Fish, destruction and rebuilding 8/18/2019

As we left Valdez, we decided to detour to visit the salmon fish hatchery just outside of town. We're so glad we did. Many years ago, we had visited the Bonneville Fish Hatchery at the Bonneville Dam in Oregon. This place felt, like most things in Alaska do, a bit wilder and wide open.

Spawning happens in late summer, so we were lucky to be there at just the right time. Hatchery staff may take eggs from as many as 16,000 adult fish each day. These fish return to the hatchery spawning building by entering the facility using a fish ladder, which carry the fish from salt water of Valdez port to raceways on shore. Over the winter, the hatchery staff tends to the eggs as they hatch and settle into simulated gravel to subsist from their yolk sacs. In early spring, the fry emerge and are ready to go to sea. Then they are pumped to net pens off shore where they are fed using commercial salmon feeds until they reach a target weight. From there, they are released to complete their life cycle in the open sea. This process is known as ocean ranching. The adults, which average about 3.5 pounds each, return the following summer, and the process starts all over again.

It's a very cool process, and amazing to see hundreds (thousands?) of salmon struggling to come up the fish ladder. The water around the weir was literally boiling with salmon. Thousands of seagulls congregated in the area, looking for easy prey. We really enjoyed this stop.

We also stopped at the old town of Valdez. In 1964, the town of Valdez was badly shaken but not destroyed in the 1964 Good Friday earthquake. Soil liquefaction of the glacial silt that formed the city's foundation led to a massive underwater landslide, which caused a section of the city's shoreline

Mount Wrangell

to break off and sink into the sea. People continued to live there for an additional three years while a new site was being prepared on more stable ground four miles away.  They transported 54 houses and buildings by truck to the new site, to re-establish the new city at its present location. The original town site was dismantled, abandoned and eventually burned down.

The ride back to Anchorage took us back along the Lowes River to Worthington Glacier and Thompson Pass. The views were spectacular.

That night we stayed at a hotel in Anchorage that had one feature that had us scratching our heads.

Photos are here: https://photos.app.goo.gl/9zCZ8eTo8iysFiCYA