Fish & Water - Sounds Wild
Hatchery Fish

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Ruth Barnett Hatchery

In a spacious open room at the Ruth Burnett Sport Fish Hatchery in Fairbanks, water four or five feet deep circulates in big round tanks ten-feet in diameter. A window in the side of one tank shows thousands of small trout swimming inside.

The Division of Sport Fish operates two state-of-the-art sport fish hatcheries, one in Fairbanks and one in Anchorage, producing rainbow trout, Arctic char, Chinook salmon and coho salmon. The Fairbanks hatchery produces more 340,000 fish each year, which are stocked in about 125 lakes and ponds in Interior Alaska.

Eggs are taken from wild and captive brood sources, fertilized and carefully monitored in special trays until they hatch into alevin - tiny baby fish with an egg sack attached. After a few weeks they develop into fry, and they are moved from the trays to the big tanks. A start up tank may have as many as 80,000 fry. Growth is related to water temperature and the amount they are fed. As they grow and become more crowded they are either stocked in the wild as fry or moved to larger tanks to grow bigger.

Water for the Fairbanks hatchery comes from wells onsite, and up to 95 percent of the water is re-used. The hatchery uses just 10 percent of the water traditionally used by a fish hatchery. The oxygen level, temperature, Ph. and water quality is continually monitored.

Fish are stocked throughout the summer. Road-accessible waters are stocked by truck, and remote waters are stocked using a plane or helicopter. Stocking hatchery fish reduces the pressure on wild stocks, increases sport-fishing opportunity, and provides diversity in sport fisheries throughout interior Alaska.