My alarm goes off at 5 am.
I’m tired. I’ve been teaching
Hunter Safety after work this week from 5:00 to 8:00 pm. After I got done with the kids last night, I
pulled the short straw for night duty. Night
duty involves checking on the facility to ensure all the doors are secure,
water is flowing, the fish are happy and several pumps are switched.
I eat some breakfast and read a copy of “Bugle”
magazine. Archery Elk season is only a
month away and I’m stoked for the chance to get out. We’re in the process of hiring two new
biologists – I’m hoping they’ll cover my absence in September. No wait, they will cover – one of the perks
of being the manager.
At 5:30 am I head over to the Hatchery. My “normal” work shift is 7:00 to 3:30, but
I’ve got a couple of things to catch up on.
Since I live on the Hatchery, it is a short walk to work. I pass through the Steelhead Burrows Ponds
and make a mental note to turn up flows to each pond – I’ll contact the lead
maintenance mechanic this morning to turn on another river pump. Our Variable Frequency Drive (VFD) pump is
almost maxed out.
On my morning rounds, our water treatment operator flags me
down to talk Chinook fishing. The season
is winding down, but the anglers are still catching fish. The speculation is now turning towards why
the steelhead are hung-up in the Columbia.
The fish managers are thinking thermal block. They’ll likely lobby the Corps of Engineers
to flush more water from the bottom of Dworshak Reservoir to cool the Snake
River. It’s a catch 22 for the
Hatchery. We certainly want the
Steelhead returning to the Snake River, but the increased dam discharges will spike
the supersaturated nitrogen gas levels in the river. Since we pump this river water to supply the
Hatchery, the current generation will struggle to ensure the previous
generation can return and spawn.
I stop by our adult trap and notice 252 adults on our fish
counter. The counter has been very
accurate lately, and I’m glad to see another 30 fish from yesterday. We have collected almost all of our Chinook
broodstock, but several other area hatcheries are short. We need about 750 more fish to make
everyone’s goals.
As I travel back to the office, I stop to talk with one of
our fish culturists. He is working on
fixing a garage door that won’t shut. I
offer my hands as help, but not much else.
We leave the door in time to amble to the morning meeting by 7:00 am –
our official start time. Rob will fix
the door later today.
We meet every morning to go over a quick game plan and any
unusual stuff happening. Our new Safety
Officer has tracked down some respirator protection information regarding OSHA
regulations. A collective groan fills
the room when I mention OSHA regulations.
We’ve not been changing our respirator cartridges often enough for
dispensing formalin. OSHA requires them
to be changed every 3 hours. We treat
the adult fish twice a week to control fungus growth. Formalin is a derivative of formaldehyde –
nasty stuff to work with, but effective as a fish treatment. Rob turns in his respirator cartridges dated
February 15, 2007. Probably a good thing
OSHA changed the rules! Of course, the
groans are from the changes in safety protocols over the years; many of us
never even used respirators when we started.
The OSHA stuff is enough for one morning, we break to start
our day.
I head towards my office and remember we didn’t finish
bolting down a formalin pump yesterday, I duck into the incubation room and
spend 5 minutes putting on the finishing touches. As I walk out, the hatchery alarm goes
off. I radio our head mechanic and he
says it is a “low flow nursery” alarm.
If I had a dollar for every false alarm from this sensor, I’d probably
retire. This time it is the real deal! I briskly walk to the nursery. Wayne flags me down – he set the alarm off
moving water to pump steelhead fingerlings out to the fish marking trailer. No problem, Wayne has as much experience in
the nursery as anyone, we’re in safe hands there.
I talk to Wayne briefly about production supplies and
tracking down a larger chemical pump for our formalin delivery system. With this new cartridge change-out schedule,
we may be able to afford a mechanical fix rather than exposing our staff. Wayne will call some of our contacts at
another hatchery to see what they’ve done.
I make it too my office at 8:00 am. There are 22 emails since yesterday afternoon
– maybe I would be better off with Facebook instead of email – about half of
these need to be answered immediately. I
punch those out and then head upstairs to meet with our Aquaculture Engineer
about a new idea for treating our effluent from the System 3 Burrows
Ponds. Our meeting is brief, I’m on
schedule for a 9:00 am meeting.
I step out of his
office just in time for the 9:00 am meeting.
I beat my boss there, so I’ll consider that early. The meeting is to discuss a disease outbreak
in the Chinook fingerlings. We are
experiencing some chronic mortality in one raceway. Fish Health has isolated Infectious Hepatic
Necrosis (IHN). This is unusual in
Chinook, but not unheard of. The Chinook
will usually fight off the infection themselves unlike steelhead. Plans are made to split the fingerlings into
several raceways. Lower densities should
decrease the stress on the fish and help them fight off the infection.
