SITKA — Earlier this spring, Fish Tech Professor Jim Seeland, Pentair Aquatic Eco-Systems, and Douglas Island Pink and Chum partnered to host a recirculation workshop to better inform Alaska fish culturists on how recirculation can be used as a technique to use water more efficiently.
“It’s becoming tougher to find new water sources, but there is still a desire to produce more,” Seeland said.
Salmon spend much of their lives in salt water oceans but their most crucial life stages — egg, fry and parr — need freshwater.
Recirculation within a hatchery allows the water to be used an infinite number of times allowing hatcheries to rear more fish without consuming more water.
Seeland saw a void for training in recirculation for fish culturists in the state and worked with Pentair, a global supplier for recirculation technology, and DIPAC, a corporation that manages two hatcheries in the Juneau region, to develop curriculum for a workshop that would be relevant to Alaskans.
Angie Bowers, director of aquaculture at the Sheldon Jackson hatchery in Sitka, attended, and helped to run the workshop.
“The presenters were awesome,” said Bowers.
While the Sheldon Jackson hatchery already uses recirculation for some things, there are other ways Bower says it could be incorporated into the operation.
“How a hatchery could use recirculation is different for every site. Here, we could use recirculation to improve water quality because during certain times of the year the river water carries a large number of suspended solids.”
