulling a 130 lb. halibut off of it. I know I told this to mom and she had no idea how big that could be... it was about 5'4" in length or something. I actually didn't see it though. Then the guys set one the other day and we watched them pull that but they didn't get that much... a small halibut and a bunch of rockfish. A ton of us went along to watch... we were hecklers! :-)


This is the Hidden Falls Beard Patrol showing off the catches of the day! This is Adam (in the blue) with a few salmon that were caught near the lagoon. Tim and Dan have the long line catch.


Pretty right!? This was at around 9:30pm while the guys were pulling the long line.


Alright, I've been raving about this huge waterfall near the hatchery. I always passed it driving to Takatz. Well finally I got a picture. Man, I love this waterfall!

Well Dan and Adam set one yesterday and got the moneyload! They set about 30 hooks on this thing and in the first 7 hooks, they already had two ~50 lb. halibut, a big fat yelloweye rockfish (looks alot like a massive goldfish), an MONSTER halibut which they predicted over 100 lbs., and another halibut which they said was probably about 80 lbs. but they let it go cause they already had so much. Well after that, there was a bit of an issue because some rock at the bottom of the line was stuck on the bottom so they had to deal with that but they did come back with a few more fish. So now... I have some fun pictures for you to see of this stuff!


Adam with the 100+ lb. halibut. It's almost as big as him! That is one of the 50 lb. halibut at his feet and the orange rockfish.


The catch...


Dan cutting up the 100+ lb. halibut. They are almost all meat, so they got ALOT from this guy! They were up til 1am packaging the meat from all the catch and the sausages that they made last night too. They made 50 lbs. of sausage.

SHOUT OUT OF THE DAY - To Mother Nature... thanks for the weather!

GOODBYE OLD CHUM!

OK so BABY chum would be the word I guess… all the babies were set free! Hey everyone! I know, I know! I’ve been MIA! Well it’s been a long but good and busy week (8 or 9 days actually!) at Takatz to finish up there.

Last Saturday, I was suppose to head out but the water wasn’t very good so I stayed overnight here at the hatchery and then helped out Dan in the morning on his pens while I waited for Adam and Chris to return. Still the water was a bit choppy, but if you kicked it into high speed, you could cruise right over the chop and it was a little fun actually! :-D he he he Since Chris was heading back to Sitka on that Wednesday, she and Adam switched days off so Chris and I returned back. Found some funny things upon my return…

A giant brown king crab shell! Someone brought them this crab.

This giant pallet chair that Adam and Chris made... who knows why but it was kinda funny...

This is the outdoor shower I talked about last time...

Anyhow, not too much all that exciting at the beginning really… the day after I got there, we headed back to drop off Chris and pick up Adam. Chris is just going to be working in town for a while… but will be back to help out during spawning season. The fish were eating massive amounts of food! We got up to 205 kilos at one pen, but after that we dropped them down a bit and then went to two feedings a day. We got worried for a few days because there were signs of disease in one of the pens. Adam said that it could spread pretty badly in about 3 days but thankfully it didn’t.

That's alooooot of food... 180 kg on the left and 195 kg on the right. Like I said, the pen on the right got up to 205 kg.

The weather was pretty BLAH at the beginning of the stay… some days just overcast… some raining a lot! On Wednesday, we were suppose to head back to the hatchery to pick up our food that arrived with the plane but the waves were crazy! We headed out to check em out and that’s when we discovered it wasn’t good, but we played around in them for a little bit. To our little boat, they seemed really big! The trough between waves was really deep. Don’t worry Mom, we didn’t drown or kill ourselves or anything! We ended up going back the next day after the first feeding. Yes I said I was out there 8 or 9 days but I DID get to shower! I took one then.

Finally on Friday, June 1^st, it got sunny again! Can you believe its a few days into June already!? That’s crazy! Well, it was a great day for sun! Adam decided that we were going to release 7 pens of fish today (instead of the next day like he originally planned.) Because of the sun being out, the fish were all up enjoying it so it was easier to get samples of them because we released them. SO, after a few months of care for these guys, it only took about 15 pretty anti-climactic minutes to release them. All this entailed was to drop 3 sides of the net but leave the one side attached and let them go out on their own. It actually was sort of cool though to see them all swimming around the whole area of the net pens. You know that “flashbulb” effect I showed you that you can see when they feed… well that’s what the whole area looked like with 20 million fish swimming around!