I leave the meeting at 9:45 am and head outside to help
clean System 3 Burrows Ponds. It’s time
to put the Engineer’s idea to the test.
There are 10 of us sweeping the bottoms of the rearing ponds. We’re going to max the system out to see if
it is effective at settling the solids out.
Two biologists are staged with radios to take water samples. There is some chatter on my radio from them
communicating back and forth. I’m
sweeping a pond and able to daydream some, elk hunting for a second, then a
reality check. The System is getting too
much water. I check my pond broom and
make the 100 yard walk to turn on another pump.
A balancing act, no doubt.
Cleaning takes just shy of an hour, the test is looking good, I’m almost
finished when my cell phone rings, conference call in 10 minutes with our Tribe
and State partners.
I head upstairs to take the conference call. The State and Tribal hatcheries are short on
Chinook brood stock. We hammer out some
details on the egg transfer. The State
Hatchery manager is going on vacation next week – hence the rushed conference
call. Should have sent them an email
this morning….hindsight.
By the end of the call, it’s time for lunch. I walk home to see my wife and two
daughters. Lunch is short as usual,
about 15 minutes. I stop over at my
neighbor’s house to get a ride back to the Hatchery. My neighbor is one of our maintenance
mechanics. We talk about a new water
leak near the Kelt tanks on the 2 minute drive over the bridge. He’ll check it out later today.
I have a meeting at noon with the Complex Manager, Engineer
and the Snake River Basin Adjudication Coordinator. The Army Corps of Engineers contractors have
come up with several retrofits to fix the Hatchery’s pollutant discharge
issues. These guys work on commission,
so several ideas seem to make more sense financially than practically.
This meeting is a pre-meeting to the conference call with
the contractors. The call goes well, we
are steering the direction to a more economical solution that will save money
and have a better chance of funding. The
future looks bright, albeit a ways off still.
It’s nearing 3:00 pm when I get back to my office. I make it halfway, and get de-briefed on
remaining work to set-up the Chinook raceways for adipose clipping operations
on Monday. All stuff that we’ll have to
tackle tomorrow. I make it back to my
office and get a visit from the Maintenance Supervisor. They’ve changed the schedule for painting the
parking lot lines. We’ll have to herd
our 40 Complex butterflies to park in alternative spots tomorrow. Short notice, but that’s what email is for,
right?
Thirty emails have appeared over the day, only about 10 need
answers, so I punch some out and vow to finish the rest on night rounds tonight. Its 3:45 pm, I need to get home to get some
stuff together for the Hunter Safety class.
I get home at 4:00 pm just in time for one of our new
biologists recruits to pull-in. He’s
here with his wife to check out real estate.
We haven’ t made any official offers, but the Hatchery system is a small
world and we are all friends and colleagues.
He has a boat he’d like to store it for awhile, my other neighbor,
Wayne, didn’t hesitate to offer some of his driveway space. It’s the generosity of our crew that makes my
day. I get a call from the Complex
Manager and send the new recruit to go look at a house that our old program
assistant is selling – small world and small town.
I’m almost running late for my class, I grab a muzzleloader
and a tanned elk hide. My first elk
ever, taken with a muzzleloader I built myself.
Back to daydreaming about elk hunting…. I pull in the parking lot and a
parent wants to negotiate an alternate day for the field day. I’m a fish guy, so I bite, we’ll make
accommodations for his daughter.
I almost make it into the class and a biologist from our
neighboring hatchery grabs me with some ideas on a steatitis study in
Chinook. It sounds like a great plan, I
make an appointment to meet with him on our first break from class at 6 pm.
The hunter safety class flies by, I don’t meet with the
biologist, he had a crisis from the fish marking crew to deal with. We’ll catch up tomorrow.
I arrive back home, and say hi to my daughters and wife, its
bedtime, and I still need to do night checks of the Hatchery. I make my rounds with my black lab, she’s a
great companion. Finds every dead fish
and any spilled feed. I’ll make a note
that we need to keep sweeping that stuff up.
Everything looks good around the facility. I turn up our main aeration VFD pump since I
didn’t get a chance to talk with the lead maintenance mechanic this
morning. On my way by the Burrows Ponds,
I adjust some flows up to accommodate the additional water.
I check the leak by the Kelt tanks, still no easy
solution. I also turn on the System 2
pump so we are ready for cleaning operations next week. Its 9:00 pm, so I call Rick King to give him
a heads-up. He’s still awake, and I’m
glad I didn’t roust him from bed for something this simple.
By 10:00 pm, I’m back home.
With any luck, the ghost alarm in the nursery will stay off so I can get
some extra sleep for tomorrow!
by Nate Wiese
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