| Project Knight Inlet Lodge
Knight Inlet Lodge COHO HATCHERY/INTERPRETATIVE CENTER.
Sometime early last year, Dean Wyatt, the owner of Knight Inlet Lodge
contacted Charley Vaughan to ask if the ORES could help him set up a small
hatchery on the dock of his lodge in Glendale Cove in Knight Inlet. Charley
immediately got Frank Petruzeltka involved and from what seemed a simple
enough request, grew a project of unusual proportions.
First we had to scope
out the magnitude of our fish production, availability of water to service
the operation and equipment needed. Then we had to get Department of
Fisheries and Oceans approval. Thanks to some willing support from the
responsible community advisor within DFO and her immediate supervisor, the
process resolved in just a little over six months. This was going to be a
slam-dunk piece of cake. Yea and pigs fly. Little did not we know that the
dock wasn't strong or level enough to support our hatchery nor did Dean have
the staff expertise to make it so? Not only that, but the project had now
taken on the proportions of an interpretive center where the hatchery with
its circular tub, heath trays and capilano trough were just the center piece
for an expanded venue with large descriptive information boards enclosed in
a roofed open sided building.
Now we needed real effort, a team with carpenter skills, fund raising
expertise and the administrative where-with-all to work with Harold and his
very capable staff at Knight Inlet Lodge to get the water supply to the
hatchery balanced, get the fish in the loop and get the information panels
completed. Fortunately, ORES has those kinds of people.
Jim, our President, Bodo,
Bernard and John Falk flew up to the lodge, leveled the dock, strengthened
it and put up the building. Jitka took over the fund raising and designing
the information boards, and Frank P. provided the technical skills to
integrate the system so the fish had oxygenated water at the right flow rate
and temperature.
It’s still a works in progress, but from the pictures you can see the
project is going to be first class. People from all over the world will see
and appreciate, first hand, the natural aspects of our beautiful British
Columbia.
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