Ashleigh's PCSC Experience

      

            My experience working with the Pacific Coast Salmon Coalition included various things. I have worked with transplanting, nursery planting, and fish flinging. I have done transplanting a few times the places where I have done this are mainly in locations near water where a bridge was put in, like Christmas Creek. The work I did there with the PCSC group was laying straw down and planting grass seed and transplanting moss and ferns. The hay is to protect the grass seed from being eaten by birds or other small forest dwelling animals. I have had many different experiences and learned various things. Nursery planting I can recall doing once in my whole experience with the salmon coalition program and what I did was plant nursery raised trees. I believe this was at Christmas Creek as well. Fish flinging I have done about three times and fish flinging is when you fling fish into creeks for nutrients enhancement.

          I have also done community service as well cleaning up trash from the sides of the street and out of the irrigation ditches. We did that to help clear the path way for little fishes to swim through to migrate. Another experience I share with the Pacific Coast Salmon Coalition is going to the fish hatchery and collecting fish and hitting the fish on the head and transporting them over to the filleting area so we can fillet them and bag them up for the food bank. And I personally really enjoyed that because I thought that is was really neat how that process happened. Filleting the fish had to be my most favorite experience I had with the PCSC. I also had experience with making a damaged area look more natural by pulling broken branches and stuff like that together for a more natural look. 

          I have learned the differences between transplanting and nursery planting. Transplanting is simply moving plants from one location to another and nursery planting is planting plants that have been raised in a nursery and prepared for planting in a certain location. I have learned that fish carcasses are good for nutrients enhancement. I have enjoyed my time with the salmon coalition this year I have learned many things and that is my experience with the Pacific Coast Salmon Coalition.      

Christmas Creek

On Wednesday May, 20^th 2015 we went to a site called Christmas Creek phase 2. This time we had to dig several ferns, moss, and other trees and plants. The drive was south of Forks and it was about a 30 mile drive. It roughly took us 25 minutes to get out there. When we got there the planting site was pretty barren, there were hardly any plants there and it was mostly dry dirt. We planted a lot of plants at 2 different spots right along the river bank. We then took about 500 willow stakes and put them in the river so that they would be ready to plant.

We grabbed the plants from the woods. We dug them with shovels sometimes and sometimes we just ripped them out of the ground. We got the moss from trees and stumps in the woods close to the river. Then we planted them along the river bank where there wasn’t very much vegetation.

The reason we planted because the plants provide shade for the water and keeps the temperature low, it also stabilizes the bank, and gives homes to insects that salmon eat. I found this research at Fishbio.com. The Pacific Coast Salmon Coalition has been doing projects like this to help the salmon for years. I have been with PCSC for one year and we have done this on multiple sites such as Christmas Creek, Hoh River, Solduc and many others.

Old Cat Yarder

Click here for audio describing the Old Cat Yarder

Sand Blasting

Click here for audio about sand blasting

We are sandblasting an old cat. This cat was made roughly 60 years ago. We have been sandblasting it for about 3 weeks. The thing with sand blasting is it takes the right kind of weather, because you can’t do it in the rain or the wind. We are hoping to get this machine ready for the old fashion forks fourth of July parade. The other thing with sand blasting is it is very dangerous. It has the power to rip open skin with ease. So in order to be safe with sandblasting you must have the proper equipment or you could do serious harm to yourself.

Ashton's Plan!

My name is Ashton Chastain I worked with the PCSC (Pacific Coast Salmon Coalition) to make up a credit. Now I am a Semester 2 intern. I will be working with the PCSC again this semester. Kody Hansen, Caleb Adams, and I will be going around Forks and putting plaques on all the storm drains that go to streams to tell people to not throw trash in them. I will be keeping up on the blog and after each week is over I will be posting about what we got accomplished that week and what we are planning for the next.

Ashton Warner Creek

Today we headed to Warner creek to clean the creek up. We met at the office and signed in, and then we headed to the shed and got waders and gloves. Four of us suited up in waders and headed into the creek. The rest were up walking along grabbing garbage off the bank and getting garbage we piled up for them. The guys in the creek started where Warner creek merged with mill creek to become mill creek from there we headed up stream and cleaned up every scrap of garbage along the way. We crawled under vaults to check for garbage under those. We followed the creek until it went under highway 101 then we cleaned up and took our gear back and signed up for the day.

Ashton Nutrient Enhancement

Today we were headed out to the Sul-Duc fish hatchery. We all loaded up into the cars and headed out we arrived at the hatchery and helped load the touts of dead fish into the trucks. WE split in half one group following one truck the other group following the other truck. We headed out to the north fork of the callawah to dump the dead fish in the river. We do this to spread the fishes nutrients back into the streams where they would naturally die. This provides vital nutrients to the plants and animals of our ecosystem. Once we where done there we headed back to town to finish the day up and sign out.