Fish Transfers and Sea Monsters

Not much new to say except that vacation is a day away! Adam and I leave Monday for town, and then fly out of Sitka on Tuesday, arrive in Maine on Wednesday morning. I'm pretty excited! I haven't left this place since I got back in late January or early February. I can't even remember. It's been a really long time. I had a hard time working on Friday... I had "vacation-itis" or something.

Not much going on at work lately. Feeding and moving fish around and getting stuff ready for spawning season. Last week, we transferred some Chinook to Haines, AK via boat. Adam had to go along with the fish and was gone a few days. It's a 16-18 hour ride to Haines. A few weeks before, we sent off our Coho to Deer Lake. This is when we bring in a plane and load some fish on in a tote and land on Deer Lake and transfer then into some net pens there. I went along on one of the 8 trips.


This is the plane we used... it's considered a "Super Otter." The planes we usually get in are Cessnas or "Beavers"... those hold 3 or 5 people in the back of the plane (1 more person can sit next to the pilot.) The Otter can hold 10-12 people. This plane is "Super" because it's a turbine engine so it sounds like a jetplane instead of the Cessna or Beaver sound. It's pretty cool. It's loud when it is sideways and then once it turns around to head out, it goes very quiet. Really cool.


The tote we put the fish into.


Ben is ready for fish to be pumped in. You can almost stand up in the plane, it's so big. All the seats are on the sides, folded up. I sat about where I'm taking the picture from... just in front of the tote. (Just for point of view, I'm looking out toward the tail of the plane.)


Just some scenery along the way. Deer Lake is south of Hidden Falls.


More scenery. They call this spot "Red Bluff." They get alot of mountain goats in this area.


Deer Lake... that is where they keep their fish food. See that yellow area? That's all tree pollen on the water. It was really bad around the time of the transfers but alot worse at Deer Lake. The whole inside of the net pens were covered!


Their net pens. The yellow teepee things you see are a set of floats to hang a net off. Unlike the net pens, there is nowhere to walk around these nets. Just a holder for a net.


This is where the Deer Lake people stay. A few years ago, their "treehouse" had a fire so they had to rebuild. I'm not sure what it looks like inside.

Well that's all the Deer Lake pictures I have. Now for some sealife...


A cool Seal picture I took on our last day at Takatz.


The Loch Ness Monster!? It's a Sea Lion. They like to catch the fish and then thrash them around. It's fun to watch. They throw them in the air.


The same Sea Lion. He probably had just thrown his fish or dropped it. They are pretty big and fat. 8 or so feet long and a few thousand pounds.

Well that's it for now. I'll let you know how my first trip to Maine goes. It should be fun!

Dog Days

Hey Hey! Back again… It’s fish release time here and surprise surprise, Mr. Whale is back! We are going to be wrapping up stuff in Takatz in the next week, releasing fish and packing up. Even though we don’t have whales down there, the boss wants us to release them slowly (a few pens at a time) instead of 2 releases of 7 pens each.

The only thing really new is our vacation plans for this summer. Most of you might already know, but we are heading out to Maine! I’m excited since I’ve never been there, and I can check that state off my list! We are leaving Sitka on June 22 and coming back July 6 (actually arriving the next day.) I’m already making plans to go to the mall and see a few movies that are out. Adam’s parents are trying to get this nice house on a lake (or atleast rent a house) to relax for a little while. It’s going to be a fun trip. We wish we could take 'Ol Tucker with us but it’s too long of a trip for him, so April (our next door neighbor) is going to watch him for us.

Well, that’s about all I have… so since it’s been a really long time, I’m going to turn this over to Tucker! He’ll tell you what he’s been up to lately!




What’s up guys!? What’s new? There’s a lot new here. Dad caught a king salmon last week. He was so excited… it was the first one of the year. I was MORE excited because those things are cool! They flop around and then I get to lick the blood off of them. Mom thinks it’s gross but I don’t care! Bears are back so I’m back to being a guard dog. We saw a bear at Takatz a while ago right near the fish pens and… I didn’t really see it. So maybe I need to get some better skills… but then I saw it and barked like crazy and he got scared… Yeah he was scared and took off. Chicken bear…



Mom and Dad took me to the Warm Springs a few weeks ago. On the way there, we stopped by some rocks out front of Takatz so Mom could take pictures of seals.




