The abandoned Jerry Myers Fish Hatchery in Skagway, Alaska was a vocational project offering local high school students a chance to work with even smaller fry.

Eureka, Ikura!

A photo dating from 1971 at the Alaska Dept. of Fish and Game’s digital archives depicts only a single main building named the “Skagway Salmon Hatchery”. Under one name or another, it would appear the endeavor enjoyed an extensive period of successful growth… much like a young salmon, one might say.

Down the Hatchery

The hatchery had always been operated by the City of Skagway school board – run rather well, as in 1989 it was named the Alaska Vocational Education Program of the Year. On the heels of this triumph, the complex was renamed the Jerry Myers Fish Hatchery. The bronze plaque above is dated June of 1990, though it doesn’t appear to have aged all that well. Alaskan weather will do that.

Skagway the Hard Way

Skagway is situated about 100 miles northwest of Juneau in the Alaskan Panhandle. The smallish city (officially a “Municipality and Borough”) was founded in 1897, achieving widespread fame and notoriety as the jumping-off point for prospectors lured north during the Klondike Gold Rush.

Run, Salmon, Run

Those golden glory days have long gone – Skagway only has about 1,000 permanent residents today. That said, the population roughly doubles in the summer when cruise ships dock at the Port of Skagway. Almost a million tourists visit Skagway annually – not exactly a gold rush but respectable (and profitable) nonetheless. Fees and taxes collected from these temporary visitors help fund projects benefiting locals, one of which being this abandoned fish hatchery.

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Caviar Wishes An Abandoned Alaska Salmon Hatchery

A new first-of-its-kind underwater art museum in the Maldives features exhibits and sculptures at various levels, from the seabed through the intertidal waterline and up to the skyline, designed to be exposed and submerged to different degrees.

More than just an aesthetic endeavor, however, the project by environmental artist Jason Decaires Taylor is engineered to support the regrowth of endangered coral populations and other local marine wildlife. It’s the island’s first regeneration project, addressing a real need while also raising regional awareness.

The outer shell is a permeable, stainless steel structure, with some above-water sculptures placed on top. Below, divers can visit works made of marine-grade cement that will, over time, become covered as sealife attaches to it.

Visitors will be able to follow a path from the shore along which they can explore local sea life in the shallows before reaching the museum, a symbolic journey from land to low water and into the deep beyond.

The intentionally porous frame of the main museum building allows in even large fish, while also providing a tidal break to help shelter any creatures who choose to take up residence (or simply find temporary refuge) within.

Marine steel mirrors and mimics surrounding sea blues, and will ultimately also reflect the greens of the natural algae bound to accumulate as this seed structure naturally changes and grows in response to its environment.

Powered by solar-paneled roofs overhead, these barge farms feature hydroponic space for produce above and support fish farming below, using extant technologies to offshore vast quantities of food to be grown on the water.

Based in Barcelona, Forward Thinking Architecture is pushing its Smart Floating Farms concept to interested cities and investors, boasting the modularity of this system that can start with a single barge or morph into a fleet of connected vessels. Each barge is designed to yield over 8 tons of fruits and vegetables and nearly 2 tons of fish per year.

The barges would be 656 by 1,150 feet and contain its own desalination plant, able to turn saltwater to fresh for farming purposes. Solar, wind and wave power render each platform self-sufficient in terms of energy as well as relatively independent, needing little human interaction or intervention to function.

While there is no set date for launching the first of these floating farms, the feasibility of the system is promising. It does not presuppose any technology that does not already exist, and represents a natural expansion of development beyond land to adjacent open spaces on the water.

From the architects: “The world population is predicted to grow from 6.9 billion in 2010 to 8.3 billion in 2030 and to 9.1 billion in 2050. By 2030, food demand is predicted to increase by 50% (70% by 2050). The main challenge facing the agricultural sector is not so much growing 70% more food in 40 years, but making 70% more food available on the plate.”

Ambitious plans construct Sky City in China, designed to be the highest skyscraper in the world and built in just 90 days, stalled at the outset over 2 years ago, leading to an unusual array of impromptu and informal adaptive reuses within and around the void dug for the tower, including an extensive fish farming operation.

In the absence of other uses, the local community has found new functions for the apparently abandoned 280,000-square-foot foundation, while the ceremonial groundbreaking marker (below) increasingly resembles the tombstone for a deceased architectural dream (rather than the herald of a record-breaking construction project). According to local source Xiaoxiang Chen Bao, one entrepreneurial farmer has invested a significant sum into his fish farm, set in the expansive rainwater-filled void (effectively an artificial lake) formed by deeply excavated sections of foundation, while others are using areas of land on all sides to grow crops or dry grain.

The tower was to stand 2,750 feet high in Changsha and its smaller sibling (Mini Sky City) has already been successfully built to 57 stories in just 19 days using innovations in prefabrication to rapidly speed up the process (time-lapse sequence shown below). Manufacturing many sections off-site, the development company was able to save significantly on costs but also to assemble the structure and facade in record time.

Permitting issues and safety concerns have held back the larger structure, however, and resulted in a number of locals turning the land toward other productive purposes. It is unclear at this time whether any of the issues are tied to the initial and smaller project.

Billionaire Zhang Yue, the man behind both projects, claims that their plans will eventually go forward, but there is no official word from the local or national Chinese government to confirm his assertions as yet, nor any construction activity on or around the site to support such claims His company, Broad Sustainable Building, aims to revolutionize safe and speedy skyscraper construction, using both buildings as examples of their capabilities … or perhaps just the one should the latter be permanently abandoned.

The advent of refrigerated ships radically changed the fish and seafood processing industry, leaving dozens of isolated and uneconomical canneries behind.

The former Canadian Fishing Company salmon cannery at Butedale on Princess Royal Island, British Columbia, is typical of the genre. Located in the midst of the region’s rich salmon fishing grounds for convenience and expediency, the mossy-roofed cannery and the associated 400-population town of Butedale prospered from about 1911 through the mid-1950s.

When the cannery closed, there was no reason to stay in Butedale – it’s become a steadily deteriorating ghost town. Kudos to Panoramio users Denis Dwyer and Jack Borno for capturing these enduring images of the abandoned CFC cannery for posterity.

Bayside The Point

Flickr user Jonathan Khoo (jonjk) brings us the remarkable Bayside Canning Company building in Alviso, California, which last canned fish back in 1931. The firm mainly employed Chinese immigrants; a tribute to whom can be seen in some of the delightful murals added to the factory’s outer walls at a much later date.

Uzbekis-Can

A fish cannery without fish is like a sea without water, which pretty much describes both the above abandoned fish cannery in Muynak, Uzbekistan, and the once-wet Aral Sea which once supplied the cannery with fish. Over 80 miles (130 km) of toxic desert sand now separate Muynak’s abandoned fish canneries from the still-receding seashore, and few if any fish now live in the concentrated toxic soup which comprises the much-diminished Aral Sea.

Oregon Fail

What’s better than building a cannery on the waterfront? Building one on the water, of course! Brilliant concept aside, it takes more than location, location and location to keep a cannery’s books in the black and this abandoned cannery on the Columbia River near Astoria, Oregon is a case in point. Credit Flickr user Eli & Anne-Marie with the above ethereal scene captured on September 10th, 2011.

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Smell Ya Later 12 Abandoned Fish Seafood Canneries