September, 2024
Rivers abound here in the Pacific Northwest of the USA. In particular, lots of rivers flow down from the Olympic Mountains and then west to the Pacific Ocean … or they flow down from the Olympics to the north to the Strait of Juan de Fuca … or they flow down to the east to Hood Canal. All of those rivers are fresh water, flowing from lovely snow-covered, ice-covered, magnificent mountains. Those rivers all flow into the salt waters below them … to the west, north, and east. And that’s just on the Olympic Peninsula … that’s not over on the Cascade Mountains side of Puget Sound, from Mt. Baker or Mt. Rainier or Glacier Peak or Mt. Shuksan or Snowking Mountain or Mt. Pilchuck or any of a great number of other mountains and of other mountain ranges here that do the same thing where their waters flow into Puget Sound or the Pacific Ocean. And then there’s Canada with even MORE rivers and fresh water flowing into the ocean water.
So, here in Washington State there are a lot of saltwater and freshwater fish, and a lot of fish that inhabit both environments, like salmon! And so, not surprisingly, there are a good number of salmon fish hatcheries in the Pacific Northwest. This week I’m camped at Dosewallips State Park on the Olympic Peninsula, practically right next to a fish hatchery.
So today, I visited the Quilcene National Fish Hatchery just north of Dosewallips State Park. Fish on!
What a beautiful day!!
There are fish hatcheries in Washington that are much larger than this one, and some that are smaller. This hatchery is one of the oldest in the USA. Notice the big white pickup truck (mine) parked in the parking lot … the only vehicle there.
I wandered around a little bit, but quickly decided I should head into the visitor’s center, the main building, and learn what there was to learn there, and check in with the people who manage the operations.
I was amazed at the amount of information inside! There was more information and photos here than in any other hatchery I’ve visited. I’ll share just a portion of it here with you folks. First off, there was a document posted on the wall that listed the answers to the most commonly asked questions …
As that sign above says, this hatchery raises only Coho Salmon these days. [“salmon” is pronounced “sam-un” emphasis on “sam”.] Hmm, so just Coho Salmon here, but what about all the other types of salmon? There’s dog salmon, pink salmon, humpy salmon, chinook salmon, coho salmon, king salmon, silver salmon, sockeye salmon, red salmon, chum salmon. Ah, but … of those ten names, only five are real types of salmon, the other five are nicknames. So which is which? Do you know? 🙂
And then, inside that building, there was a computer screen with images scrolling past that spoke to the history of this hatchery as well as current practices … the people, the fish, etc. I watched the whole thing, twice! Then I took a photo of each image of that video while it scrolled past me a third time. Yes, I stood there and took a photo of each image. Rather than post individual photos here, I’ve created a slideshow group of photos below. Starting with just the first image below, click on the right arrow to scroll through them .. or on the left arrow to go back. The photos will open in turn, no need to leave this blog or figure out how to get back. If you don’t want this much detail, then skip on down to the other photos below.
Those photos were an excellent introduction to the hatchery, how it works, the fish, the weather, the people who work here, what the spawning process is all about.
In addition to those computer images shown inside that building, there were also many print images, and photos, and lists of info on the walls inside this building. I took photos of most of them. I’ll share just a couple of them with you.
First photo is of a life-size physical model of a Coho Salmon in the “ocean stage” … what the fish would look like if caught while it was living out in the Pacific Ocean.
This next photo (below) is of another life-size physical model of a Coho Salmon, but it’s in the “spawning stage”. This is what they look like when they return to spawn (and then die) up in fresh river waters, up in rivers like the Dosey (Dosewallips).
There were three posters on the wall here showing all five different types of salmon in different stages. Here’s one of the prints showing Steelhead and Chum. Steelhead are one of the largest of salmons.
The Northern Green Frog is among the most significant predators of salmon. I didn’t know that. Some research is required!
And then it was time to leave the inside of that building and get a good look at the hatchery itself. Of course, I started where the adult fish come into the hatchery in the autumn, just as they are getting ready to spawn.
