Picture This - Chumming around at Grovers Creek

Grovers Creek Hatchery, off Indianola Road, is busy this time of year, recovering salmon eggs for habitat restoration. The eggs and milt of chum are recovered to provide broodstock for the hatchery and educational uses.

The Suquamish Tribe has had a salmon program since the late 1970s and several years ago, moved a large part of the chum operation from its original Cowling Creek Hatchery up the road to the larger Grovers Creek Hatchery.

The streamlined operations at Grovers Creek allow for more focus on habitat restoration and study, which includes long-running, nearshore environmental studies on how the hatchery fish interact with wild salmon.

Although the main focus on the hatchery remains with chinook and coho, the chum play a vital role in the hatchery process. Every few years, the tribe tests the genetics of the chum, which act as a ‘genetic backup’ to the coho in case of a major collapse of the runs. The chum genetic lines are pure and can be used to restore in case of a catastrophic species event.

I have covered harvests from both hatcheries and fish farms including Grovers Creek. Basically, three times a week workers pull on waders and wander out chest deep in the pond with a net and gather the salmon that ventured up the ladder.

Males and females are sorted, males are milted and females are tested and eggs harvested. The fish are then

distributed to the lines of folks waiting with buckets and coolers to take them home. The eggs are washed, sorted, mixed with the milt and then placed in rows of incubation trays. Small fry salmon later get released into various streams in Kitsap.

The public can visit the hatchery over the next few weeks on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. The chum run has just started and will be ramping up in mid-November.

Brad Camp is a staff photographer for the Kitsap News Group, which includes the Kingston Community News, and also maintains a portrait studio in Kingston. For more Picture This stories, visit his blog at www.bradcampimages.blogspot.com.

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