Special Projects
Coleman National Fish Hatchery
Coleman NFH, located in Anderson California is the largest salmon hatchery in the contiguous 48 US states. Imagine feeding 842 metric tons of fish food per year! The Coleman NFH was established in 1942 to mitigate the loss of natural salmon spawning grounds as a result of the construction of Shasta and Keswick Dams.
The two major species the hatchery raises are Chinook and Steelhead. The hatchery needed a counter that was passive and could count fish upstream and downstream. Their counter spends part of the year installed in a fish ladder on Battlecreek. However, during the fall run in October through mid-December the counter will be installed in a channel connected to the main holding pond. This second installation site is the primary reason the hatchery procured the counter and will enable the hatchery to accurately record the total number of salmon and steelhead returning to the hatchery each year.
More information is available on our Fish Counters from WMT.
Coleman NFH, Outside view
John Scott with Coleman NFH in the egg stripping room.
Grass growing over the salmon release pond. Coleman developed an innovative sprinkler system to protect the salmon from bird predation. The osprey is the only bird that will get its feathers wet to capture its prey.
Here young salmon conditioned to human hand feeding crowd to the human with camera expecting to be fed. Coleman is developing an underwater feeding system that lessens pavlof conditioning to produce a wilder fish.
Counter installed at the headworks of the fish ladder on Battle Creek.