In the photo below, the RED arrow points to the top of the fish ladder. The adult fish swim in from the ocean, then swim up the Quilcene River, then at a dam across the river that is purpose-built the fish “climb” a fish ladder (jumping from pool to pool trying to get upriver), then they enter the top “pond” at that RED arrow.
The contraption below pumps the fish up out of the “pond” and then into holding tanks.
The contraption is called a “pescalator”. Pesca is Spanish for “fish” … so I suspect this is an escalator for fish and someone just coined that fun word.
The photo below shows the pescalator on the right, and the shaded holding pens for the adult fish after they’ve gone through the pescalator. The pescalator takes the fish from the water below the pescalator, from the “pond”, and it moves the fish into those holding pens. If you look closely, you can see that anyone can walk right up to the fence and look into that narrow “pond” that the adult fish have just climbed into via the fish ladder (the fish ladder is on the left, outside the photo).
So that’s where I went, right up to the fence … and peered in through the chain link fence.
Whoa, salmon! LOTS of them!
The fish moved so fast that it was almost impossible to get a still photo of them. Here’s a short video (below) that I took of one tiny portion of that “pond”. The fish came into the pond from the left. That small bit of wire grate in the water on the left provided a small bit of protection from the water pouring in (to aerate the water), so that’s where many of the fish were trying (still!) to get upriver. In the video below, the first fish pops up at about 20 seconds into the video. Then there are more, but they are fast! Keep you eyes open during the last few seconds of the video!
While I was watching the fish in that “pond”, a hatchery employee came out and walked out on one of the center walkways inside a holding pen (below). There were no railings there, she better have good balance! At first I wondered why she would be wearing a skirt … but I soon realized she had shorts on in this heat … and she had a bag of fish food in front of her (hence it looked like a skirt). She was feeding these adult fish, tossing fish food left and right.
So then, after the adult salmon are put into these pens, and are fed and kept healthy, they are then “processed”. You will have seen much of that process in the slideshow above. The eggs and sperm are removed, mixed, the resulting eggs are kept safe until they grow into tiny little salmon “fry” … small fry yes? 🙂 Eventually, those young’uns grow large enough (and are then called “smolts”) to be released back into the river to head back out to sea. Each fish takes about three years to do all of this, be born, grow up, head out to the sea, and then come back to spawn, and then they die.
After seeing the pens where the adult fish were kept for a little while, I walked over to the larger section of the hatchery where there were many more pens or “raceways” … all full of salmon smolts, all about one year old. And these pens, I could walk right up to!
Notice the splashing white water at the bottom of the photo above. It’s not created by fish trying to get out … it’s created by water being pumped into each pen to aerate the water in the pen, and to keep the water fresh and clean, and so keep the young salmon healthy.
Here’s a video of hundreds of young salmon in just one small portion of just that one raceway.
There’s an ongoing discussion about whether hatcheries are good. Decades ago, when the fish population/numbers started to decline, hatcheries were created to build those numbers back, and to save the salmon. Today there’s talk about the original native populations of salmon that are being reduced because of the hatcheries, because the fish are not allowed to repopulate on their own, and because some hatcheries use “introduced” salmon instead of the local salmon. I know of one hatchery here in Washington that was shut down completely and the dam removed because of that argument. The original native salmon population in that river exploded in numbers! They returned upriver and are healthier than ever. And we no longer have to support the expense of that hatchery.
But … that requires a healthy, clean river. That requires that the spawning locations of those fish remain clean and are left alone, that the water depth and temperature remain healthy for them. That requires that we humans don’t pollute the rivers, the land next to the rivers, the air. It’s a choice.
I’m sure there are a good number of you readers here who know much more than I do about these hatcheries, and about salmon. Please share your comments! 🙂 I had a great time here today.
