Hatchery helps recreational fishing live on
Published 9:29 am Monday, April 12, 2010
GOLD BAR — Sometimes, the miracle of life begins in a bucket.
Fish hatchery staff use the plastic pails to mix salmon sperm and eggs, before transporting thousands of the translucent pink gems into incubation trays.
“No wine, no candlelight, no nothing,” said Doug Hatfield, state hatchery operations manager in Snohomish County.
From that simple beginning, state hatcheries are able to send about 160 million fish into the wild each year, keeping recreational fishing alive.
The hatchery system was on display last week at the state’s largest fish-rearing facility in Snohomish County, the Wallace River Hatchery off U.S. 2 just west of Gold Bar. The 50-acre site was releasing 250,000 chinook salmon into the wild.
“These fish aren’t to prop up the wild population,” Hatfield said. “These fish are targeted for harvesting.”
The state opened its first hatchery in 1895. Today, about 80 hatcheries operate largely for commercial and recreational uses, but also to aid conservation of the species.
While hatcheries may wind up feeding a family, the system has its downsides. The Northwest Fisheries Science Center, a division of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, ticks off several.
Disease can spread easily among thousands of fish at hatcheries. The fertilization process can lead to inbreeding. Evolution might cause fish to develop characteristics that aren’t useful in the wild.
Problems continue when hatchery populations head into the ocean. Hatchery fish compete for food with wild salmon and, at times, may even eat their endangered counterparts.
“They are legitimate concerns, but they’re being addressed in various ways,” said Walt Dickhoff, division director for resource enhancement with the Northwest Fisheries Science Center.
For instance, fisheries now avoid inbreeding in part by marking salmon. That lengthy process is now under way at the Wallace River complex.
Last week, eight people crammed into a white trailer to clip off thousands of adipose fins, the small useless bump that rests between a salmon’s tail and dorsal fin. Done by hand, the work takes nearly two months, affects 2 million fish and pays $9 an hour.
“I’ve been doing this since I was 14,” said Jesse Haaland, 30, of Startup. “It’s a fun, seasonal job.”
Haaland clipped the fin off anesthetized fingerling salmon, handling as many as 30 fish in a minute. With the fin gone, the salmon are clearly identifiable as a hatchery product.
After snipping off the fins, Haaland dropped the salmon through a counter. The salmon then shot through an aluminum irrigation tube and fell into a massive concrete holding pool, 80 feet long and 20 feet wide.
Glancing into a series of pools is like looking at a textbook diagram. Each is filled with salmon at different stages of development.
The final 1,000-foot rearing channel held 16-month-old chinook salmon. That group was leaving the facility through eight narrow tubes that gushed out white water. It looked like a violent entry into the natural world.
“That’s not violent,” Hatfield said. “I’ll show you violence.”
He walked a few feet over to the Wallace River. A couple of birds — mergansers — were startled into the air.
His point was clear. The salmon might one day return to Snohomish County for fishers, assuming something else doesn’t get them first.
Andy Rathbun: 425-339-3455; arathbun@heraldnet.com.
