Today we went to the Issaquah Salmon Hatchery with Aiden and his family. It was a beautiful day for it! And the salmon were swimming hard upstream. We got to see a special treat today, the sorting of the salmon. Elena and Aiden really enjoyed watching the salmon flop around in the bins.
The salmon are sorted male/female and then sent through a metal detector. The detector signals if they are hatchery fish or not (hatchery fish have a wire planted in their heads that track their travels). Hatchery fish get to have their heads lopped off and sent to Olympia for wire extraction and data collection. The fish bodies are filleted and sent to food banks or the prison system (we learned a lot today!). The video below shows the fish being sent through the metal detector and sorted. Hear the funny noise? That's a fish without a wire. Reminds me of Veruca Salt on the egg detector...
Anyway, we've been going to the salmon hatchery for 3 years and this has been the most exciting and informative. Hopefully we can catch the sorting next year too - it was fascinating to all.
No comments:
Post a Comment