Southern Southeast Regional Aquaculture Association, Inc.
Enhancing and Rehabilitating Salmon Production in Southeast Alaska

Remote Camp Living - Anita Bay

Bob Mattson has spent the last two winters tucked inside SSRAA's remote  release site at Anita Bay tending to the daily routine of caring for chum, king and coho smolts. 

Mattson has run the camp at Anita Bay for two years.  He was previously involved in winter-rearing hatchery salmon at Earl West Cove and has been with the company for the past seven years.

Anita Bay south of Wrangell is SSRAA's pen-rearing site for approximately 14 million chum salmon, nearly 400,000 kings and more than 200,000 cohos.  A barge tied to the floating-pen array carries a house for SSRAA personnel. 

Annually the camp is towed from Neets Bay (where moored when not in use) to Anita Bay in mid-February.   Net pens for housing salmon smolt are put in place, and the camp in general is setup.  A two person crew will stay on-site from approximately mid-February through late May.

Coho fry originating from Whitman Lake Hatchery (Ketchikan) and chinook fry from Crystal Lake Hatchery (Petersburg) are transported via tanker truck to each cities dock and gravity fed into the hold of contracted vessels F/V Seven Seas and Lynda.  The remaining chum fry are loaded at the Neets Bay Hatchery.  From there the fry will travel to Anita Bay to be offloaded into  saltwater net pens and cultured until their release at the end of May.

The Anita Bay camp was built in 2001, with handyman Mattson hired as one of the carpenters.  Since that time Bob has added a number of finishing touches during his months aboard; building shutters for the windows, several flower boxes and constructing bedroom furniture from spare lumber.

Free time is scarce.  Fast -growing salmon smolts need hourly feeding between dawn and sunset during much of the winter/spring net-rearing season.  But Mattson gets away occasionally for shrimping, crabbing and fishing for winter kings. 

Anita Bay is one of three floating camps SSRAA operates in Southeast Alaska.   For exact locations of camps (Anita Bay, Nakat Inlet & Kendrick Bay)  select "Hatchery Location Map" on our website.

The photo collage below depicts camp living.