Mom says "AWWW Look at their faces!"



At the Hot Springs, we went to the pools to see if anyone was there. We didn’t go all the way down but far enough to see the pools from up on the hill. Well….. There were some people… and Dad saw a big naked guy. So we went back to the path and walked back to the lake to give the naked guy and his friends some more time. Dad wanted to go fishing for a little bit but it was way too windy. So we hiked around some more. When we went back to the pools, the people were out and there was a dog too! So Mom and Dad talked to the people for a few minutes and I sniffed around with the dog. He was an old chocolate lab. Then Mom and Dad went into the pools for a while and I watched them and slept a little.



When they were done, we walked back down the path and as we got closer to the houses, I saw two more dogs! It was a great day to make friends. These two were small dogs. One was a Boston Terrier, just like my buddy Rocky, but smaller, and the other was a Chihuahua Pomeranian mix. As nice as I was, neither of them liked me very much. They didn’t want to play with me. That was a fun trip.

My favorite friend has been back to visit me at Takatz and she brought lots of people with her. She works on the fancy cruise ship. They came this week and last week. Mom and Dad talked to everyone about the fish and stuff, while I mingled and made lots of friends! We haven’t been able to go to the boat yet but hopefully we will because there are more friends to meet there! Everyone who I meet loves me. They like to play with me and I do some tricks for them. It’s the most fun EVER! Ok maybe not the most fun but I love meeting everyone.

THIS is the most fun ever… I’d like to introduce you to my girlfriend, Sophie!



Her mom is Melissa. She is good friends with my mom. Sophie is a German Shorthair mix and she came from the Best Friends Animal Shelter in Utah. Melissa adopted her. I met her the first day she came but she really didn’t like me. Mom said it was because she was just nervous because she just got here. Then we played the next week and we had so much fun! We are about the same age. She runs me into the ground actually… she really tires me out… but I love her. We love to just run around and jump on each other. She is SO much faster than me but I don’t mind. Our favorite thing to do is this…



I love this spot! It’s a mud trench right behind our house and it’s fun! Though I have to get a bath or atleast washed down afterward… so that’s not very fun, but it’s worth it! Mom and Melissa laughed a lot when we first went in there. I just walked back and forth in the mud, feeling it squish between my toes. Then I kept finding stuff so I’d try to get it with my mouth… Well my whole face was dirty. But… it was totally worth it! As much fun as it is, I don’t really go in there very often anymore. I get in trouble. Then Mom and Dad won’t let me get out of my box until I’m completely dry… that takes a while.


Yeah, I'm dirty... but look how good I can sit there!


Sophie and I both played in the mud... but I'm the only one who looks guilty.

Well, that’s all I have! I just want to say that I’m a little sad that I won’t get to meet any of you this summer. Especially you, Grandpa! You would LOVE me. Alright, I’ve got to go. It’s a great day out and there are HOPEFULLY fish to be caught and licked and grass to be chewed and, maybe if I’m lucky, MUD TO BE STOMPED IN! BYE!

This blog is dedicated to my uncle that I never got the chance to play with… You will be missed Uncle Stormy!

Killers, Rainbows, and Cliffs

So I’m sitting here, making Uncle Eddie proud by watching the second half of the Michigan State game, so I decided to make a post. However, by the time this gets posted online, the game will already be over. So Uncle Eddie, sorry if State lost and I just sent you into another depression after you’ve already recovered.

There isn’t a whole lot new… it’s that time of year where I have no good work stories because it’s all very routine work. Same ‘ol work every day… feed fish. The fish are growing good… too good actually. TOO GOOD, you say… IS THAT POSSIBLE!? Well sorta. It’s good that they are growing great. But last year when Adam had to figure out how much food he needed for this year, he estimates that the fish will grow at a certain percentage and right now they are growing BETTER than that percentage. We have different sizes of food and we switch the food when the fish hit certain size marks… So when they grow better than expected, they get to that size but we still have a lot of food left. We still have to feed all that food out so instead of switching them at 0.5 grams, we have to switch their food at 0.6 grams or something. When the food is too small for the fish, they just have to work too hard to get it. So it’s just not as beneficial for them. Yeah so I hope that all made sense… a bit of hatchery science for you.

