Fish Culturist Jobs

Every aquaculture station or salmon hatchery has at least one fish culturist who takes care of the laboratory work.

Many of those who have worked consecutive summers at hatcheries choose to make a career of it, and move permanently to Alaska. The fish culturist is the first position a permanent career person can have. So what do they do exactly?

Most culturists have a fisheries related degree and are adept at using both computers and lab equipment for analysis. However, their exact on-site duties most often include buying supplies, supervising fish transportation, cleaning fish raceways, feeding incubators, providing tours to hatchery and habitat site visitors, and working at remote site net-pen facilities. Also, fish culturists spend much of their time studying and researching the causes and effects of disease in hatchery and non-hatchery fish populations. Fish culturists are commonly skilled in treatment methodologies such as extraction, fertilization, hatching, incubation, and rearing. Fish culturists sometimes take a supervisor’s role at the aquaculture station.

Starting pay for a fish culturist ranges between $30,000 and $38,000 a year. As with the fisheries biologist, you usually live on site so you spend very little of the money you make. If you are sent to a remote site, plan on spending one to two months there.