These fish were actually the smallest guys we sampled... they were only about 2.1 grams.

It's sort of hard to see but notice the "flash bulb" effect... goes clear past the pens.

Anyhow, after that, we had to return some stuff back to the hatchery. We ended up meeting the new guy that came in the day that Chris left. The next day was interesting though. We pulled up some nets out of the water from the fish release. Let me tell ya… that’s not an easy job! Pulling up a 40 ft by 40 ft net (who knows how deep it is!) that is soaking wet and has been the house for a few million eating and pooping salmon fools! Hard and smelly work! :-D After that, we loaded 3 of them into the little boat of ours and Adam took them back to the hatchery. When he returned, he was carrying a big cooler. He set it down, opened it up to show a huge freshly caught King Salmon (aka a Chinook), and said “Dinner!” It looked huge to me, but it was “average” apparently… maybe 15-20 pounds. So I watched him cut up that salmon like a pro, then we pulled some more nets, loaded 2, and we both went back.

After UNLOADING the nets at the hatchery via this huge wheel thing, we headed in to take showers and do some random stuff. When I got back to the dock, Adam was scouting for some more Kings. Finally he saw some and cast his line. About a minute later, he caught one and then was like “Got it! Ok come here!” So, under his instruction, I brought it in! Let me tell ya! It’s not like catching little blue gills off your Grandma’s deck! HA HA I’m fighting with a mad 15 pound fish! By the way my arm felt, I would have though it weighed more but it was only like 15 lbs. BUT, I got it and it was kinda cool! Sorry, I don’t have pictures… I didn’t have my camera on me. BOO… it was a few feet long though. We had some of Adam’s salmon for dinner and it was pretty darn good! :-D

The next day, it was sunny again and we released the final 7 pens. It was crazy to see them all go! I think Adam said that these were the biggest fish released from Takatz. They were an average of about 2.3 grams I think it was… maybe a little bit smaller.

SOOOO yesterday was the last day at Takatz… we didn’t have much to do so we slept in a little… took it easy. We had 5 nets to pull up which was a pain but didn’t take as long as we though. It was a blah foggy and misty rain day anyhow, so it was nice to not be outside for a long time. We had to go get the shrimp and crab pots set in the bay too. We got some shrimp and found a MASSIVE guy! Whew he was big… Then we pulled up the crab pot and discovered out FIRST king crab! On the very last day… King crabs are the big crabs you see them catching on Deadliest Catch! Instead of pulling it out of the water, we re-baited and dropped it back in. Then we got back, cleaned up inside and packed up a bunch of stuff. As we were eating lunch, Adam noticed a humpback whale in the bay feeding. Really, it was very cool to watch, but sad at the same time because we knew it was probably feeding on OUR BABY CHUM! Hopefully most of them left the bay the day before but we knew it would happen. So I was really intrigued with this whale… tried to get a lot of pictures and videos of it but I was having a hard time. My camera has a dumb delay so I kept missing a lot of what the whale was doing so the videos show more. However, I can’t post the videos because they are too big and you know we have this whole bandwidth thing. So you’ll have to wait on those, but they are cool because you can hear the whale puffing water out and everything. We loaded stuff in the boat and then (OK don’t freak out MOM!) we got closer to the whale. Really, he was already close to the pens but we just motored over closer to him. If he felt too threatened, he would have taken off, not attacked us! After a bit, we headed back to the hatchery, set the shrimp pot, then unloaded our stuff. I spent the rest of the afternoon (only about an hour and a half) helping Deena with the tiny freshwater babies.

He was bigger than Adam's hand!

Please avoid looking at the MAGOO look on my face... but this is the king crab.

This was his big claw... looks like human molars right!?

THE HUMPBACK ATE YOUR BABY!!

Darn you humpback... eating out babies! But you are sure cool!

Well… Takatz is done… it’s been fun… I do think I’ll miss it! Surprisingly, it felt nice to get away from all the distractions of tv and internet. Coming from ME, that’s kind of a shocker, I know! But now I’m back here… so that means no cell phone reception anymore, so don’t bother calling!

SHOUT OUT OF THE DAY - I’m gonna go with my boss on this one! HA Sorry readers… I just want to thank HIM for making the decision to put me out in Takatz. You all know I was a little worried going into it… but it ended up turning out to be really great. Thanks Scott!

