Day 48: Salmon Everywhere

We are done with this trip. In the very last haul we accidentally ran into a huge school of salmon with our net. Unlike everything else salmon are federally managed by number instead of weight. This means an unbiased person has to hand count each salmon that their boat pulls up, also known as, me. There were just under 1,000 salmon that I had to ID to species (there are 5 species of pacific salmon) and count. Then take genetic samples from 35 of them. By the end I decided that salmon were not worth the effort required to manage their populations, I don’t think the higher ups at the National Marine Fisheries Service will agree with me but they have never counted salmon for 4 hours.