By Tom Morphet
A planned release of juvenile king salmon at Lutak Inlet aimed at
boosting the local sportfishery hit a snag this week when a freight barge was unable to
maneuver around the project’s floating net pen.
Workers with Northern Southeast Regional Aquaculture Association and
local contractors last week assembled the 40-square-foot pen and anchored it offshore a
stream a few hundred feet north of the sportboat launch ramp near the ferry terminal.
NSRAA is scheduled to put fish in the pen next week.
Although the project secured a state tidelands lease for the site and
the Haines Borough also apparently signed off on its location, the pen’s location
Monday blocked use of the roll-off dock by the barge that brings most of the town’s
freight.
"It’s not in the right spot now, that I can tell," said
harbormaster Phil Benner, who said his office hadn’t been consulted on the pen’s
location. "We’re trying to work this out to the benefit of everybody."
Benner said it appeared the pen and its east-facing mooring lines both
would be in the way of the barge. The captain of Monday’s barge said the pen needed
to be moved 300 yards north to ensure barge docking in all types of weather.
The barge eventually docked by pulling aside the Lutak Dock, which
worked for off-loading heavy equipment only because a favorable tide left the barge
surface flush with the dock’s face, Benner said. At press time Tuesday,
representatives of Alaska Marine Lines and NSRAA were discussing the situation.
"The impression I get is that we’re going to help (NSRAA) get
it moved," said Don Reid, vice-president of shipper Alaska Marine Lines.
Although barges can use the dock face to off-load most goods, use of
the roll-off dock is required at least once a month for moving freight that can’t be
lifted with a forklift, including heavy equipment and container vans full of beer, Benner
said.
Beginning next week, the square steel float is scheduled to hold
250,000 king smolt that will swim inside a net at the float’s middle, imprinting to
the adjacent stream and growing three times their five-gram size.
By 2010, the kings are expected to begin returning to the site as
mature fish, creating opportunity for local anglers.
The pen is designed to be stouter than one blown away by rough weather
in 1993 during a similar release in Lutak Inlet. "I’m fairly confident it will
stay in place," said Steve Reifenstuhl, operations manager for NSRAA.
The pen itself is larger than the previous one, and is held down by
five, 1,000-pound Danforth anchors, chain with six-inch links and a type of synthetic line
stronger than cable, Reifenstuhl said.
The anchors, each more than six feet long, were lifted and lowered into
place last week by an excavator operating from the deck of the landing craft ferry Silver
Eagle.
The pen technology is identical to that used in similar projects all
over Southeast. NSRAA mechanic Mike Pountney, who led installation of the pen last week,
said he’s helped install 120 such pens.
This week’s snafu is only the latest setback for the project that
aims to return between 2,000 and 5,000 kings to Lutak each year for 10 years.
NSRAA’s first choice of a pen location – near 7 Mile Lutak
Road – was dropped after an adjoining landowner objected. Environmentalists and
others also have questioned whether release of the hatchery-raised fish would impact runs
of wild salmon that return to Chilkoot and Chilkat inlets.
