There are 30,000 Chum salmon eggs incubating at Carkeek Park right now!
Every Spring, CWCAP travels to the Suquamish Tribe’s Grovers Creek Salmon Hatchery to pick up Chum salmon eggs for incubation at Carkeek Park. The eggs will hatch, mature, and then self-release into Venema Creek by mid-to-late March.
The three trays you see in the nearby photo are submerged in the vertical Incubation/Self-release tank where eggs will quickly hatch and drop through the mesh they are sitting on.
The trays will eventually be removed as the alevin (immature fish with attached egg/yoke sac) mature at the bottom of the tank.
At this same time, 70+ schools in Seattle have received 200-250 salmon eggs to raise as participants in the Salmon in the Schools program. The fish at Carkeek Park will soon self-release into Venema Creek while these schools will feed and study their fish through the end of March, beginning of April.