Dirty Jobs Recap: Poo Pot Maker
Carcass Surveyor. If you aren't familiar with the lifecycle of the salmon, then you probably don't know that they live for a while, and then they return to where they were born in order to spawn themselves - at which point they die. But in order to successfully spawn, salmon need very specific conditions to be met. Even then, the likelihood that they will do so is not always guaranteed. So teams monitor the waters to check out the conditions of the spawning grounds to see what's happening, and do what they can to keep track of the carcasses. Yes, they actually count the dead salmon. And more.
First off is to see how many dead salmon they can find. Amazingly, these dead fish are all over the place. They are on top of the water and on the shore and just about everywhere. There were hundreds of them. Okay, maybe a hundred.
What is really interesting is that you don't want to count the fish twice, because then your count would be off. So you have to "mark" the carcasses as you count them. So you chop them. Really. You pick up the carcass with a meat hook, and then chop it in half, leaving the pieces in the water so that they can decompose as normal, which provides nutrition for the fish that are yet to be born.
There is also some gathering of biological material (fish guts mostly), so that it can make it back to a lab to see what sort of chemicals and whatnot can be found inside the fish themselves, and the water can be tested to see if the conditions are ripe for the fish. Since in any given year, only a small part of the fish will spawn correctly even if they are met with favorable conditions, it is important for them to monitor. Frankly, I'm wondering how the salmon managed to get along for so long without us. Probably because we weren't around fouling the rivers in the first place.
Poo Pot Maker. Since many jobs lately haven't been all that dirty, I guess that Mike decided to get really dirty, so he heads to a farm where they not only produce a lot of poo (did you know that each cow makes over one hundred pounds per day?), they have actually built a replica of a cow's digestive system so that the liquid part of the poo (which is the smelly part) can be removed, and the dry part can be processed into a sort of clay, which can then be made into pots.
This whole process actually takes weeks, after which they put liquid back into the pots, which are then sold for a few cents, and those pots can be placed into the ground, providing a fertilizing environment that you don't have to re-plant later. It's a pretty cool idea, but it seems like a lot of work for a little money. Environmentally friendly to be sure, but I just don't know if it's worth it.

















