Fifteen Days of Work

July 7th - 21st  (Tuesday – Tuesday)

 

In this set of fifteen days we worked 150 hours, almost a full month’s work for most people in a typical 40-hour workweek job.  The days involved a lot of walking, and on average I walked 8.9 kms per day with a total of 134 kms over the fifteen days.  Many of the days one or both of us would move over 3,000 kilograms of feed in 20 kg bags; sometimes we were filling the automatic feed silos, and other days we were bringing up bags of feed to be thrown out by hand.  Our daily tasks varied immensely from filling the feed silos, to adjusting the automatic feeders, to washing down the walkways and tank bases, to removing an old starter from a truck, to mowing and weed whacking the yard’s grassy areas.  The days never got boring.  

Most of the days Jason and I started work at 06:00.  The automatic feeders turn on at 05:30, when the sun rises and the fish start to become active.  By the time that Jason and I would arrive at 06:00 the fish were quite hungry and each of us would take a wing of the large 15 metre tanks to spread feed.  Dave, our supervisor, would take the two wings of the smaller 8 metre tanks, and each of us would throw out extra feed to supplement what the automatic feeders were spreading.  

It is very impressive to see the fish when they are hungry.  Our largest fish, the ones that came in first when we were last on shift, and that were already quite large, have now doubled in size and they are not shy about coming up for food.  It is especially impressive on darker mornings when it is still only dusk at 06:00 due to a thick cloud cover.  The water is dark and still, until we throw out the feed, and then, as the feed lands on the water’s surface in a nice brush stroke, the water in the specific area erupts in a boil of action and the surface turns white.  We can clearly see the exact outline of the food pieces in our throw, by the commotion of the fish and the accompanying noise of an accumulation of bloop, bloop, bloop, as the fish break the surface.  Some fish rocket upwards toward the food and come flying out of the water, while others attack with less commitment and splash at the surface as they flip themselves around and rocket back downward.  Seeing the fish’s feeding habits really reinforces the fishermen’s’ advice to fish early in the morning for fresh-water salmonidaes.  On many of these darker mornings I felt like an artist; I could create different shapes and patterns on the water’s surface depending on how I threw out the feed, and it was immediate feedback as to the areas that I had missed as those areas would remain perfectly still.

Our number-one focus at work is the fish.  We attend to their hunger, their water quality and specifications of salinity levels and oxygen levels, as well as their water temperature.  If they are hungry, we feed them, and this means keeping the automatic feeders working well.  On the large tanks, two feeders are needed to disperse feed over the surface of the tanks and they stick out from the central walkway on moveable arms.  To service or adjust one of these feeders we simply swing the arm in parallel to the walkway and work on it from the walkway itself.  

On the small tanks, only one feeder is needed to spread feed over the surface, so it is mounted underneath the walkway, which runs across the centre of the tanks.  Minor adjustments can be made by reaching in under the walkway, but in order to make any more major adjustments, or to change out a feeder, we need to get access to the underneath of the walkway.  I worked with Dave one day as he was making these adjustments to some of the tanks, and on the next day I got to make the adjustments by myself.  To do this I had to put on hip waders and climb into a float tube in the tank.  It was neat being in the tanks with the fish, as I could actually feel them bumping into my legs.  The spin of the water within the tank was what made the work challenging, as I had to stop myself from simply spinning around in circles.  While I was in the tank Jason turned on the feeder so that I could see how it was spreading the feed.  I would then make an adjustment and radio for the feeder to be started up again.  

At one point in our shift the decision was made to lower the temperature of the water for the fish.  Jason got to go up to the lake with Dave and they took the lake boat out to the floating barge that is anchored above where the fresh-water intake screens are located.  The intake pipes and screens are hung from winches up on the dock and one can raise or lower them as necessary to access the desired water temperature layer within the lake.  We had been sitting at around 14.4 degrees and the intakes were close to the surface.  Jason and Dave lowered the intakes while I watched the temperature decrease down at the office and let them know over the radio as the temperature changed.  We dropped the temperature about two degrees and it was amazing the next morning to see what a big difference it had made.  The fish were a lot less hungry, they were still hungry, just not ravenous and it was much easier to feed them until they were full.  It was amazing how much of a difference two degrees made.  

When we go back to work on August 4^th, it will be interesting to see how much more the fish will have grown.