Volunteers Wanted Oct 27 Coho Egg Collection

[Jeremy Ray Green]

Hey Onwind,

Yesterday was a very different day than expected in previous years for our coho egg collections.

In most years our group of only about 6 individuals would make the trip to the river only to find a few Hens and a few Males ready to give up their spawn.

in order to obtain an amount of eggs that was obtained yesterday.

our group would tirelessly try to find these coho in more than one river over 4-6 days to find even half the amount of eggs.

As a Group yesterday we did not expect to find soo many eggs.

normally we would have been on the river for at most 2 hours.
yesterday we worked from 10:00 am to 2:30 on the river, and collected 103 thousand eggs. from 30 females.

If we knew how much work we had ahead of ourselves im sure our group would have made better arangements for some warm beverages...

As for the getting in the water part, I got into a set of chest waders, and was in the water for a bit, this year with the rain the water is higher than what was expected, and my waders got flooded. glad that happenned ealry in the day cause i wasnt looking forward to walking through the river for the electroshocking part, There were areas where in the past rocks would be sticking 5 ft out of the water, yesterday you couldnt even tell they were there.
I was wet and cold all day and even this morning when i woke up my body was still feeling it ...

We had an amazing turnout on the river yesterday, with 18 volunteers helping at one point in the day.


It took us longer than normal to process eggs, because again, we had so many eggs from our one day collection.
We were not done at the hatchery until almost 8:00 pm.

It was a long day but the benefits will be rewarding. And Anyone who attended will be part of a video documentary for our group.

~Jeremy.