Whitehorse Fish Ladder

We stopped by the Whitehorse Fish Ladder today because the salmon are making their way upstream to the spawning grounds.  Each year around this time chinook salmon make the trip from the Bering Sea up the Yukon River to the streams where they were hatched several years earlier to spawn and repeat the cycle.  The trip is some 1800 miles (3000 km), a remarkable journey.

Since Yukon Electrical installed the hydroelectric dam on the Yukon River at Whitehorse, the world’s longest wooden fish ladder helps the salmon bypass the dam and find their way to the spawning beds.  At the fish ladder they have a viewing station where the salmon are counted on their way through – and the public can stop by to see them up close.  You can also see them in the water milling around at the entrance to the fish ladder.

Here are some photos.

This is the secondary dam just downstream from the power dam.  Here the salmon are forced to move toward the entrance to the fish ladder.

  

From the overhead platform in the first photo, you can see the salmon in the water below.

 

 

 

 

 

This is part of the fish ladder, from the entrance (off to the bottom left of this photo), to the viewing station. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This young boy is fascinated by the huge chinook salmon in the viewing station.  The bars on the left side of the ‘aquarium’ temporarily prevents the salmon from continuing up the rest of the fish ladder.  Here they are examined and counted.

Boys are walking past a display of whimsical salmon painted and decorated by school children.  Here are a couple of closeups: