I don’t get a lot of days in the field in January, particularly not to spawn fish….mainly since most have already spawned or the hatcheries already have all their brood for the year.
I have a new guy who just started with me last Tuesday, so today was day five for him. It would have been nice to have had him start in the fall when he could have been on one giant field trip to visit sites and get a feel for the program. It’s not like he/we can’t do that now, but brood season always has a lot more going on and, as a general rule, I like to visit sites when I can also be helpful in some manner, like helping spawn, or sample, or whatever. I don’t like standing around and I don’t like being that person watching while others are doing.
I was initially thinking the first thing I’d be able to get him involved in to learn a bit about the sites would be an egg pick….not exciting, but important. But one of the managers had sent me a video of a crush of coho coming into their trap between Christmas and New Year’s and when I sent an inquiry at the end of the week asking if they had any coho left to spawn, the answer was “yes” one more small spawn to reach their target.
Awesome, because if I am going to introduce someone to the program, brood season is the best starting point since it’s the start of the hatchery life cycle.
So I picked up the new guy, who lives relatively close to where I do, and off we went to Squamish, the Tenderfoot Creek hatchery.
I didn’t ask, but I think the staff left a few fish in the trap so that they could start right at the beginning of the process so that my new biologist could see everything involved from start to finish on an egg take day, and I’m super grateful that they did.
I don’t get up here as much as I’d like….to be fair I don’t get to any of the sites as much as I’d like, so it was a treat to get to go down to the trap just a short distance from the hatchery itself and see a few coho in the creek both above and below the trap, as well as in the trap itself.
I got a little bit involved…fertilized, washed, and disinfected some eggs, made a few suggestions on kidney sampling and did a one fish demo, but largely stood back because he jumped right in.
He put fish in the truck. He moved fish from eh truck to the tubs. He held fish for egg collection. He spawned males to collect milt. He fertilized eggs. He washed eggs. He disinfected eggs. He poured eggs into incubators. And he took kidney samples for BKD screening.
In other words….he tried pretty much everything and I didn’t have to prompt him once. I watched him, listened to the questions he asked the staff, watched how he intersected…..
He’s got a lot to learn, but I think he’s going to do well.
Good day today 🙂
