Our First Couple of Weeks

Our first two weeks were just as much fun as we expected.  All the staff at the hatchery are very nice and we enjoyed catching up with everyone.

Our tiny little fish from the beginning of last year are now the future brood and have grown from 3/4 of an inch when we arrived last year to about 8 inches today.

It's hard to tell but these fish are about 8 inches long.

These are the new batch of fry that are the result of last Fall's spawning:

Hundreds of tiny little Atlantic Salmon.

Our first job every work day is to help feed the fish.  We are in charge of feeding the future brood and brood.  The brood fish are 3 and 4 year-olds.  They are separated into two raceways.  This coming Fall all of the 4 year-olds will be spawned and released into the Penobscot River and the mature 3 year-olds will also be spawned and released.  The immature 3 year-olds will be the mature 4 year-olds next year.

The 3 and 4 year old salmon are separated into two raceways.

We’ve started cleaning the outside feeders.  It will be a few weeks before they are needed but it’s nice to get them clean and ready to go.

We clean the old food from last year out of the feeder.  I scrape down the inside top part of the feeder then Mark scrapes the bottom.  Then he gets inside the pool and opens up the opening where the food comes out while I use a very long pole from the inside to push the old food out.  The old food is caught in a bucket and discarded.

The large gray box (upper left) is the feeder.

We’ve also started cleaning the outside tanks.  These are very large tanks.  There are two sizes, 20 foot diameter and 30 foot diameter.  We’re cleaning the 30 foot tanks.

Mark power washing the walls

Teri scrubbing/power washing the floors.

This machine turned out to be too hard for me to handle so

we switched jobs and I clean the walls and Mark cleans the floor

Washing everything down the drain.

All clean.

It’s nice to come back to the same place and know what to expect.  I don’t know if we will have any new projects this year but we already have plenty to keep us busy.

We work 3 8-hour days a week which gives us plenty of free days to explore and have fun.

Stay tuned - It’s going to be a fun summer!