Alaska takes pride in its wild salmon, and works to protect and maintain the wildlife that provide food and livelihood for salmon fisheries statewide. Many hatcheries help raise and release thousands, if not millions of salmon into the rivers and coastal waters to help maintain stocks for recreational and commercial fishing.
Last week, SeafoodSource visited one of these hatcheries, located in Ketchikan, a small city less than 150 miles from the Canadian border. This hatchery, an independent nonprofit, is run by Alaska’s Southern Southeast Regional Aquaculture Association. The visit was part of the American National Fisheries Institute’s 2014 Future Leaders program.
The pens in the first two clips below represent the beginning and end of the salmon life cycle. Wild salmon are known for being able to detect the exact spot upriver where they were born, even after two to three years away. They return to this spot to spawn and with hatchery salmon, the cycle is the same. The salmon in these clips are Chinook, and after surviving in the wild, they returned to the hatchery, even swimming up a small fish ladder to get into holding pens, up to 2,500 salmon in each. Here, workers will eventually harvest them, removing the eggs and sperm for fertilization. The eggs then germinate in an incubator. In the video, the salmon swim toward an intake pipe that brings fresh water into the pen. The rushing water inadvertently fools the salmon into thinking it’s a rushing river, prompting them to want to jump up it.
Here’s a closer look at the far end. Note the metal grates, which are all that keep the salmon from leaping out of the pen altogether!
When the hatchlings are large enough, roughly the length of an adult’s middle finger, they are placed in large holding tanks, shown in these next two clips. The dividers are actually baffles, and the fish can swim under them. There can be anywhere from 80,000-125,000 hatchlings held in one pen at any one time. They eat feed provided from some of the same companies that supply feed to aquaculture firms. They are fed several times a day, and as these clips show, the hatchlings are hungry!
Here, a worker feeds Chinook hatchlings.
Here, another worker feeds coho hatchlings.
