There’s no job quite like Jorge Villarreal’s. He’s a fish hatchery specialist 4, according to the state Department of Fish and Wildlife, but he said his layman’s title is more simple – the manager of the Minter Creek Hatchery on the Key Peninsula, as well as its two affiliated sites nearby.

“It’s a combination of art and science,” he said of overseeing staff members — currently four full-time and three temporary — and the operations of the hatchery, home to different types of salmon as well as rainbow trout.

The hatchery incubates 13 million salmon eggs each year. The Minter Creek Hatchery raises salmon and trout from egg to spawn to release at its facility off the titular creek, which runs into Carr Inlet.
Incubating eggs into fry and moving the fry to holding ponds, as well as transferring hundreds of thousands of eggs to community partners, occurs at this time of year, and spawning takes place in the spring and fall. The hatchery releases more than 2 million chum salmon, more than 1.7 million chinook and more than 500,000 coho every year.

Everything from incubation to marking and tracking fish in the wild is highly technical. But Villarreal, who has worked at Minter Creek since 2000 and was promoted to manager about a year ago, said instinct also plays a part in the work.

Villarreal said an experienced hatchery specialist can tell when something’s wrong with a fish early, if a fish appears to be sick or senses a predator nearby.

The job is physical — Villarreal and his team at Minter Creek put on their waders and step into the holding ponds with the fish, and they grab them to check their stomachs for signs that they’re ripe for spawning.

With such a large volume of fish in the hatchery’s charge, however, Villarreal said he recognizes a home for millions of fish, like a city with millions of people, will have its share of problems.

“New people in fish culture start to panic when they see fish dying, when a seasoned person wouldn’t,” he said. “But, like in any population, there will always be diseases and mutations.”

Still, Villarreal said the rate of loss among fish raised at Minter Creek is about 5 to 10 percent. He added that can be the rate of survival for fish raised in the wild, even when they lack a hatchery’s protection against weather and predation.

The hatchery draws many visitors, from elementary school groups to community college students to families who happen to drive past and wonder what goes on at the industrial-looking complex on the creek. Villarreal said he’s happy to show visitors around, and many of them are surprised by what they see.

“A lot of people say, ‘Wow, I didn’t think this was so involved. There are so many steps!’ ” Villarreal said. “People think it’s very simple, and it’s not.”

A hatchery specialist’s job changes several times throughout the course of the year, depending on the season. Villarreal and his team currently are at the end of the incubation season, during which eggs are kept monitored in racks in large cooling rooms, partly preserved with formaldehyde. Hatched fry are moved to ponds while many eggs are collected unhatched.

Because Washington’s salmon are co-managed by the state and local tribes, many of Minter Creek’s eggs are given to tribal groups who need to supplement their own supply. This year, the Tulalip tribe was short their usual number, and Minter Creek provided them with 5.5 million more chum eggs than in a typical year.

Hatchery workers begin to trap adult salmon for spawning in the spring, although most spawning takes place in the fall.

From now until spawning season begins, they will perform the long task of marking each adult fish set for release by clipping its adipose fin so fishermen know if a fish they’ve caught is from a hatchery, which can be kept, or raised in the wild, in which case it must be released.

Some of the hatchery’s trapped adult fish are sent to local food banks, Villarreal said, and the state’s licensed fish buyer also provides community services with extra fish. Others are taken by fishermen’s groups to fill creeks around the state, for sport and for the nutrient enhancement that decomposing salmon provide.

The hatchery has more downtime in the summer, Villarreal said, although that just means there’s more time to do maintenance work on their facilities.

He said staff members do most of their own repairs. It’s part of why he calls himself and his co-workers “jacks of all trades and masters of few.”

“You’re never doing the same thing,” Villarreal said of his ever-changing job. “If something’s getting old, it’s probably time to move on to something else.”

Reporter Will Livesley-O’Neill can be reached at 253-358-4152 or by email at will.livesley-oneill@gateline.com. Follow him on Twitter, @gateway_will.