Sunday, August 9, 2015

August 09, 2015 at 08:46PM by advodna_dave


Took a drive across the bay to the Solomon Gulch Salmon Hatchery. They're permitted to incubate 230 million pink salmon eggs a year and about 15 million return as adults to spawn here. The stream leading back up to Solomon Falls is not actually a natural salmon spawning grounds. Instead, returning fish are stopped at the mouth of the creek and redirected into a fish ladder leading into the hatchery. By this time, the hatchery had already collected its quota for the year, so despite the pinks looking just about thick enough to walk across, the remaining fish struggling against the current are all destined to end their lifecycle without spawning. A Google search came up with a hatcheries in WA and OR donating hundreds of thousands of pounds of salmon to food banks, but I wasn't able to find anything similar in Alaska. Of course, the hatchery is run by the Valdez Fisheries Development Association so it's possible they're just trying to protect market prices. Of course, not all salmon successfully spawn in the wild either and serve a valuable role in the food chain. As you might expect, there were plenty of signs in the area warning about bears! #Valdez #salmon #pinksalmon #solomongulchhatchery #airstreamtoalaska