The Salmon Run and Solomon Gulch Hatchery

The salmon run has begun, and despite all of the glorified documentaries we have seen, it really is not a pretty sight.  The story behind the run is amazing - how salmon find their way home to spawn - but the actual viewing of it is pretty ugly.

We went to a hatchery near Valdez that is responsible for the release of millions of baby salmon every year.  This truly is sustainable fishing at its finest.  They collect the eggs from about 300,000 salmon every year, fertilize them, and grow them until they are ready to be released into the ocean.  Then within a year or two, the salmon return to the hatchery to spawn - and the cycle is repeated.

To see the thousands of fish trying to get upstream, desperate to find a spawning place, is fascinating, yet sad, as once they have laid their eggs, they will die - whether at the hatchery or in the stream where they are spawning.  In the meantime, there are dead salmon littering the streams, gulls flying around to eat them, bears dragging them off, and mountains of fish trying to get upstream.

At the hatchery, they have built a weir to keep the fish from going up the stream and to divert them to the fish ladder that leads them back to the hatchery.  It is an amazing contraption, and despite its height, a few fish manage to get over it.

Most of them, however, end up finding the fish ladder and go up it.  By the time they get to the end, the fish are pretty well battered, bruised, and done.  As in most things in nature, this is a fascinating story - the good, the bad, and the ugly.