Macaulay Salmon Hatchery: DIPAC – Juneau, Alaska

Last Monday, Bob and I decided to tour the Macaulay Salmon Hatchery because it was switching between light and heavy rain. The tour was primarily indoors with an affordable $5/person entry fee.

For this venture, we decided to try the Capital Transit Juneau, AK or the bus system. I downloaded the MoovIt app that was very good at showing the bus stops and bus numbers to get you where you want to go along with how far you need to walk to get to the bus and to your final destination. Bob prefers Google Maps.

For $2/person there and $2/person back we saw a significant savings over the local taxi service. We’re looking to purchase the $40 bus pass that is good for as many bus rides that you want for 30 days.

The buses seem to run about every 15 to 20 minutes. There are the Express buses that take the highway and will get you from Nugget Mall to downtown in about 12 minutes. The regular buses have more stops and get you more precisely to your starting and stopping point but will take about 35 to 45 minutes from Nugget Mall to downtown. We’ve used both and highly recommend the Juneau bus system.

The DIPAC Macaulay Salmon Hatchery is about .5 miles from the bus stop and it is a very easy walk.

We paid our entrance fee inside of the gift store and had some free hot coffee while we watch a quick 10 minute video presentation on the fish hatchery process. It’s an amazing process. Each year they release more than 140,000,000 baby salmon – primarily King and Coho from this location. Because the salmon were “imprinted” to that hatchery – somewhere between 1% to 10% will return to that hatchery where they will start the circle of life again after they have lived in the ocean for 1 to 5 years depending upon the species.

I was happy to hear that they no longer raise the pink salmon in Alaskan fish hatcheries because they are doing well enough in the wild to sustain themselves.

In the main building, they also had some aquariums with a wide variety of local aquatic species, along with touch tanks. I was surprised by the touch of the star fish which was smooth with a bit of roughness on the surface of their skin. We also learned that the American Bald Eagle has a brown head and body for the first two years of life. After that, they molt and the white head and tail feathers appear. I had not known that fact as we have several bald eagles we watch at Truman.

The rest of the facility was a series of holding tanks of the different types of salmon at different ages, rotating them as they grow. Most will be at the hatchery for 2 years before they are released.

The only note I will say is that one of the Key Features of the hatchery was not in operation – the fish ladder. We were too early in the season. The salmon do not start returning to where they were imprinted until late June through September. During this time, they jump all over the Gast Channel and the fish hatchery becomes a lively place with heavy cruise ship boat traffic. Even without the ladder going, I felt that this attraction was well worth the entry fee. I will be checking back before I leave to see if any of the salmon are running early as I would like to see the fish ladder in operation.