I’ve fished all my life and I thought all those salmon names were different types of salmon, but my wife says I’m wrong, ha! So I looked it up online and, I’m wrong! I get different answers depending on which website I’m looking at about which five are the real names of different species of salmon, but yes there are only five. Makes me wonder what else I thought I knew. Humbling it is. 🙂
Ah, yes, humbling. I’ve had that experience too Tim. Sometimes a bit too often. 🙂
Fascinating! I know almost nothing about fish. Friends of mine pronounce it “SAL-MON”. I will correct them. 🙂
Good for you Judy. Especially in English, not all words are pronounced like they are spelled. It’s a goofy language.
Yes, protect the fish, and you protect the mammals and birds that feed on them, you protect the environment that all of them live in, you protect our food supply, etc, etc, and it all goes around and around. Same as protecting wolves or bears or iguanas or bees and butterflies. We are all in this together. Thank you Ann.
You are welcome Paul. Your comment is great, thank you!
Salmon are so important, same as Paul says, same as wolves and dolphins and native trees and snakes and fungi. Without the entire spectrum, we humans would be dead. Computers, “AI”, all of that cannot make up for damage to our planet. Thank you for sharing what people are doing to help, and for talking about the questions. This is my favorite blog for travel, and for truth. And for great photos of the salmon youngsters. 🙂
Thank you Susan! Great comment, all of it is so true!
Northern Green Frog, never heard of it. I’ve lived here all my life. Thank you for making us learn. Great photos and videos.
I’d not heard of that frog either, Kinny, until I saw that sign and then did some research. It’s native to northeast USA, but was introduced into British Columbia and has spread throughout BC, Washington, and Alaska, probably because they were common as pets but probably got loose. They live in the same watery environments where salmon spawn, and they eat salmon fry.
I liked both videos, but I liked the first one the best. Sort of. It kind of hurt that those fish were still trying to swim up river and kept leaping out of the water only to bang their snouts on the wall! Should we remove that dam and let them swim upriver on their own? Wiser folks must decide. Wasn’t there a river in Oregon too that removed the dam so fish could swim upriver?
Ha! I had the same reaction when I saw those fish smashing into the wall over and over, while they were thinking (hoping) they were swimming up stream. And yes, Oregon (government and native tribes) also removed a large dam (actually four dams) on the Klamath River in order to return the environment to a more natural state.
Real names of pacific northwest salmon are: Chinook, Coho, Pink, Chum, and Sockeye. Chinook are the largest so they are sometimes called King Salmon, but as you say that’s a nickname. There are Atlantic salmon as well (almost all of them are farmed these days) and other types of salmon around the world, but we’re talking just pacific northwest here and the huge majority of salmon here are wild-caught. We (including Canada and Alaska) are the salmon capital of the world! Thanks Ann. Excellent description and photos.
Thank you Rob! Different websites gave me different answers. I checked with Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife folks (the agency that is here in Washington State) just a few minutes before you posted your comment … it’s a good thing they agree with you or I would have had to correct them. 🙂
So, it appears that the small “fry” that were born in this hatchery a year ago (in the fall of 2023) are still here in the fall of 2024, when you were camped here and took these photos. That means they are a full year old but they haven’t been released yet? And, since there has now been another year’s worth of spawning, where do those young salmon stay? I would assume they must be kept separate from last year’s. And, when are the ones born a year ago going to be released back into the river? Sounds like a full house! Lots of fish feeding and tank cleaning for the employees.
Ah, good questions, Lori. The hatchery keeps those young fish for about a year and a half before they release the smolts (no longer called fry) back into the river in the spring of each year. The smolts are kept in separate pens from the fry. The process goes on year after year after year in these hatcheries, so I suspect the people who work there don’t even have to think about it, whereas I might be a bit confused as to who’s who. Yes, lots of work, and it continues no matter the weather.
This was fascinating. I was telling some friends about it and they said there are similar sorts of fish things and bird things and all manner of interesting things and farms and such really near where I live, but I’ve never gone to see them. I’m done with being bored and sitting at home! Tomorrow I’m out the door! Thank you for that.