(Ohh a Spartan just dunked… NICE.)

ANYHOW, our weather has been so off and on that it’s getting to be really a pain! Not just like “Oh it’s raining… have to put on my rain gear to feed” but every time we have to switch out for Takatz, the weather is usually bad. Last week, we had to leave the hatchery early to go back because it was going to get worse. Then this week, we couldn’t leave Takatz because it was crappy so we had to work another day and got back Thursday. TODAY we are supposed to switch out and go back to TK but I don’t think we can because it’s windy and choppy in the water. It’s sunny though… this second. A few minutes ago it was rainy. We actually got a bit of snow on Thursday, which happened to be April Fool’s day! That Mother Nature and her jokes! None of use appreciated that much.

There has also been annoying business with our seasonals also. We just had one leave last week. He surprised us with that one a month ago… Well he was one of our Takatz people so we had to get another person to go down. But… they don’t want to or don’t feel comfortable with it or the other person or something. I’ve been stewing about this whole thing for a few days… and I probably shouldn’t really even say much about it, in case someone reads this. It’s just been really annoying and like they are trying to make up their own rules, even though they’ve been here for about a month.

IN OTHER NEWS, I have told a bunch of people this story already but didn’t put it on here. About two weeks ago, we were down at Takatz and took Tucker to his favorite beach. Well Adam wanted to go looking for some ducks in this one area so we hiked over there. Then we hiked back and as we were getting close to the beach, we got to this spot where there was a small drop off. Well Tucker was in the lead but Adam stopped him and told him to turn back. Adam turned around and walked toward me, then stopped and said “Where’d he go?” “I DUNNO!” I said. “OH NO, DID HE FALL!?” Adam said as we both went to the drop off. Sure enough, Tucker was at the bottom. Now we arent’ talking like a hundred feet or anything! It was only like 10 feet. But that could do some damage. We aren’t sure if he jumped or maybe fell as he went to turn back, but he was down at the bottom… and he was bleeding.

Well, right then, I turn into SCARED MOM and we get down there. By then he was freaking out in a snow drift and rubbing his nose in the snow, smearing blood around. We got to him and saw that he had a gash on his lip and some scratch down one side of his nose. But he was walking and nothing else was hurt. We calmed him down and tried to stop the bleeding. We did mostly and he got up and basically started acting normal. CRAZY DOG! Well we took him back to the house and he was still bleeding a bit and we saw that he broke two of his front teeth. I was really worried but I started feeling better after a while. Now it’s been two weeks and his lip is almost all the way healed, which is good, because we were sort of worried it would get infected. We are going to have to address his teeth when we can get into town, but he doesn’t seem to be bothered by them.





Last week, when we went back to Takatz, there were two Killer Whales in bay! This is only the second time I’ve seen any in my 4 years up here. It was probably a mom and calf, but I only got a picture of the mom, I think. This was the only picture I managed to snap before they disappeared under the water, probably because they sensed or heard the boat. But for this being the only picture I could get, I was pretty surprised by how good it turned out. Unless they jump all the way out of the water, this is about as much whale as you are going to get in a picture. I’m pretty happy about it.



Because it’s been rainy lately, we’ve seen a few really nice rainbows down at Takatz. Here are two that I got pictures of.




This rainbow was partly a double rainbow, but you can't see it well.

Well I hope you all have a HAPPY EASTER! We’ll be feeding fish.

P.S. They lost… Sorry Uncle Eddie! :-(

Senior year at Takatz

Hey folks,

Well I don't have that much to say to you all but I have some pictures to share. We are heading into our 2nd week of Takatz and Adam and I are there 5 days a week. Our weather has been really off and on so it's been alright there so far. Our transfers went alright and FAST, though we battled slush 2 out of the 4 days. The water was sort of rough too so who ever was riding on the boat back and forth (Adam mostly) had to make sure he didn't get sea sick. Hopefully Takatz will be a good year. The fish are in the water a few weeks earlier this year than last year. AND the water is already at the temperature that it was in the middle of April last year. That's cause there isn't as much ice and snow as last year.