A Special Shout Out

SHOUT OUT OF THE DAY - On this fine Sunday morning/afternoon (depending on what time zone you're in!) I would like to send the shout out to my little brother, Steven, who is graduating from High School today! I wish I could be there man! It really makes me sad. But I am so proud of you!! CONGRATS!!

Sun for days!

Hey, I've been really lazy today and still feel like I'm forcing myself to write this one today...

The weather for the past week has been GREAT (minus the past few days) but today it did nothing but rain. Yesterday was very overcast with some sprinkles. I guess we knew it couldn't last forever!

Well, the weekly recap... there's not all that much to tell really. Sunday was a really really REALLY nice day! After feeding first thing in the morning, Adam and I pulled a few pots and then decided to explore in the other part of Takatz Bay. It was low tide so we found this spot that is covered with water during high tide but was exposed at the time. So we walked around and found alot of cool stuff. Lots of sea cucumbers, starfish and sea anemones INSIDE OUT which looked like crazy colored piles of snot!, and beds of old clam shells, which I found really cool. We just walked all over. On the way back to the boat, I kept finding cool colored starfish, so we decided to bring some back to the house so I could take a picture of them.


That weird reddish shiny thing is a sea cucumber. When Adam picked it out, it looked alot cooler, but it lost all it's COOLNESS. Next to it is this little eel-looking fish. It was cool too.

Really, I intended on tossing them back in the water right after I got my pictures, but a few were such cool colored that I decided to see if I could dry them out and keep them. I kept 4 of them and they dried out pretty good (when I left Takatz, the middles were still a tiny bit soft). The sad thing is that, though they dried nice, they lost alot of their color. I kept the orange one (close to that shell), the blue one on it's right (which was a cool blue and green shade if you looked close), the purple-ish blue one on it's left, and that purple one up on the left corner. I did take individual up-close pictures of the nice colored ones too.

Anyhow, so when we got back, I decided to sit outside and call Melissa and Valerie. Talked with them for a little bit while I watched Adam make a shower outside because he had his heart set on taking one! There was this bucket set-up in the bathroom in the house with a shower head that looked like a watering hose and nozzle from the greenhouses! Anyhow, he rigged it up outside and attempted to heat up some water in the bucket by leaving it in the sun, but apparently it didn't warm up much. Well, after the 2nd feeding, we decided to lay out in the sun, which was great!

Dad, you'll appreciate this. It was literally only about 55 degrees out, but I was seriously contemplating putting my bathing suit on! That's how warm the sun felt! Instead I was out there in shorts and a tank top. Adam got so hot that he decided to jump in the water! The water is like 50 degrees... that's pretty cold! ha ha After work, he did end up taking a shower under his Bucket O' Shower.

The next day started off a little on the shaky side! While using the hand push cart dealio to carry bags of food (not the motorized one I like to crash, but the kind with 2 wheels that you tip back and push) I tipped it forward to set it down and 2 bags of food flew into the water! These are 44 pound bags of food, and one of them even ripped on the way in! Well thankfully, they float! Chris and I actually learned that a few weeks ago but who knew it would actually float with a hole in it too! I ended up bruising my same knee when I must have dived onto the metal deck to try to save them. Then later on in the day, I was sitting outside in the sun reading because I was getting cold inside. I had a cute little wet mink sneak up on me from around the corner of the building! It was funny, but it was weird too! It was like I saw it coming almost... but it felt sort of like a cat coming up to great me until I realized "WAIT! We don't HAVE a cat!!" Once it saw me, it turned and ran so I chased him around the building just so he wouldn't run up the stairs into the house because Adam wasn't in there to chase him OUT! It ended up going into where the food was and eating food out of a bucket, which was sort of funny.

Anyhow, Monday and Tuesday wasn't quite as warm but it was still nice and sunny. Wednesday still felt sort of warm but was overcast all day. Then Thursday, my work day at the hatchery, it was overcast too with some sprinkles. I worked with Angie on land, which was a nice change. A day off from feeding crazy chum. I helped her sample all of the fish she has in the back which are all in freshwater. Teeny tiny coho... I'm not sure if any of the tiny ones are chinook too. She does have some chinook back there though that I haven't looked at for a while and they are huge! 3 grams, which look huge. The tiny tiny fish she has were just ponded into a few raceways a few weeks ago so they are like 0.2 grams or something. I felt like I was going to smash them! Then that night we had a fire in the fire pit and hung out which was pretty nice.

