The life cycle of salmon, from fingerlings upstream to an amazing ritual of spawning, has been well documented. But what happens to the fish beyond that? November is often thought of as the end of the salmon’s story, but in many ways it is the beginning. In part one of a two part series, Kendall Watson explores the other journey of Issaquah’s famous fish.

Waist-deep in water and soaked by flailing fish, staff and volunteers at the Issaquah Salmon Hatchery Nov. 17 smiled and shouted out as they tallied salmon for the final hatchery spawning of the year.

“Hen!”, shouted out Friends of the Issaquah Salmon Hatchery (FISH) volunteer Amy Holmes.

“Wild Buck!”, called another volunteer.

Marking the end of the salmon season, the last of the coho are finishing their journey back to the Issaquah Creek.

According to hatchery supervisor Darin Combs and specialist John Kugen, as of Nov. 18 they had trapped approximately 13,812 adult coho, 2,295 chinook, 27 cutthroat trout, seven sockeye and two pink salmon this year.

“That’s about average for coho and down for the chinook,” said Kugen. “The pinks are a first for the hatchery,” he said.

The hatchery harvested approximately 2,100 salmon for an estimated 2.2 million chinook eggs and 1.2 million coho eggs for the year. But the state Department of Fish and Wildlife (DFW) also allows the hatcheries to send much of the extra fish upstream so they can naturally complete their life cycle by spawning in the wild.

FISH volunteers Dan Wilshin, Jennifer Allee and Holmes, joined by hatchery specialists Mike Griffin and Debi Sanchez, hoisted mostly hatchery-spawned coho “hens” and “bucks” out of holding ponds and down a flume that fed the fish back into the Issaquah Creek.

Over 10,000 salmon were allowed back into the natural watershed so far.

“The state has chosen to put more fish upstream this year,” said Combs.

“We’ve always put quite a few coho upstream.”

Years of intervention by humans in the form of overfishing, urban runoff and dams threatened salmon stocks to the point where the state decided to establish the hatchery system.

Nowadays, DFW is still trying to find the right balance between a sustainable ecosystem that needs the salmon, and the demand of people who want to eat them.

“The numbers aren’t really increasing,” Combs said.

Since August, Combs has been working to build the hatchery’s stocks of fertilized salmon eggs at both the Issaquah and Tokul Creek hatcheries. Now he and his staff will incubate the eggs in holding ponds and nourish the fry once they hatch — starting as soon as December.

They are raised in captivity until they are ready to smolt at 5-7 inches long, then released into Issaquah Creek.

But before they release them, the fish are either hand-clipped or passed through a DFW-approved machine to remove the young fingerling’s adipose fin, making them easy to identify as hatchery-raised and help DFW keep track of their progress to restore and maintain Puget Sound salmon.

The marking machine, which can mark 7,000 fingerlings per hour, or two fish per second, uses a flow of cold water to attract fish to a chute where mechanized gates separate them and hold them for individual fin clipping. But only 10 percent of the clipping is done this way – the rest is done through the hard work of hatchery staff and volunteers.

Unfortunately, the entire process of trapping, counting and harvesting some of the salmon also takes a toll on the fish themselves. Over 1,000 died in the hatchery’s holding ponds before they could be counted for spawning or released.

“We can only spawn once a week,” Kugen said. “There’s all sorts of reasons why they die.”

The pilgrimage to Issaquah Creek for spawning might be the end for most of the local salmon — but for many, a new sort of journey begins at the Issaquah Hatchery.

Contracted by DFW to collect the salmon carcasses from egg harvesting sites like the Issaquah hatchery, American Canadian Fisheries, Inc. is also guaranteed a share of the salmon harvest.

The Bellingham-based company, which produces canned foods, fertilizer, pet food and bait, puts the salmon on ice and trucks them to its factory where the fish is processed.

Last year, American Canadian received 3,700 salmon from Issaquah alone. And according to USDA standards, the majority of that haul was edible for human consumption last year.

Who ate it? Was it safe? How much did it cost?

Read more next week to find out what’s become of this year’s returning salmon.