2:47pm Kenai, AK
I went out to the water shed to get some...well...water and i saw hundreds of seagulls circling our dock. The parts of the fish that we don't use or want get ground up in the processing room and wash out to the river through a chute under the plant. Thus drawing all of the seagulls to come and make a big ruckus.
We just had a plant wide meeting with Vince, the owner, about what's going on with the fish. The King Salmon are running slow from the Yukon. They are expecting 30 million fish from the Yukon and just over 1% have run so far. It was a rough winter and a cold spring and all of the fish are waiting for the water to warm up. I don't blame them...i never liked a cold pool. But we usually don't have a lot of fish from the Yukon now anyway. We are waiting on the set netters. (until i saw this in print i was so confused. they do what their name says. they go to the beach and set their nets in the water and wait. There are also drifters. They drop their nets of their boats and drift with the current and get fish that way.) The set netters are our beach fisherman and they are the ones that are going to keep us busy until the Yukon produces for us. And then we will be really busy because we will have fish from the Yukon, fish from the Kenai River, fish from Cook Inlet and who knows where else.
I just feel so bad for all of the people that aren't getting any hours. Yesterday we had fish and they processed for less than 1hr. I would be so upset if i came all the way here and didn't have work for so long. It makes the toilets look pretty good.