Now a few more pictures...


This is one of my new favorite pictures. This was at 10 pm just the other day. It amazes me how light it can be at 10 pm.


I just think this is funny. There were a few stacks that I needed to move from the corner so we could use them. Well this stack had a bit of a lean... At one point, while I was moving it on the pallet jack, I really thought the whole thing was going to tip over! When Adam saw it, he was like "It's missing a bag from the very bottom... OH YEAH, I think I pulled that out because it was sticking out." HA Yeah... thanks. By the way, those stacks are 1200 pounds. :-D I can move one by myself too.


Last week, I showed a picture of Angie and Branden working with one of the ponds. They were pushing out some of the Coho into some saltwater pens. Well, now ALL the Coho are gooooone! The last of the Coho got directly released into the ocean, where as before they went into pens. Some of these ponds in the picture ARE empty, but some (like that 2nd one back) has water in them but no fish. At the time I took this, the water in that pond was swirling all crazy! It was cool.

Well, I'm not sure if I said this last week, but last Thursday we got a new guy in to work for a few months. In a few days, Chris will be leaving to work in town, and a different guy is coming in to take her place. We'll be releasing our chum within the next few weeks too, so I think I will be out at Takatz for an extended amount of time. Maybe like 6 days instead of 4. I'm not even sure yet. So if you don't read anything on here, that's the deal... or I was just lazy! :-D

Sorry, no Shout outs... *shrug*

"One up" the bear picture

Alright so just a little bit ago I was able to "one up" my first bear picture... 2 bears at once!


I'm guessing that the big bear might be that same bear in the first picture... maybe?

There IS a real post under this one... so READ IT! :-D

Otters & Box Crabs & Bears, OH MY!

Hey everyone! Well it's been a good week... Very good I'd say.

I'm gonna start off by saying I am excited to show you my very first BEAR PICTURE! :-D Please, no comments about "oh be careful!" or "yikes... scary!" I never get close to any bears... I'm not dumb. The amount of bear sightings has raised... though I think it's the same few bears every time. This guy was across the lagoon.


He was probably checking out Waylon, the dog, who was barking at him.

Yesterday, Sarah and I took care of the chum here at the hatchery, but before our last feeding, Scott asked us to go out and feed the 5 pens of Coho. The Coho pens are right near the chum pens but a little closer to the shore. Well, as we were feeding, a bear down the hill onto the shore. It was really cool! I was mad I didn't have my camera because I could have gotten some amazing pictures because we were really close to him. Again, please... I know. We were separated by water and plus, he could have cared less we were there. Ada, the dog, was out there and didn't see him at first but once she did, she wouldn't stop barking! Even when she was going nuts, the bear could STILL not care less!

Anyhow, another good week at Takatz. For a few days, we kept ourselves pretty busy pulling and then dropping the nets. We pulled the nets up on one side to just dry out the algae growing on them, like what I did a few weeks ago at the hatchery. Then we dropped the nets. This is just where we dropped the nets down to the level of the deck to give the fish more net room since they are growing alot. They fish around probably around... uhh... 1.3-ish grams maybe. Last week when they sampled them, they ranged from 1.05 to 1.17 grams so I guess 1.3 is a guess. We are now feeding 3 times a day and it feels like it takes forever. They are eating alot now so we are trying to fill them up more at each feeding. I know you guys are probably thinking "I don't even know how big a 1 point something gram fish looks like..." Well I have a picture... :-)


These fish were probably about 1.1 grams-ish. As I've seen them grow from the tiny tiny things they were when they came out of the incubators, they look so big to me, but I know to you, they still look pretty small. Yesterday, Sarah and I morted a pen and among the dead, there was this huge baby that we both immediately knew we had to save cause he was big! A fat little thing... quite a bit larger than these... but again... probably only about 1.4 grams! Sorry it's a little blurry... lemme tell ya, these guys didn't want to lay still for my picture! :-D he he


This is what it looks like now that the nets are dropped to the deck. You can see all the way to the end now.


This is the view standing on the Takatz house balcony.

