Rev. 07/30/01

Alaska & beyond - continued 7/30 - 7/31

Valdez - hatchery, "Winnebago" Point

Today, it is foggy and rainy.  A good day to visit the Valdez fish hatchery.  The run of pink salmon is "man made," not a natural run.  But it is a major support of a large fishing fleet and canneries at Valdez.

In a natural environment, a pair of pink salmon will swim up their natal stream, where they were born.  The female will select a spot where clean water runs over gravel.  There she will dig a redd with her tail, and deposit her eggs, about 1200, in the hole she has dug.  The male will fertilize the eggs, and she will then cover them with gravel.  The salmon, after completing this task, will then die.  Of the 1200 eggs, only about 12 will hatch, and swim to the ocean.  The rest die from predators, disease, floods or drought -- only one percent make it to the ocean.  Of those 12 only about 2 will return to spawn, the rest are eaten by sea lions, caught in nets, or caught by guys like me -- pretty slim odds

What the hatchery does, is improve those odds enormously.  Instead of 12 going to the ocean, the hatchery will release 900 to 1000-- they eliminate the predators of the eggs, the drought, the floods, and much of the disease.  With those kind of odds, a hatchery can develop it's own "run."

You can see the enormous school of fish, out in the fog, waiting to spawn.  They will swim up the channel, which is like a fish ladder with a series of steps, into large holding tanks.

Of course there is always the opportunistic sea lion, waiting around for dinner.

Next to the holding tank is a large building.  The salmon, driven by one urge, to spawn, crowd up to the gate where workers will let is a few at a time.

The building is where the trays of fertalized eggs are kept, and it is there that the workers take the eggs from the mature salmon.

After they take the eggs from the female, they fertilize them, place them in trays, with water from the outfall of the adjacent power plant, constantly running over them.  The trays are fill with "saddles," like the one I'm holding.  The saddles simulate the gravel of the redd.  When the eggs hatch, they burrow down into the layer of saddles, living off their egg sack.  After the young fish leave, the saddles can be sterilized and reused the next year.

That, in very short form, is the Valdez fish hatchery.

Tuesday morning it was very foggy and cloudy, and a constant rain was coming down.  After getting all the chore done for my ferry trip to Cordova, I headed back to "Winnebago" Point  again.  The fishing was good.

Three large Class "A" RV's parked in the lot at the top of the bluff.  They all piled out and two of the women came down to watch me fish.

Soon I had a nice one on, brought it in and released it.  One of the women, Linda, gave me the third degree, why did I let it go -- I was a bit lost for words, hard to explain.  After a bit I hooked another, and yelled up the hill, "If you want it, come and get it.!"  Linda came running down with a pail, so I unhook it and dropped it in her pail -- which it promptly tried to jump out of..  She ran back up the hill, trying to keep it in the pail, so they could have fresh salmon for dinner.

It ended up with them inviting me to eat dinner with them.

Found out one couple was from Indiana, and lived close to IU, Carol's alma mater.  Another couple from Florida and the third from California.  Now with my poor ability to get names straight, this time I got one of them to write all their names down -- just don't ask me to put all their names with the correct faces. They were Dave and Linda, Bob and Sue, Brad and Marty.

How they all got together from all ends of the US, I still am not sure.  But they started traveling in May, and passed through Butte, Montana -- that's where the guys started growing beards, so they'd look the part up here.

They're headed for Hains and Skagway next -- so maybe I'll meet up with them again.  Hope so, they're a fun group.

Got down to the ferry dock to make sure I'm on the waiting list to Cordova -- now we'll see if I get on.

It was 11:45 pm when they told me they had space for me, and to drive the RT onboard -- actually they had space for a half a dozen of me.  And what they didn't tell me was to bring my sleeping bag up to the lounge area -- everyone else knew, and took the seat cushions off the seats, laid them in the aisle, spread their sleeping bags on them, sacking out until 6:00 am when the ferry docked in Cordova.  It was a long night.

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