Here are a few photos of my hatchery crew. The day starts out with a bunch of slimers delivered from the hatchery trap. About 100 fish fit in a tote.
We generally receive 15-20 totes per day. Rough days may include fifty totes, so organization it's important to expedite the sampling.
In addition to total numbers, we collect a variety of biological data from the fish sampled. Here, staff removes the fish's ear bones to determine it's origin.
The work gets a bit gooey... blood, eggs, sperm, and sweat. After 10 hours of messing with fish, staff gets pretty messy. We ride in a big van referred to as the "Pus Bus". I wonder if these kids thought this is what they would get into after graduating from college?
We also have to sample the slimers that died in the holding ponds. I apologize if the smell leaks out from your USB port.
In the near future I will post some photos of my carcass recovery crew working in the Hanford Reach. The dying time is just beginning for the record 180K plus fall Chinook that spawned in the Hanford Reach this year.
I don't Text (at least not very well), I eat Blackberrys, and I only Twitter after sex...