June 11, 2026, by Lisa Teas Conaway

When Josie Eccher first came to the Sitka Sound Science Center, she never imagined her love of fish could possibly grow, but Sitka has that effect on people. 

Josie first fell in love with fish while wading through remote mountain streams of Montana and Colorado. She spent several seasons working in the field on trout recolonization and sculpin genetics, in very remote settings, becoming intimately familiar with the fish in their natural habitat. Our hatchery stands in stark contrast with freshwater intakes and egg incubation rooms:

“I was really impressed by the elaborate water systems,”

Josie remembered from her first few days. But there is a rhythm to hatchery life that Josie soon found and thrived in. Sampling the fish every week and seeing their growth became one of the most enjoyable parts of Josie’s day-to-day hatchery apprenticeship tasks. The routine paired well with the many unusual issues that sprang up this year, creating a well-rounded hatchery experience. Josie learned quickly that though the hatchery had a steady rhythm, it also took elaborate solos in the form of alarm calls in the middle of the night, low oxygen levels in round ponds, and unexpected equipment breaks, no day was ever quite the same.

One memorable moment came in early January, while everyone was about to leave work for the day, strong winds ruptured a viewing window to a round pond holding 20,000 baby coho. Night was falling fast as baby salmon streamed out of the break onto the gravel, but Josie and the full Science Center crew rallied. Buckets flew back and forth, and a handful of individuals helped scoop up and save thousands of baby fish that night. Our team really came together in an amazing group effort to avert a crisis that we hope to never face again. Thankfully, Josie’s time here also had many good highlights along with the dramatic. One such memory was from the full day of pushing our net pens from our hatchery site down Silver Bay to Medvejie hatchery for the season. Our net pens consist of a 45×100-foot grid of dock platforms encircling large nets that sink into the water and hold our baby salmon in the ocean. It’s not easy moving something so large through the water, but not impossible. The pens are restrained to our 20-foot hatchery boat and slowly but surely pushed the full 10 miles down the channel. Thankfully, this went smoothly, friendship bonding being the most memorable part of the boat ride. While reflecting on her year at the hatchery, Josie smiling said:

“I learned more about life than fish”. 

While we fondly say best fishes to Josie, we know she has a bright future ahead of her.