A potentially poor year for human-aided spawning of sockeye salmon on the Cedar River has turned bright, with the collection of about 4.5 million sockeye eggs.

Those eggs are now incubating in the salmon hatchery at Landsburg, a roughly 20-minute drive from where the sockeye adults were trapped in a fish weir near Carco Theater.

The weir was removed on Nov. 5, as the sockeye run was nearly at an end. One day earlier in the week, crews with the state Department of Fish and Wildlife collected 21 fish – 12 boys and 9 girls, as the crew refers to them.

There were days in mid-October when about 300 fish were hauled out of the cage on the Cedar, just upriver from the Interstate 405 bridge.

In all, about 2,900 sockeye were trapped; the goal at the beginning of the effort was about 2,200 fish.

The fish weir and the hatchery at Landsburg are a joint project of the state and Seattle Public Utilities as part of Seattle’s environmental mitigation for its dams on the river and the Chester Morse Reservoir, which supplies Seattle’s water.

Expectations were low because this year’s return of sockeye was forecast at just 22,000 adult fish. That’s lower than last year’s roughly 34,000 returning salmon.

This year’s return of sockeye is the lowest on record at the Ballard Locks since 1972, when record-keeping began, according to Gary Sprague, the Landsburg mitigation manager for Seattle Public Utilities.

“It was a very poor year for returning sockeye,” he said.

Despite the poor run – and what makes this a relatively good year – is that the crews with the state and Seattle have collected more eggs than last year’s 2.9 million.

“We did bettter this year than last year, primarily due to modifications to the weir,” Sprague said. Those modifications include a new gate next to the weir that allows for the easy passage upriver of Chinook salmon, which are struggling to maintain a minimal run on the Cedar.

The next key number is how many sockeye fry the hatchery actually produces from its 4.5 million eggs. Typically, between 95 percent to 98 percent of the eggs survive to become fry.

Sockeye typically return to spawn in three or four years, after a stay in Lake Washington to grow, before heading out to the Pacific Ocean.

The fish weir is basically a flat fence that spans the river and directs salmon of all species to a large holding area.

From there, the male and female sockeye are separated and hauled by tank truck to the hatchery at Landsburg upriver, where they are spawned manually, their lifecycle completed.

All returning coho and Chinook salmon are allowed to migrate upriver.

The trapping begins right after Labor Day, in order to catch the earliest parts of the sockeye run. Typically, the weir will remain in place into November.

This is the second year the weir was installed in the river next to Carco Theater. Prior to that, it had been at Cavanaugh Pond upriver since 1992.

Collecting the salmon from the weir is hard work. Everyone wears a life vest.

Gathering the fish involves one person netting fish individually in the large trap, then placing those in large rubber tubes carried to the trap by another worker.

The worker then sloshes through the river, typically carrying two tubes, back to shore. The tubes are handed off to a worker standing on one of two tanker trucks filled with river water. The fish are kept separate by gender. They are kept separate through the whole spawning process.

The idea is to keep tight control over who spawns with whom to maintain as much genetic diversity as possible, said Cory Cuthbertson, the hatchery manager.

The workers obviously enjoy their work. They see it as an important part in maintaining the sockeye runs on the river.

Mary Anne Binkley, a veteran on the river, said she still gets joy from her job.

“It’s a blast,” she said.

Jobs rotate. She has stood in the cage, netting the fish.

“It’s like you are one on one with the fish,” she said.