Nimbus Fish Hatchery

This is going to be an educational post. Our preschool group went to Nimbus Fish Hatchery for a field trip. It was really cool! It's the salmon run right now, so we got to watch all the salmon come up the ladders. They happened to be harvesting the eggs that day as well, so we got to watch that as well. So, I'll try to walk you through the process.

First, the Salmon make the long journey to this part of the river. Going AGAINST the stream the entire way. Once they get in the ladders. They have to start climbing.

They have to climb all these ladders. (you can see one of them jumping up) It's amazing to watch how fast the river flows, and see the fish swim the opposite direction.

The holding pond where they await their ultimate demise.

The machine pushes them into the sorting room.

Then, the workers sort the girls from the boys. They also sort out the young Salmon, and send them back to the river. Then the workers hit the fish over the head with that murder mallet.

Next, they cut open the females and remove all the eggs. Then that guy grabs a boy and squirts a little "magic juice" into the bucket to fertilize the eggs. Since the Salmon die after spawning they kill all of them and use them for other things. Like feeding us for dinner. YUM!!

Once the eggs hatch they fill up tons of holding ponds with baby Salmon and let all the visitors stuff them with fish food. - Noah and Kendall feeding all the baby Salmon.-

There's your little lesson for the day. If you ever come visit us, we'll have to take you to the hatchery. It was really neat.