Last week, I reported that the Purse Seine Vessel Owners Association has come forward with $158,000 a year to maintain the operation of the McKernan Hatchery near Shelton.
The hatchery, which produces 40 percent of the chum salmon in Hood Canal, was scheduled to close July 1 unless a private entity stepped up to run it. Three groups offered proposals, and the arrangement will allow state hatchery workers to keep doing their regular jobs. See my story in Friday’s Kitsap Sun for details.
Two questions came up in comments at the bottom of the story:
Why doesn’t the state rear coho, chinook or other more valuable
fish at McKernan? And why does the state continue to allow these
kinds of production hatcheries to continue, considering impacts on
wild salmon?
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