October, 2021
In the last blog post, reader Bill Burnn commented that there must be salmon in the Mayfield Lake and the Cowlitz River (and all the waterways hereabouts, I’d think). He is right. Salmon galore.
I don’t fish (even tho my friend and blog-reader Mark taught me how to cast a fly, and it’s so easy the way he does it). And yet, even tho I don’t fish, you can’t be out and about in the Pacific Northwest of the USA (or the Pacific southwest of Canada, thanks reader Janey) without being around fishing, fish, people who fish, etc.
I enjoy visiting fish hatcheries and I visited two of them today. Let’s go!
The first one is a small one, but an important one, full of fish! 🙂 This is the Mossyrock Hatchery, a Washington State hatchery. It handles salmon or trout, depending on the time of year, and depending on the size of the run.
The truck is used for all manner of things. It’s a tank for fish, juvenile fish, or fish fry (with the outlet at the back). The truck has a hoist/crane (on the left side) for lifting things and other workings/business. It carries a compressed “air” tank on the left. Most websites I find say that green tank is oxygen, but a few websites say it might be nitrogen. What would that be used for at a fish hatchery?
Below are the holding pens or ponds for the fish (12 ponds in all here). This isn’t a large hatchery, but it’s important. It’s completely screened in (above and all sides) to keep eagles and herons and raccoons and bears out, and humans too.
Above … these are the ponds for sorting and holding fish until they are ready for the next step. In the photo below, you’ll see the fellow on the right who is cleaning one of the ponds. He talked with me at length. I now wish I had recorded all that he shared with me.
But I already know these hatcheries are important … whether to introduce fish to an area that hasn’t been doing well, or to support the native population. So many folks depend on fish here in the Pacific Northwest … humans, eagles, orcas, bears, etc.
The fellow in the photo above opened the gate in that fence and let me climb in so I could walk around the ponds (don’t ask them to do that, they shouldn’t let us do that because of liability. But hey, I’m not saying anything. shhhhh!).
Looking down on the water in those ponds …. at first I saw just busy-ness on top of the water. But I kept looking.
What at first seemed just a churning mass of water eventually turned into so many beautiful fish … and even an artistic view.
So that was the small Mossyrock Hatchery, fascinating. Next down the road was the much larger Cowlitz Salmon Hatchery. All they handle is salmon … fry, smolt, juveniles, and adults.
The photo below shows the signs on the doors of the Visitor Center. And you’ll see the big white truck reflected in the windows. The sign says to follow the blue fish …
… and so I did …
Oops, except for this one sign below. It stopped me in my tracks.
I mis-read it. My first reading was “Adult CORRECTION Facility”, straight ahead. Oh boy, nope I didn’t want to go there. I much preferred the “Juvenile Raceways” … vroom, vroom. But then I stopped and thought about it and looked again at the sign. Well, ok, then. And I’d bet they mean collection of adult fish … not of adult humans. Ha! 🙂
So on up the hill I went.
The building in the photo below is at the top of the fish ladder that the fish use to come up from the river. The fish are sorted here and then sent/taken to the proper pond.
The photo below shows the very long underground conduit on the right and then the fish ladder on the left that guide the fish up from the river. The fish swim through it on their way upriver to spawn.
The last few yards of the waterway are a fish ladder with pockets of water where fish can rest a moment.
Then the fish reach the top of the fish ladder and the inlet to the processing/sorting area.
Notice the curved metal prongs/fence just below the water’s surface in the photos above and below. It prevents the fish from heading back down the fish ladder.
Below … the view of a few of the fish ponds here.
There are 14 fish ponds on the right side of the building, and 20 more of them on the left side of the building, all of them for juvenile salmon. Then there are another 9 ponds for adult salmon next to the processing building (not in these two photos) … 43 ponds total. This is the largest hatchery in the State of Washington … and the third largest in the USA.
The photo below is of the adult holding ponds immediately adjacent to the spawning room/building.
The photo below is of fish removed from the adult ponds … fish that are diseased or damaged or discolored. They will be inspected and researched and the information will be used to further help support a healthy population.
And then I found a big open door to the spawning room. Pay dirt! But I was wise enough to stand outside until someone inside noticed me. She came out and let me know that I could not enter but that I was welcome to stand just outside the doorway and watch or take photos or videos.
So that’s what I did. First photo below is of the lights on the control panel for the doors that allow adult spawning fish in from each of the ponds outside, and doors that do all manner of other things that I have no idea what they do. These doors were controlled by one woman in the room.
There were several people in the room checking the adult spawning salmon as they came in and sending them down the proper shoot or into the proper bin (females in one, males in another), or simply counting how many salmon were going in which direction. There was even one fellow who was tasked with retrieving any salmon who inadvertently jumped out of its bin. This was wet work.
If you want more details about how these fish are handled, what happens to them, this website tells the story in easy to read detail.
Another fascinating day! What will I find next?