Anyhow, Adam and I decided to pull some pots the other day, and the shrimp pot was one of them. Though I say "shrimp pot" loosely because I think there was more OTHER stuff in the pot than shrimp! It was a pretty sad catch but we got some cool stuff. There were a ton of snail and box crabs, which I'd never see and found pretty SWEET!


That was our catch... minus some tiny shrimp I had already picked out.


Box crabs. That little one down on the bottom is all closed up and pulled in. Some of them had these cool orange spots on them... maybe sponges growing? They closed up to be this real tight rock looking thing.


This is one of them closed up. They looked so cool because of those holes on the front. However he folded up created these holes.


Adam and his pet box crab. He wanted to keep this guy because it just hung out on his shoulder. The other one in his hand wouldn't let go and for being small, they're pretty strong monsters! We decided we needed to get an aquarium so we could keep all the cool things we find. But he let him go. A few minutes later, Adam came up with the idea that would should have kept him in the back of the toilet because it gets a steady flow of saltwater! (It's a saltwater toilet.) Maybe next time Adam... Chris and I were entertained one afternoon by some umm... mating otters. ha ha Atleast we thought they were otters... we weren't sure what else they were but we were pretty sure they were mating.

Anyhow, last week I talked about the large boat that anchored up in Takatz and the small boats that accompanied it. They were the NOAA crew doing the surveying. Well they came back to the bay. It must have been lunch time for the crew because the big boat came in to pick up the little one. It was like Daddy boat picking up the kids... ;-D ha ha


The Davidson...

We also had a real nice looking yacht come into the back of the bay. I'm not sure how long it stayed because we didn't see it leave but about 30 minutes after it got back there, the smaller boat it was towing came cruising out pulling something... like someone was in the back tubing! You could hear shouting and stuff. EHH I sure hope they were wearing a wetsuit because the water is only like 45 degrees!

At about 2 in the morning one night, there was alot of Coast Guard activity on the radio. Some 300 person cruise ship ran aground and was taking on water. I ended up getting up to turn the radio down but yesterday I found a picture about this incident.



Things seems to be going alright here at the hatchery. Though I'm still not sure about the food situation. I know I reported that our food wasn't effected by the melamine contamination but I guess they found out some of it might have been after all. We had to get some inventory at Takatz of certain food, but a few of us were still confused at what was going on with that so I'm not sure. When I was in Takatz, Branden released all of his chinook... remember those big guys that I said were fun to feed? Yeah, those. Now as we speak (type? heh) Angie and Branden are out IN the round ponds sending the rest of the Coho out to saltwater.


That's Angie in the waders and that's Branden's head sticking up... he's standing inside the super slippery pond, probably pushing out the very last of the ones left in that pond down the drain.

Well, when I got back to the hatchery on Wednesday, a few things put me in a good mood. I think you'll find one of those interesting. SOOO last weekend when I was bored, I decided to send in a few pictures and a little story about how I'm working in Alaska to the drum corps website, DCI.org. They do this "picture of the day" thing and since Alaska isn't one of those states that anyone gets to see because of drum corps, I thought people would find it interesting. I called it "The state untouched by drum corps." Well upon my return, I got an email back about my submission from someone who works there (he happened to be a former drum major for The Cavaliers and I used to be a FAN of his...;-) he he) He said that instead of putting it on Forzato, "the picture of the day" thing, he'd like to write an article about it... that they are always looking for stories about cool things people are doing after they age out from drum corps. I had a good laugh about that! That's not what I was expecting at ALL! But I agreed... he said he was going to send me some questions for me to fill out. HA I still find it funny.

Well I guess that's all for this week. I'm happy to report there was NO push cart accident this week. Thankfully Dan pushed it up back to the shop this week. Alright, how about that American Idol though!? Mom, what'd I tell ya!? Blake would win or atleast be in the Top 2! I personally still think he'll win... Jordin's good... Melinda was good and so was LaKisha but... I still think I'll be Blake. What do you all think? Speaking of tv... anyone watch Grey's Anatomy?? Heck of a Season Finale... and this new show "Private Practice"... I knew it was coming. Well, if anyone wants to talk tv, lemme know! :-D Have a good week!

SHOUT OUT OF THE DAY - To Traci and Lee, heck of a Mother's Day present ya got there! :-D Congrats! Now when do I get to see some pictures!?