Steelhead Spawning

This is a follow-up on the ongoing Steelhead recolonization project for the Elwha River. Many agencies are partaking in this event NOAA, Lower Elwha Tribe, and REUers. Last Tuesday was a very exciting day down at the Lower Elwha fish hatchery. The first group of native Elwha Steelhead (4 year olds) who were pumped from redds (in the river) and transported to the hatchery where they have been reared were ready to be spawned. The genetics (fin clip) have been done on these fish when they were PIT tagged, when they were approximately 6 months old. Gary Winans from NOAA is heading up the genetics and he has a very large data base of the families these Steelhead belong to as well as gender. The genetics allow us to make sure we are not breeding close relatives together.
The fish were captured out of their tanks, scanned for tag number so we knew what family they belonged to, if the fish was female then she was killed (they die after spawning in the wild) her eggs were extracted and put into 3 different tubs. The males were put into a tank with anesthetize (they get live to give semen once more) so we could milk the semen out. The semen was collected in baggies, oxygen was added to preserve viability, once we had semen from 3 males we mixed semen from one male into each tub of eggs. Water was added to aid the fertilization process then we mixed all of them together strained the eggs then added them to a brooder. The water in the brooder had iodine added to it to protect the eggs from bacteria. The iodine was rinsed out after a short amount time and now we are all waiting to see if our spawning was a success.