Daily Sitka Sentinel

Valve Shutoff Puts Hatchery Fish at Risk

By KLAS STOLPE
Sentinel Staff Writer
    They had been in the family for almost two years.
    Spermed and spawned, fed and nurtured, and just days from being released into the wild waters of Sitka Sound.

Fisheries technician Brian LeBlanc and fish technician intern Mariah Savolainen transfer coho salmon into saltwater Wednesday where they will stay for two weeks before being released. (Sentinel Photo by Klas Stolpe)

    Instead, an alleged act of vandalism resulted in more than 1,000 coho salmon smolt perishing early Saturday morning at the Sitka Science Center when the valve of a hose leading to a large blue fresh water tank was turned off.
    “Originally, we thought it may have been a family visiting and a kid did it,” executive director Lisa Busch said. “But it takes some strength to turn the valve.”
    Roughly 16,000 smolt were in the tank. The water level had fallen to a critical stage when it was discovered after 9 a.m. Saturday by fisheries technician intern Mariah Savolainen.
    “We thought it was going to be much worse than it was,” Busch said. “Why would someone do this, though?”
    The salmon were from the 2016 brood stock, meaning their parents returned from the ocean in September 2016.
    The parents were analyzed for disease, the female’s eggs and the male’s milt were collected, the eggs were fertilized in buckets, and the process began that would lead them to months of nurturing in fresh water “round pond” tanks until reaching transfer size, roughly 4 inches in length.
    “These are fish we spawned and fertilized the eggs in late October or early November of 2016,” said Science Center aquaculture director Angie Bowers. “Almost 20 months here in fresh water.”
    Bowers said that even though it is a science the staff does form attachments.
    “I think especially with the coho because we have them for so long and we are caring for them every day,” she said. “So it’s really sad for us to see something like this happen. And sometimes they will get sick, and that’s sad too.”
    Based on an 8-percent survival rate after release, and a market price of $2 per pound, Bowers estimated the loss of the smolts at about $1,100.
    The vandalism, even if apparently minor, hurts more than just a fisheries stock.
    The Sitka Science Center hatchery was started in 1972, built by the students of Sheldon Jackson College, and was the first permitted hatchery in the state. The college had formed a two-year program in aquaculture, fisheries science and fisheries management, many students went on to become leaders in natural resource management in Alaska.
    Under its current permit the hatchery can produce 250,000 coho, 3 million pinks and 3 million chum a year.
    “Our hatchery is really used as a training facility,” Busch said. “But the fish that we produce get put into the common property fishery and it’s caught by charter, by subsistence, by commercial – it’s caught by everybody, and we have pretty good numbers on the commercial fleet with how much we contribute.”
    Busch said the center does a lot of different collaborative research.
    “We’re doing research on ocean acidification,” she said. “We’re doing feed studies on salmon looking at fitness and quality; we are part of a giant study looking at the relationship between hatchery fish and wild fish that the state of Alaska is funding and the Department of Fish and Game is involved with.”
    Bush said the hatchery’s mission is research and education, but it fits more on the education side because of aquaculture training, educating the roughly 14,000 yearly facility visitors about aquaculture and how salmon works in Alaska.
    “An act like this affects our whole organization,” she said. “It is all related, our organization has a lot of arms.”
    Fortunately, most of the salmon smolt in the tank when the valve was turned off were hearty enough to survive the trauma of being slowly crushed together with no circulating fresh water.
    On Tuesday, Savolainen and fisheries technician Brian LeBlanc moved half of the remaining coho salmon stock out to saltwater pens where they will remain for three weeks to retain the biological scent flowing from the hatchery’s outfall stream. The other half were to be moved Wednesday.
    An 18-month ocean journey into the ocean lies ahead, and those that survive the perils of the wild and the nets and hooks of the offshore fisheries will return to pass their genealogy on to another stock.
    Science center staff members said they are taking steps to secure the critical water valves against tampering and installing  surveillance cameras.
    On a positive note, they’re looking forward to the arrival of the first cruise ships, and educating visitors about the science of aquaculture while carrying on their mission of protecting a species.