This morning at 8:30 I picked up 70,000 coho salmon eggs from the Skykomish river strain at the Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife's Issaquah Hatchery. I brought them back to Lake Forest Park and McAleer Creek and Francis and I loaded them all into the incubator. For a video overview of the process, scroll down a couple of posts for the 4 videos I put up a couple of weeks ago. The middle two will give you a good idea of what we did today.
Now the daily vigilance of checking the outlet pipe of the incubator begins. As long as there is water flowing out there, then there is water flowing through the system. The eggs should hatch in the next couple of weeks. From there it'll be another 3.5 months (more or less) until they are ready to release. The whole process is driven by the temperature of the water that the eggs/alevin/fry are in. The warmer the water, the faster they grow. Of course, the colder the water is, the more oxygen it carries, so there is a balance to be achieved there (not that I can really do anything about the temperature of McAleer Creek beyond making sure that we have lots of overhanging vegetation to shade it so it won't heat up unnecessarily).
I love working in the water with the little fishes.
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About Me
- RoboDad
- I'm currently 60 years old. I currently work as the learning management system specialist for American University of Madaba in Madaba, Jordan. I was originally certified as a high-school English teacher and taught school for 13 years (1 year of substituting, 1 year of 7th grade, 2 years of a combined 5th, 6th, 7th grade, 9 years of 8th grade). I've worked for hardware and software companies for the past 23 years doing training, training materials development, certification test development and other education related stuff. My wife and I have raised four children to adulthood; some of them live at home at the moment, but that won't last (they're too independent for that). We live at home with 2 Golden Retrievers, 2 black cats, a crazy cat, and, during the winter, 70,000 coho salmon.
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