I accepted a full time position here in Twisp with Yakima Nation Fisheries. I will start full time on March 1. I needed to get one more travel in. I am going back down to Borneo for five weeks in January. I am going to meet a co-worker down there. I was there two years ago but only for like ten days and seven of those days i was underwater, so i'd like to see a little more of the second largest island in the world. Now when i say full time i only mean 8.5 months. I am still going to be spending my Summers in Alaska. I wasn't ready to give that gig up and the Yaks were fine with that. As a bonus i just found out yesterday that they are going to hire me on as a Fisheries Technician III that is the next level up from where i am now. A few $$$ an hour more. I am a Tech III in Alaska too, A full time job with insurance and 401k stuff. I have not had a full time job in about.... forever. I can still live here at the office too. The job will be trapping Coho from Oct-Nov, then like what we are doing now is stream surveys. We hike up the tributaries that flow into the Methow River in search of Coho Redds (nests) we also float down the Methow river doing the same. The Coho were raised in Hatchery and before they are released what is known as a Coded Wire Tag is inserted into their snouts. It is very small like a millimeter in length. Any spawned out Coho we find we sample them and cut off there snouts bag them up and put them in the freezer for later i will carefully dissect them and retrieve the CWT. There is a numerical code stamped onto the tag and we will ready that under the microscope to find out which hatchery it came from. The Disecting is done in December/January after all of the Coho have spawned. The Coho that we trap at the Dam we keep at the Winthrop Hatchery and when they are ready to spawn (lay eggs) we manually do this by cutting open the bellies on the females, dump the eggs into a bucket and then milt the males, give the bucket a swirl and pour the eggs into a tray where they will incubate until March, at which time we will spend a few months feeding the fish and cleaning the raceways.
I got my rig back after it had been at the mechanic for the last month and a half. The bill was enormous, but the car was free so i guess it kind of evens out? I have my clay up here and just found an art table for $12 at a thrift store. I have a pretty big list of characters that people want so i am staying busy on my days off. I will take pictures of the sculptures as i finish them.
