Tuesday, June 3, 2014

Excess Fish - Winthrop NFH

More salmon than are needed for the hatchery spawning program return to the hatchery, so excess fish are given to Native American tribes in the area.  It's quite an amazing process to observe.
Salmon come down the "channel like tube" into a tank filled with carbon dioxide.  This makes them sleepy and easier to work with.  Each fish is scanned for a "coded wire" which is a magnetized stainless steel wire about 0.25 mm in diameter with numbers that indicate the hatchery and year spawned.  The wires are cut by an injector that hypodermically implants them into suitable tissue on the fish, usually the snout.  If the scanning indicates that the fish is "ok", it's snout is placed in the blue looking machine on the table which "zaps" it.  Then another group of "fish guys" take measurements and cut off the head of every 4th fish for sampling.  The fish are placed in large containers with salted ice.  The tribal members leave the hatchery with hundreds of salmon.

Overview of facility

Fish in the carbon dioxide tank.
 
Scanning the fish
 
(Didn't show pictures of all the bloody stuff!)

Lids will be placed on containers and fish are ready to be transported.
 

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