Snipped Fins Mark Hatchery-Raised Salmon

NETARTS, Ore. – When a salmon reared at the Whiskey Creek Fish Hatchery grows up, fishermen will be able to distinguish it from a wild chinook by the absence of a tiny fin.

More than 350 volunteers turned out over the weekend for the hatchery’s annual fin-clipping day, teaming up to give about 100,000 young salmon a telltale snip.

“Once you get the hang of it, it gets pretty easy,” said Avalon Reynolds-Brice, a sixth-grader from Portland who volunteered with her sister, Haven.

The salmon get a dose of anesthetic before the scissors-wielding volunteers clip off the tiny adipose fin, located on the fish’s back just in front of the tail.

“They wake up and have no idea what’s happened to them,” said Jerry Dove, 68, president of Tillamook Anglers, which organized the gathering.

The hatchery raises 200,000 salmon a year and places them in the Wilson and Trask rivers.

Bill Bakke, executive director of the Native Fish Society, said it’s important that hatchery fish are marked if they are introduced into rivers, so fishermen can keep them and throw back the wild ones.

Hatchery fish can be a problem, he said, because they compete with wild fish for food and may interbreed with them, possibly creating genetically inferior offspring.

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On the Net:

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