Day 10

 July 17th

Location: Walla Walla Hatchery

 

We revisited the South Fork Walla Walla River this morning to get our final measurement from this site.

Flow Meter Device 1:

0.6 m/s	m/s
15.7 MAX	MAX
14.2 Degrees C	Degrees C

 

Flow Meter Device 2:

0.47 m/s

Today we visited the Walla Walla Hatchery’s restoration sites and their facility. Our tour guides for the facility and restoration site were, John, Tela and Jason. The restoration work they have done is impressive considering how much work they had to do for there to be more meandering in the channel. Previously it was relatively straight and had been moved by farmers and other landowners. I thought it was great that whenever there are any disturbances while they are working, they plant native species, which is great as it provides a more balanced ecosystem for everything in and surrounding the river. At the site we essentially had two different ecosystems meshed into one another. There is more diversity downstream and is packed with vegetation while upstream is more of a riparian area with lots and lots of thistles. They are also hoping that more adult fish will start returning to the area as of now, very few return. The Umatilla River Vision consists of 5 touchstones:

-          Water quality and quantity

o   Buffering temperatures through riparian shading and groundwater

-          Geomorphology

o   Channel construction

o   Large wood enhancement

o   Side channel connection

-          Connectivity

o   Reconnected floodplain

o   Enhanced groundwater exchange

-          Riparian vegetation

o   Direct planting

o   Creating suitable habitats

-          Aquatic biota

o   Creating spawning and rearing habits

At the facility they produce 500,000 Chinook Salmon annually. Their incubation rooms can hold up to 840,000 eggs but their facility, compared to the other one we went to, does not ensure that all the eggs/fish are at the same stages of life. Their project objectives include: “To contribute to the restoration of natural spawning populations of Spring Chinook throughout the basin.” In August-September staff will collect and fertilize around 640,000 eggs in order to meet their production goal. The fish stay at the hatchery for two years until they undergo smoltification which allows them to transition from freshwater to saltwater. “The purpose of the fish hatchery is to re-introduce Spring Chinook Salmon into the Walla Walla Basin where they went extinct in the early 1900s.”

This facility was impressive to see and goes to show how far technology has come for work like this. Their tanks are self-cleaning because of how the mechanism of the tank itself is set-up which allows everything to sink to the bottom where one of the two drains is located and circulates the water. The tanks were also much bigger allowing for more holding capacity and space for the fish to exercise. To finish the day, we came back to our campsite and did gram staining on our sample from the Upper Deschutes River. My sample had both gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria when examining it under the microscope. I had purple rods chained throughout that appeared hair-like and pink clusters of circular shapes.