day 4

 

Imtwah Fish Hatchery was our first stop today. Imwtah was a newer fishery as the facility was completed in 2022. Emily Meshke was our tour guide; she is the Assistant Manager. It was my second hatchery I've ever been to, and I was surprised to find out that most hatcheries only have about 6-15 employees at most, and Imtwah had 6, and I was astonished, as it was pretty big, but it's probably because of the amount of automated work there was. 

Emily mentioned that she was worried about the state of the river as the CFS is around 100, but yesterday it was 80. Brian Startzl, an employee at the hatchery, also said that what we're seeing is what we'll see in the next 80 years. Hearing that dawned on me that it could progressively get worse, and that’s terrifying. Sunhawk Thomas, a temp worker for the hatchery, worked himself from the ground up to where he is currently, and they all had tips such as being willing to go where the jobs are, working for a tribe, and jobs are constantly open for the hatchery. After visiting two hatcheries, I might be interested in that field of work, honestly. Back in Toppenish, there is a small hatchery, I believe, or it’s a place where they hold salmon, and it’s kind of piqued my interest in that type of job someday.

There was an automated fish trailer similar to the one at the Spokane hatchery, marking spring shinnok. There were a couple of other ones but this one only had 5 of the automated machines for marking and the goal for that trailer was 6600 fish per hour at 98% with 79k fish a day. The other trailers can hold up to 7-8 machines and they tend to have about 8-10k fish per hour. They release smolts into the river and they plan to get 500k fish per year. They mentioned that they worked for 12 hours a day, spread out throughout the day.

Emily gave us one more tour of the brain of the hatchery, Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA). You’re able to see everything that’s happening at the whole facility. There are two SCADA machines, one inside the main building and the other in the apartments, so you don’t have to run over to the only one. When you operate it by either opening valves or tempering with anything, it can automate what you’re trying to do as well.

Our next stop was at the Native Plant nursery to help Gale and learn more about the types of plants that they were growing. Before we did any work, she took us through a tour of what was around. She gave us a rundown on how plants needed specific requirements to survive and how they needed the plants themselves to survive on their own so they could be released into the landscape. Some plants were very close to each other to the point the furthest plants in the middle were either dying or hardly getting any water, so we all rotated on positions to help put them in a checkered formation so that they'd each have enough space to grow together and clear out the dead plants. During the time we had with Gale, it made me realize how important plants were to the ecosystem and how big of a role they all each played. 

Getting back to camp, we had to get soil samples of vegetation and non-vegetation. All we had to do today for soil, though, was get it in the cups so we’d be able to write about it tomorrow and analyze it. Since this one is a group soil sample, we don’t all need to get a cup, but we will have to do the other analysis individually. Tomorrow we get to go to a museum.

We had Chicken Teriyaki tonight with rice, it was very delicious, and when we stopped by the Wildhorse Resort Casino RV Park to shower, I luckily found a vending machine to crave my sugar that I’ve been missing out, so I got to drink soda during dinner, and now we’re ending the night with an enjoyable campfire.