Good on you Walt! Go explore! There’s so much to see and learn in this world. Sometimes my favorite store is just a small hardware store or feed store in a small town. I look at everything, read the labels of items I’m not familiar with, chat with the folks who work there and who know those products and how they are used. I learn, and those people who work there feel appreciated.
Where does the word Quilcene come from? What does it mean? Keeping you on your toes here. 🙂
You caught me! I forgot to share what the word “Quilcene” means and where it came from. Quilcene is a very small town, population around 600, over here on the Olympic Peninsula. The town is the location of one of the largest oyster hatcheries in the world. The Twana people lived here and all along Hood Canal for a very, very long time (and some are still there). The Quilcene people were a small group of people within that Twana group. “Quilcene” means “salt-water people”. I will try to do better in the future, Pat. 🙂 Keep me on my toes!
It seems odd that a frog is able to be a threat to a fish as big as salmon! You are right. More research is required. We kayak down the Platt River here, from the place you put in out to Lake Michigan. In September the salmon are running up the river and it’s very cool. Then, there’s a fish hatchery near a place I have camped in the UP. I drove by it daily for a week last year and never thought to stop. I wonder if they have an educational room or center there. Next time I’m up there I’ll stop.
I wondered how a frog would endanger salmon too, Dawn. Check out my reply to Kinny above. The frogs eat the tiny baby salmon, not nice! Some varieties of salmon spawn in the summer, some in the fall, so find out when spawning happens at your hatchery and then yes do take a look. Every hatchery I’ve been to in Washington has educational stuff. I hope yours does too. The employees always seem to love having people come visit and ask questions and watch the processes. I’ll watch your blog for an update. 🙂
That sign says that this one hatchery raises 650,000 salmon every year. That’s a lot of fish! And it says about 6.9% return (or are caught by fishing folk) so that’s about 45,000 salmon that make it to adulthood and are caught for food, or they return to the hatchery to spawn. I bet the percentages of caught or returning salmon is much smaller when there is no hatchery.
Indeed, that’s true, hatcheries result in more fish being born, more returning to the ocean, and more coming back upstream to spawn. That’s the benefit of hatcheries. But they always need a dam of some sort to trap returning fish, and those dams interrupt all sorts of other life on the river. And, because the fish don’t keep going upriver, then the birds and mammals that used to eat the fish upriver, no longer have that food source. It’s an interesting question … whether to dam or not to dam.
I’ve always been amazed at the story of salmon and their migrations. When we travelled to Alaska years ago we saw the fish ladder in Juneau, and we ‘combat fished’ for salmon in Valdez. Right here in Owen Sound there is a fish ladder and an important hatchery. But the history of salmon in the Great Lakes is another story entirely!
When I was younger, I thought all salmon lived in saltwater except when spawning in a river. But your comment reminds me that I eventually learned that some salmon live in fresh water all their lives. That’s fascinating. One wonders how the salmon in the Great Lakes got there, and then how it came to be that they stayed there. Have there been dams built that then prevented the salmon from returning to the ocean? More research needed! Thanks FG, this is fascinating.
years and years ago, I worked in a fish cannry for one season. We processed whichever species of salmon were curretntly running. I don’t remember all the names of them, but I’m fairley sure some of them were refered to by their nicknames Still, I got 4 of the 5 right. (I missed “pinks”) Thank you, Rob.
What I do rememmber is how much the workers looked forward to the sockeye run, because they are the best of the salmon. They have the firmest flesh and the richest color of all the fish we processsed. And they were a small run, at least that season.
I didn’t remember that you worked in a hatchery! You’ve done a lot of different things in your life! Your stories are great.
Ah, yes, sockeye is the best eating of all the salmon … those of us who have lived around so many! salmon surely have tried all of them. It’s sockeye salmon that is used in expensive salmon burgers. If anyone reading here is ordering an expensive salmon burger, do ask which variety of salmon is used … if it isn’t sockeye, don’t buy it.
Thanks Fritzi. 🙂