Every year in early January maintenance staff readies the remote camp barges for transport to SSRAA’s three remote rearing and release sites: Kendrick Bay, Nakat Inlet and Anita Bay.  And in every year the busy months that follow include finding a site crew, towing the barges to the sites, setting up the net pens, transporting fish to the sites, rearing fry to approximately 10 times their original size, releasing the fry, clean up and breaking down the equipment, and finally towing the barges back to Neets Bay where they are kept when not in use.

Kendrick Bay is situated on the southern end of Prince of Wales Island.  Brody Wilson and John Sanders make up the 2006 crew at Kendrick.  Brody and John will take care of the 20 million summer chum smolts held in the net pens at Kendrick. They will spend most of their waking hours for the next three months (on site from late January through early May) feeding fish, doing routine net cleaning, camp repairs, and monitoring the condition of the fish in their care. 

The summer chum salmon reared at Kendrick are the Carroll River stock that has been produced for more than 20 years at Neets Bay Hatchery.  Eggs are collected every August from Carroll River summer chum returning to Neets Bay.  The eggs are incubated for about 50 days to the “eyed stage” at Neets Bay.  Eyed eggs for Kendrick Bay are transported by boat to Whitman Lake Hatchery on the Ketchikan road system where they are incubated until fry emerge in January.  The fry are moved by truck from Whitman Lake to a large salmon tender (F/V Seven Seas or Lynda) waiting at the Ketchikan City Dock.  The fry are siphoned from the tank truck to specially designed net pens in the holds of the tenders.  The fry are then transported by tender to Kendrick where they are moved from the tender to net pens, and rearing begins.

Chum salmon returning to Kendrick are all intended for common property harvest by the commercial salmon fleets of SE Alaska.  As part of a large allocation plan, the Kendrick fish are directed toward the seine fleet.  Most of these fish are caught as adults in the traditional District 102 seine fishery along the southeastern coastline of Prince of Wales.