Today was a day back at the hatchery. There was a quick sort that included finding three hatchery males that we’d brought back from the upper river in a transport tank Monday. These three aren’t to be used for spawning, rather they were brought back to facilitate some genetic research back in Vancouver. I’d received a last minute request to transport a blood transport kit with me to sample blood from several fish.
It’s been a long time since I sampled blood using a syringe, and pretty much all of the work I’d done in graduate school was on little fish. I’d done a bit of teaching of blood sampling on larger fish post-graduate school, but it’s been awhile. But if you can find the caudal blood vessel on a 7 gram fish with a needle and syringe, I figured I ought to be able to find it on a 10-15lb adult Chinook salmon.
I wasn’t wrong. It was pretty easy, even after the long absence some drawing blood.
After that it was shocking and inventory of chum eggs at the eyed stage, and then movement of the eggs into Kitoi boxes for incubation from eyed to hatch.
Aren’t they cute? See their little black eyes? Those are attached to a little head, that is attached to a little body, that is curled up inside each little orange sphere. Some of those will eventually come back as adult Chum salmon, 5-15 lbs each.
And then it was a late afternoon, face to face, meeting with a member of the Coastal First Nations to talk about capacity for training on fish culture and fish health topics. We’d conversed in email, and had a MS Teams call to talk weeks earlier, but as luck would have it, we were both scheduled to be in Bella Coola at the same time (the Valley is where she is from, with a very long family history). It was a sit outside in the sun at a picnic table, and enjoy numerous sidebar conversations as hatchery staff popped in and out to chat. We visited the sockeye site and talked about biosecurity, sockeye culture, and risk management. We wandered up to the new interpretive centre, and then the former hatchery manager happened to stop in to pick something up, offering an opportunity to say hello that I didn’t think I would have. And then, after all the staff had left, the two of us sat back down at the picnic table in the fading sun, and talked more about spawning best practices, sockeye risk management, and how to collaborate and build learning capacity for the community-based sites in need.
And then it was six o’clock and she needed to go, and I needed to make myself some dinner.
No bears, no deer, no scrambling up and down rocks, no bouncing down the tote road. Just a bit of science, a bit of fish culture, a couple of hellos and a few goodbyes, and a lot of discussion about this, that, and the other thing.