Unique program helping restore Campbell River's big chinook salmon run
Neil Cameron / Campbell River Courier Islander, January 15, 2014
It was a strange-seeming entourage that waded into a side channel of the Campbell River carrying what appeared to be boxes of treasure Thursday.
In fact it was a treasure and the entourage were technicians from the Quinsam River hatchery. They were carrying 744,627 eyed chinook eggs which they were depositing into in-stream incubator boxes.
It’s not part of the hatchery’s regular chinook program, in which they produce 2.9 million chinook smolts to create a sustainable fishery that has some affects on almost the entire west coast during their migration to their feeding grounds and eventual return to the Campbell
This incubation box project is a “rebuilding enhancement project”, said Hatchery manager Dave Ewart, part of a plan to home these chinooks on the upper watershed of the Campbell River where they historically spawned. That history helped create the Tyee Club of British Columbia annual tournament and made Campbell River known around the world for its big fish.
But due to various causes the number of big chinooks spawning in the Campbell River dropped off.
This project is helping bring them back.
“Up to 30 per cent of the adult chinook return to the upper Campbell River comes from the incubator group,” said Ewart. “And they are all natural age class comprising larger and older fish.”
The fish are what is called ‘otilith marked’, a technique that uses controlled water temperatures to create specific rings on the otilith bone of the salmon. The rings are specific to this group of fish and fish managers use the information somewhat like foresters use the rings on a tree.
But the special program could not be done without the people of Campbell River who have donated over the years to the Campbell River Salmon Foundation.
“We could not have done this project without the funding provided by the Campbell River Salmon Foundation,” said Ewart. “Every fall, they provide $10,000 worth of funding to the hatchery to carry out all of the work to take these “extra” eggs and place them in the Campbell incubators. The project is showing good results now that adults from previous releases are returning.”
And the magic that is the salmon cycle is beginning in earnest in those incubator boxes. Probably sometime this weekend the eggs will hatch into alevins, little fish that have a yolk sack hanging from their abdomen that provides the fish with its nutrients.
They will remain in the boxes, flexing their tiny fins in the clear, cold flow of the Campbell River until sometime about the second week of April, their yolk sacks will almost have vanished. That’s when hatchery technicians will return, open the boxes and the tiny chinook will begin their great journey.
Some young chinook will spend several months in their natal river before heading out to the ocean. These chinooks, however, will not dally long.
“They do not spend more than a couple months in freshwater before heading to sea,” said Ewart. “From sampling we have done and river swims in the spring, we know that these fry head fairly quickly to the lower part of the river. They occupy a near shore type niche in the side channels at Baikie Island, along the Tyee Spit, and protected back-water type habitats. They grow quickly and are basically all gone from the estuary by the first of July.”
