Ketchikan, AK
Trip Start
Unknown
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6
7
Trip End
Ongoing
Ketchikan, Alaska
Sunday, July 25, 2010
We visited the salmon hatchery that is run by a local indian tribe. The gal selling us tickets was quite a pretty little squaw, but she had a small obelisk sticking through the skin under her lower lip. She and I got into a lively discussion about it's uses. I still think it's a place to sick papers on a, windy day. It also turns out this particular squaw is the great granddaughter of the last tribal chief. Seems if you descend from royalty, you get your own totem pole. I resisted the easy jokes here, but did ask if she, being royal, had to make sure the guys she dated had their own totems. She did not get that either, but did tell me that she has two kids from two different guys. Crazy.
The hatchery would be very cool during the height of spawning. We were about 3 weeks early so there were a lot of salmon in the hatchery, but it was sort of like a 6th grade dance - lots of movement, but no one really knew what to do. Apparently salmon go back to the spot of their birth to spawn. The process is like this.
1. Fish hatches and spends a year growing in the hatchery
2. When big enough, fish is released to swim downstream to the ocean (couple of miles)
3. The Salmon spends the next 2-4 years growing in the ocean and trying not to get caught or eaten.
4. Some internal clock (time bomb, really) goes off in there little fish brain that tells them to stop eating and head for home.
5. Salmon leave ocean and get into the rivers. They literally start to rot from the inside out.
6. Salmon swim upstream and wait until the time is right.
7. En masse, the female dump the eggs and the guys milt or fertalize them.
8. The time bomb goes off and all of the adults die.
In the hatchery, 1-5 are the same:
6. Salmon swim into the hatchery into large tanks
7. A lucky few females are selected, split open and their eggs (~3,000 or so) are dumped into a 5-gallon bucket.
8. A couple of males get the milt wrung out of them.
9. All of the salmon in the tanks become fish foot.
So both options suck, if you're a salmon.
On the other hand, if you're a lumberjack, life does not suck in Ketchikan. The thing to do in town is go to the lumberjack show. And quite a show it is. There is something for everyone. Big burly lumberjacks for the ladies, hopped up, nitro burning chainsaws for the fellas, corny jokes for the kids and a health does of competition for all. It was a good 90 minute show that felt less staged than it was. I guess that's what you get when the cast consists entirely of 17 - 24 men. No matter how how scripted it is, every young guy wants to beat the next guy. They literally put their back into it. Fun show.
We bought a bottle of nice champagne in town and had to smuggle it past the crack Carnival security staff. Back on the ship by noon and off toward Victoria, BC.
