The latest volunteer venture - coho salmon counts with the WA Dept of Fish & Wildlife. This is a lot of fun and not fishy smelling at all, just wet. The past two Friday mornings, I've spent 3 morning hours traveling 20minutes away to help count coho salmon smolt. Below you'll see the process. Essentially, two people get in the creek and pull a seine net to corral the fish into a trap. Then two people take nets and get in the trap and scoop up fish and give it to the rest of us to put in a large tank. Once the tank is full, the entire group commences counting the fish and also noting if it's a small or medium fish, then they're released. We're keeping a lookout for cutthroat and steelhead as well and taking some of the coho for measurement and scale sampling. We try our best to go quickly and minimize the stress on the fish. The data is extremely helpful in monitoring coho salmon populations and in essence the health of the salmon watersheds. We're super lucky in that our lead, WDFW staffer Cheri Scalf always makes us home baked good. Thanks Cheri!
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| Setting up the seine net |
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| Seining toward the fish trap |
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| Then two people go in chest waders and scoop up fish and hand them up |
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| Here I am taking the scooped up fish to the tank for counting |
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| Counting and ID-ing |
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| Taking measurements and scale samples |
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