Gastineau Guiding: Tour of Juneau

Thanks to Kevin & Tracey, and their generous gift to us, we got to enjoy a guided tour of Juneau this past Sunday.  Through Gastineau Guiding, we took a 4-hour tour of downtown, Douglas Island (where we live), Rainforest Trail, and the local salmon hatchery.  It was awesome!  

Our guide was a woman named Brenda who is a retired fish biologist who has lived in Juneau for 30 years and loves it.  We were joined by a tourist couple from OshKosh, Wisconsin, and the four of us had a great time together.    

After driving around downtown and seeing some historical buildings, we drove across the bridge to Douglas Island and our first stop was "Pocket Park", to enjoy a view of downtown from the island side.

We went on to see the sandy beach that is on the south side of Douglas Island, and then drove back toward the north side (where we live) and parked at a boat dock to enjoy this view of Mendenhall Glacier.  Brenda got married at this boat dock 12 years ago, too :)

Then we drove toward the Rainforest Trail and walked an easy loop and listened to Brenda share her knowledge of the local plants.  Main rule we learned: blue is ok to eat, red is not.  There are tons of blueberries around here!

At the middle of the loop, we stopped by the water to enjoy the view....

That ridge out there is Admiralty Island, otherwise known as "Fortress of Bears" - evidently tons of bears live there and you can take a helicopter ride and watch them as a touristy thing to do.  

 Back through the rainforest for the second half of the loop:

After the rainforest trail, we headed to the local salmon hatchery.  This was my favorite part of the tour, probably because I went in knowing nothing about salmon.  It's fascinating stuff!

During "salmon season" all kinds of salmon swim "home" back to this hatchery.  This is because before they are released, they "imprint" fresh water surroundings on them, so as soon as they smell the fresh water, they'll know exactly where to come back to.  

 They swim up this "ladder", upstream, to a holding area.

They're jumpy little buggers!

The worker is sticking a plunger into the water to scare the fish away from where he's plunging, to consolidate them all to that one side of the divider.  They wanted to get them all into the same area, so they could pick some out and make that tank less crowded.  They basically push them around, so to speak.

Here's the holding area

They get corralled into these three aisles: pink salmon, king salmon, and chum salmon

Then they get sent up chute where they're eventually divided by gender

Then the lady fish get sliced and thousands of eggs pour out into buckets, and the boy fish get squeezed and their spermies (aka "milt") go into the bucket too....voila.  Manufactured fish love.

And then come the babies!

Lots of them!

The whole process was super interesting to learn about, and I still don't even totally understand all of it. But it was cool!  We got to go behind the scenes and see where they do all the slicing and holding of the eggs and fish throughout their development.

Also inside the hatchery is this cool fish tank full of all kinds of exotic fish that are found in nearby waters.

Thanks for that amazing introduction to our new town, Kevin & Tracey.  We loved it!