By: Corey Gedrose

Kurt Kremers

• Kurt Kremers viewing all of the progress he and his team have made in maintaining a healthy salmon and trout population on the Mckenzie River. The holding tanks behind Kurt can hold up to 30,000 fish total, showing just how many fish can be nurtured at a time. As a dedicated outdoorsman, this line of work is very important in keeping Oregon’s fish population at a healthy level.

• Brian Daggett, left, and Bruce Dahne, right, making improvements to the facility. Here they are adding a ladder to their storage area in order to make the facility more accessible and practical for when the Spring stocking season arrives. Since the hatchery is understaffed and underfunded by the state, it is crucial for people like this to take “hatchery-improvement” projects upon their self to ensure it is maintained properly.

• This is one of the many stages of fish life, the incubation stage. Fish in this stage are kept close together and monitored continuously to make sure they grow at a healthy pace. It is places like this that show how much care goes into maintaining a population of wildlife that may be overlooked. Fish are an important part of Oregon’s waterways and facilities such as fish hatcheries make this possible.

• Manager of the McKenzie River Hatchery Kurt Kremers monitors the spillway where fish are released into the river. This is one of the most important part of the hatchery in terms of keeping it maintained because it ensures that the fish have a healthy integration into the river.

 

• Kurt partaking in his least favorite job at the hatchery, cleaning the filters in the nearby canal. This tank often becomes clogged with mud, grass, reeds and other aquatic plants making it a burden to deal with. This job, although undesirable, is crucial to keeping the canals along the river clean and habitable for fish and other wildlife.