This is work

49

September 8, 2017 – It’s hard not to love my job. A couple of trips up to the Pitt this week for work, and a visit to an Island site to test some equipment and help out with some injections on some broodstock from a stock of concern. All that makes for another week in which I am left grateful for having found something that makes me happy to do, and which provides economic, social, and environmental benefits, which makes me even happier.

The drive to the Pitt is about an hour from home, but at the early hour the traffic is lighter than usual and, if I get out the door early, I enjoy getting to the pick-up site a half hour early to enjoy the peace of the lower river before the rest of the crew arrives.

The site is popular with tourists in the summer, but school is back in now and the rental boats sit idle.

The air was smoky again this week, but it was welcome given what the temperature would have been had the sun been able to shine fully down on us. Dragging nets on a shallow creek and hauling in fish while wearing waders would have been almost unbearable if the smoke had not provided a bit of a buffer.

But I haven’t seen a sun that pink since I visited the Amazon a number of years ago. Seeing that pink sun now makes me realize that the pink sun I saw in Brazil over the Amazon River was probably due to the same filter – smoke from fires buring the forests. The difference here is that the fires were not intentional.

I’ve been up on this system every September for the past seven years, and it’s one of those programs I love to participate in. The crew is always awesome the weather is nice more often than not, and there is a boat ride involved. How can I not enjoy this work.

This year we had two boats, (a Fisheries boat and a water taxi), and I was grateful for that since the single boat we had last year was terrifyingly unstable!

There was a difference up on Corbold Creek this year though, the waters had changed, something happened up at the glacier and the normally crystal clear waters were milky blue with rock flour. It made the sets for fish challenging because we were essentially blind. Visibility into the water was a mere inch or two. The creek has also changed its course a bit too, widening out enough that it has stolen the gravel beach we used to work on, making things difficult to set up for the egg takes.

The ride back down the lake is smokier than things were this morning, but some rain is in the forecast in a couple of days and that should clean things up a bit.