Fishery Class

This week I took (and am still taking cause it's still the third day) a three day fisheries class. It's been really awesome so far.

Day 1: The teacher explained what fisheries were about and he gave us a rundown of what we were going to be doing. Then, we got to kill some baby fish that were about 8 cm long and we collected data from them (condition, length, weight, etc.) and took blood samples.

Then, we put the blood samples in a thing that spun them and separated the red blood cells from the plasma. We used a circular tool (I forget what it's called) to measure what percentage of the liquid in the tubes was blood.

After that, we took otoliths out of fish heads. Not the little fish though. We used full-grown salmon heads. My lab partner and I only managed to find one otolith, but we had the head of a humpy (aka pink), and their otoliths are really small. On the second head, we lost both otoliths, but that was because we didn't split the head exactly in half.

Day 2: We went out to the hatchery and took a tour. The manager explained what they did in the hatcheries, and then we got to help do tasks. First, we took 200 fish from the tank and massed them. Then we took fish from a different place (these ones were bigger) and we weighed and measured them. Then we helped clean the fish pen things. I have to admit, it was all pretty fun because it was sunny and semi-warm outside.

Day 3: Um, well, it's still morning and school hasn't started yet, but I kind of know what we're going to do. We will go out to the hatchery again and watch the people load fish into this truck thing. Then we will follow them into town and watch them load the fish on a boat.

That's all for now. I am losing my focus, so yup. Byenow!