Tucker has forgotten anything he ever knew about Takatz from last year. He didn't like walking on the net pens and you would literally have to carry him. So I played trainer one day and walked him around, off and on the pens like it was nothing. He has been coming on ever since but he still takes a little coaxing. He doesn't really like getting in and out of the boat, but I guess he never really did. We probably traumatized him the other day though. We hadn't gotten our plane for a few days and it finally came, so we went back to the hatchery to get our groceries. The water was alright on the way there but on the way back to Takatz, it was HORRIBLE. Probably the worst boating conditions we've been in. The weather wasn't too bad... just the water. We made it safe though.

On a good note, they have figured out some good stuff with our internet. I'm not sure how much you know about our internet and how much I've said. They have set up a monitoring program so that each house is monitored and it'll shut off each person's internet when (if they do) reach their limit for the day. Instead of one person using up ALL the bandwidth and ruining it for everyone. That way we all have access to the same amount of bandwidth. Also, they found out that our internet provider does not monitor our internet usage from the hour of 8pm-2am so we have basically unlimited internet during that time! That's pretty awesome! Though I have stayed up pretty late for the past few nights browsing and buying! So that means I can turn on the AIM during that time, if anyone is up to talk to me on it. And I can hopefully post more pictures and check out the pictures anyone else posts online, like Melissa's.

Anyhow, that's really all I have to say. Here are some pictures... mostly stuff you've seen before though I think...

P.S. Bears must be out and about a bit. Adam went hiking with Tucker and saw some large bear tracks in the snow.


Some of you have seen this... I posted it on Facebook. This is the valance that I made.


Ehhhh.... slush and 0 visability! Just another winter day at Takatz.


NIGHT AND DAY, right!? That's the exact same view as the picture above. That's only a few days afterward too.


Different year at Takatz, Same ol Tucker!


Tucker and his friend. We pulled up this baby King crab on a line that was in the water right near the netpens. He was such a little guy, but super cute and VERY SPIKY! We wondered if his parents were around so Adam set a crab pot. We didn't get anything though. Can't get much meat off of this guy so we tossed him back in the water, in hopes he'll become our meal one day! :-)


Tucker... just hanging out.


Tucker's other stance. "LETS FIGHT!" is what he's thinking!

Start of Senior Year

Hello! Welcome to the beginning of YEAR 4! If this was school, I’d be a senior right now! That’s kinda how I feel around here too. We’ve got 2 of the 3 seasonals here now, and today was the first day of Chum ponding. I’m Ye Ol’ Wise one around here, besides Adam and the boss. It’s nice to be the one who knows what they are doing, but then again, the new girls look at me like lost puppies sometimes! I don’t really like that, but I imagine I was the same way 4 years ago. I’m having a hard time remembering how I was… though I do remember my first day of chum ponding 4 years ago. This will make me sound old, but these girls have it easy these days! HA Back in my first year, we had to push the boxes full of water and fish using man power. Now we have an airlift that you just push the pedal and the box lifts for you. I remember going to my room after work that first ponding day, and lying on my floor because my back hurt… there may or may not have been a few tears. The girls were welcomed to working in Alaska with some beautifully NASTY windy and rainy weather, though. Back in MY day, we had SNOW! You all know what I’m talkin’ about!

Speaking of weather, my world has been covered in a thick white pea soup fog for the past three days! That means no plane today and no 3rd seasonal… that also means no ice cream party get together that we have been trying to have for the past week for when everyone is here. We do, however, have NO snow. It’s pretty unbelievable! This is probably what that guy was talking about when he first hired me… “Oh we don’t get much snow…” I keep looking over across the lagoon waiting to see a bear walk out. Having no snow just means that the hatchery is muddy, which means our yellow lab becomes part black lab! Oh well, he loves it.

