Fish Culture Member, Quilcene National Fish Hatchery

American Conservation Experience (ACE), a non-profit conservation corps, in partnership with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), is seeking ONE Fish Culture Member to contribute to fish hatchery operations and provide supplemental field science and public outreach support to projects under the mentorship of Quilcene National Fish Hatchery Staff.

For more information about ACE, please visit our website.

Start Date:

1/4/2027

Estimated End Date: 8/14/2027

* a 32-week minimum commitment is required, approximately 1280 hours*

Location Details/

Description:

Quilcene National Fish Hatchery, Quilcene, WA

For more information about Quilcene National Fish Hatchery, please visit its USFWS website.

The mission of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) is working with others to conserve, protect, and enhance fish, wildlife, plants, and their habitats for the continuing benefit of the American people. This position will help FWS realize the mission at Quilcene National Fish Hatchery by supporting fish hatchery operations and providing supplemental field science and public outreach support. The fisheries supplementation support at this hatchery includes spawning, egg incubation care, fish rearing, water quality monitoring, fish disease monitoring and other related duties.

There will also be opportunities to provide supplemental assistance for field, lab and hatchery evaluation projects for experience diversification and career exposure. This opportunity is intended for enthusiastic young professionals with a deep interest in advancing their career goals in fisheries conservation.

This individual placement is meant to facilitate professional development and promotes exposure to land management agencies and networking with professionals. This could include gaining experience in different conservation fields and shadowing different work groups.

The member will provide support and assistance under the guidance and direction of FWS staff in the following tasks:

• Fish Rearing:
  Fish feeding, raceway (large tank) cleaning and upkeep, fish transfers, and water quality and fish health monitoring
• Fish Spawning:
  Fish sorting, egg extractions, egg fertilizations, and egg monitoring and transfers.
• Hatchery Evaluation:
  Mass marking and tagging of juveniles, tag retention sampling, adult tag scans, biological sampling of tagged adults.
• Field biological sampling, including minnow traps, electrofishing, seins, gill nets, and screw trapping.
• Fish identification and data collection (length, weight, scale samples, tag scans, etc)
• Abiotic data collection such as substrate sampling and water salinity, turbidity, dissolved oxygen and temperature.
• Data entry and management
• Laboratory processing and data collection, including coded wire tag retrieval from hatchery salmon samples, fish stomach sample identification, and sediment sample analysis.
• Supporting upkeep of sampling instrumentation used for core position functions.
• Public engagement: answering questions from visitors, leading hatchery tours, supporting school visits, supporting school programming, and event preparation and implementation.
• Maintenance duties and forklift use in support of hatchery operations as required

Duties are tentatively carried out between 7:30am and 4:00pm Pacific, 5 days/week. Some weekend work might be necessary if there is a need specifically at the hatchery. Daily work hours may also vary due to supplemental field work assistance. Bi-weekly totals should not exceed 48 hours. A flexible work schedule will be required, which could involve work performed outside of normal work hours including early field work departures (6:00am) and/or late returns (6:00pm) depending on the season and field project.

Time off may be granted, and requests should be directed to ACE and the FWS for approval.

Living Allowance:
The ACE Member is expected to contribute ~40 hours/week and will receive a living allowance of $1000/week to offset the costs of food and incidental expenses, dispersed bi-weekly.

Public Land Corps Hiring Authority:
Members serving under this agreement may be eligible for a federal hiring authority upon completion of their term of service and 640 hours of service. If the duration of a PLC-eligible term is not long enough for Members to accrue 640 hours of service (~16 weeks), the total hours served at the completion of the term may be eligible to be combined with hours accrued from another…