The other weekend, Scott arranged for us to get a private tour of the Salmon hatchery on Orcas Island. It's surprising that we've been going to Orcas for over 10 years now and never noticed this place before!
The tour started down by the waters along Eastsound where Mike, the facilities manager, showed us where the Salmon come in from the ocean ever year. There is a fish ladder down there and a little dock that lets them catch the spawning salmon and they can quickly fertilize the eggs. Then we drove up to the main hatchery where he walked us through where the eggs incubate until they are little hatchlings before being moved to larger swimming pools.
It was an interesting little tour to learn all about the life of the salmon. This hatchery focuses on Chinook (King) salmon, and out of the 800,000 baby salmon they release back to the water, about 800-900 come back to spawn. The rest are eaten up by whales in the Pacific ocean or caught by commercial fisherman out in the open water. The hatchery tag their fish with a little tracker right on the nose so if the fish are caught by commercial fisherman, they can be ID'd to see how far they've gone.
Here's some photos of our little educational trip.
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| Pretty little ponds on the hatchery property where they also raise trout |
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| Salmon eggs |
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| Inside the facility. Those black trays house salmon eggs. The big blue bins are where the bigger fish swim around. |
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| Scott fishing in one of the rivers in Moran State Park. |
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| He was SOOOO happy that he caught his first Kokanee! Kokanee are land-locked salmon. Side note: these were delicious for dinner. |
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