Up until today, there hasn’t been much going on here. Lots of boring “odds and ends”…”odds and ins”??? What IS the correct phrase!? Tomorrow we’ll have our first chum of the season in saltwater. It will take 7 more days until all the Hidden Falls chum are ponded. Tomorrow, the American Patriot will come and tow our chum pens and house down to Takatz, and offload our food for the season into the house. Hopefully the boat will be here early and we can get it all done in one day. Hopefully this pea soup goes away too and we can start seeing stuff again!
I’m ready to get back to Takatz. I hope this will be a good WARM DRY season! Since the winter was good, but wet, who knows what that will mean for the rest of the year? Takatz is always a nice break… it’s quiet. Even though I like having my tv, I feel like it’s just a huge distraction. I missing listening to my satellite radio shows and I’ll get more reading done. I still have a 1200 page Steven King book to read! I think Tucker is going to like it too. He was so young when he was last there so he probably doesn’t even remember being there. But I think he’ll like having the freedom of being with us all day and doing whatever he wants. The only problem I foresee is that since he IS bigger, he’s going to ALWAYS be in the way inside the house. Our living room is tiny there… and he used to like to lie under the coffee table. He’ll still fit but he’s about as big as the table now!

Well that’s about all I have now. I don’t have any new pictures… I don’t think? Our internet has been really bad this whole week so I wouldn’t be able to post them anyhow. Oh, just so you know, because I talked about this a bunch when I was still home… Right now, we have daylight from about 7:15am-5:45pm-ish. Hope everyone is great!

UPDATE: I started this a few days ago, but our internet has been so bad that I couldn’t post it. The pea soup lifted the next day and the new guy, Nate, came. We had our ice cream party that night and had fun. It was a good thing to do, so that everyone could hang out and talk and stuff. The Takatz pens and house are now down at Takatz. We’re not sure when we’ll go down quite yet but I checked the fish today and they are getting really close. We are just waiting on the boat to come from in town. I’ll keep you posted and email you when we’re going to head down there. When we do, we’ll be down there for more than a week straight. We stay down there while we’re doing all the fish transfers and we’ll be there a few days ahead to get everything set up.

Today has started out to be a great day, with sun and everything. We are actually getting sun on the hatchery for a bit now. Benji is off today so I’m taking care of the Hidden Falls chum that we have out in saltwater. So far, I’m only feeding 4 pens of fish, and we have 2 more pens of fish out there that were just pushed out there today. So they’ll start getting fed tomorrow. It’s a good day to be out there because the sun was shining on the pens all morning. The high today was 45!! Oh and Scott plotted this graph to show the snow fall amount compared to past years. This year we’ve had 34 inches of snow. It looks pretty funny next to last year’s 240 inch mark!

'Tis the Season!

Back again! I guess it's been two months since the last blog and I didn't realize it but really I haven't had much to talk about.

It's the week before Christmas and I will be home in 2 weeks and 3 days! YAY! I think most of you know that Adam is coming home with me again. Did I email that out? I can't remember. We will be home on January 2nd. It was originally the 5th but we found out we leave the hatchery on the 30th instead of New Years Eve. We decided that would be way too many days spent in Sitka so we forked over the money to change our flight. I'm sure you also know that we are heading down to Florida on from the 7th - 12th for a vacation with Melissa, Mike, Karleigh, Valerie and Steven. ALSO Adam's parents are coming down at the same time! They are actually going from the 6th-13th so they will be there longer. It should be fun! I've never had a vacation with tons of people!

Anyhow, we're getting ready for Christmas. Even though I'm sad I won't be home, I'm also happy that I'll be here. It's been fun getting ready and talking about Christmas and our plans. On Christmas Eve, Jacquie, Ben, Melissa, Adam and I are going to have dinner and do our gifts. We decided our dinner is going to consist of all of our traditions. I made pierogi and am going to make some kolaczki. Melissa is Swedish so she is going to bring a few things they eat... one of those things being PICKLED HERRING. I'm sure I still won't eat it but it'll feel like Christmas to have it there! :-) I think she's going to bring a cucumber dish and some rice pudding they eat. I'm not sure what else we are eating. We are still yet to figure that out completely I guess! I think for Christmas, we are all just going to do our own thing. Then everyone might get together later in the day.

We had high hopes for decorating. Adam was all about making a garland to go around our window. First we started with the making of a Christmas wreath, and I think he decided it would be too hard for a garland! Making a wreath isn't as easy as it looks, when you are working with spiky needles! It worked out nice though. We have it hanging on our door and have lights in the wreath and all around our door. Then Mom sent me some Christmas decorations so I got motivated! I put some colored ball ornaments along the window and have our new stockings hanging on the holders for the curtain rod. (I still haven't made the living room valance but the posts have been up for a while!) Then there was this little fake tree over in the bunkhouse and we all made fun of it because it was sorta frosted white. I decided it probably wouldn't look as ugly with ornaments so I took it and decorated it. Now I'm really glad and I love it! Adam's parents sent some presents so we have some under the tree already. :-)




You can't really see Adam's stocking very well but it has a deer on it and it's red and white. I bought these stockings and LOVE them now! Especially mine, the green one. They are knitted and are really really nice! I also got a cute stocking for Tucker!

So far we have no snow, so Mother Nature better get movin on that! I don't want TOO much but you have to have snow on Christmas. Today it rained... all day! It was just awful! Nothing is worse than blowing winter rain... it just feels so cold. The hunters also want some snow! Even though most of them have gotten plenty of deer, they like to go out and see tons of deer on the beach because of the snow. Adam has gotten 3 deer already and hoping to get 1 or 2 more. We have big plans to make burger and sausage with it (italian sausage and chorizo!) MMMM...


These are two deer he got in the same day.

A month ago, we did have some snow but now it's melted. But for a while there, most of it was gone but we had awesome clear weather but it was really cold. Because of the humidity in the air, everything got covered in these crystals. It looked like snow but when you looked close, it was individual crystals that just kept growing. It was pretty cool and some of the crystals were really neat!


Make the picture bigger and it's cooler!

Well, there hasn't been much going on lately. We have new neighbors next door. Dan is the new maintenence guy and his wife, April, just got here a few weeks ago. Dan has worked here before, twice actually, so he knows his way around and has fit in really well! April is fun and sounds very southern (they're from NC). I really like them both. They have two really nice cats that I love to pet. :-)

Not much has been going on at the hatchery. We have just been doing alot of odd jobs and prep for winter. Not gonna lie, I've been pretty bored! Today I had fun though! Lately I've been getting thing cleaned up and ready in our lab. It isn't much of a lab really but I'm trying to make it more of a lab. Scott wants to start doing some microbiology type stuff to see if we can figure out how to treat out fish. Like growing some bacteria on petri dishes. So I'm in charge of that. I did some test plates yesterday and found some bacteria growth today! That was cool. Then played with fish heads for the rest of the day. :-)

Every year, a certain percentage of our coho and chinook are "tagged." A crew comes and they use some machine to put a tiny 2mm long metal tag in their head. Just so we can learn stuff from our fish I guess. During spawning, we send the heads of the tagged fish to a lab so they can pull the tags out. These tags have a code on them. But for our little fish that come up (the ones we had just released that year that just get confused and come up the ladder) we save in the freezer and pull them out ourselves. So today I pulled the tiny tag out of 21 fish. It was pretty fun, for some reason! I just really enjoyed myself. Anyhow, it felt like the first day in a long while that I've really enjoyed work. Just because there hasn't been much to do. I don't like those days where you are scroungin for stuff to do and when you find something, it's usually some crappy job you don't want to do! That's winter hatchery work for ya!

Anyhow, I'll end this blog with another picture. Two weeks ago we ponded a group of Chinook and a few days later I morted them. Getting out all the dead eggs and dead fish that came out along with the live ones. When you have tiny babies, you always run into a few oddballs!


Curly here probably wouldn't have made it very far in life. The usual "freak" fish we see are two headers... I haven't seen too many curly-Qs.

RECOMMENDATION OF THE DAY:
If you haven't seen Julie & Julia, I'd recommend it! Atleast for the ladies. I watched it last night with the girls and it is very good and funny. If you don't know, it's a movie with two stories. One tracks Julia Child's life and her process of becoming her famous cooking self and this other lady (in real time) who is looking for something in her life and decides to cook her way through Julia Child's cookbook, 524 recipes in 365 days, and she blogs about it each day. I think all of you ladies would really like it, just like we did! Julia Child was a hoot apparently!

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.



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!?


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.



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.



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…


Melissa and Dan siphoning eggs into baskets to be weighted.


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.


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


The eggs pouring into the incubator box.


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!


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.


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


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


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