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[GoldHammeredCroc]

I have since limited my subscription to the paper just to 1 day a week - gotta save for a wedding.  Anyway, just wondering if anyone has online access to the the sun and if so, could they post the daily story here.  Either that or if you can contact me perhaps, I can borrow your access just to read the continuing adventure of the fish.  I think its meant to be a 3 week adventure describing what they go through to get to the Adams spawning beds.

Cheers

[wagz]

Looks like a very good read!

[GoldHammeredCroc]

Thanks, but do you have online access or can you cut and paste the story here ?

[weizen]

Hope this is what you're looking for:

**************************************************************************************
Sophisticated electronics monitor run: After four years at sea, the Adams River sockeye salmon are heading home to spawn and, ultimately, die. Witness a unique B.C. event as The Sun follows the fish upriver on their epic 18-day migration.
The Vancouver Sun
Tue 26 Sep 2006
Page: B2
Section: WestCoast News
Byline: \Randy Shore
Source: Vancouver Sun
Series: Incredible Journey

DAY 5: Mission

A small aluminum boat roams back and forth across the Fraser River in the shadow of the Mission Bridge, just as it has 24 hours a day for the past three months.

Since 1977, the Mission counting station has been collecting data on the sockeye and pink salmon as they move up the river to spawn.

The boat is festooned with brackets and cable for the hydro-acoustic systems that are positioned just below the surface of the water. On the south bank is a 36-metre weir, with another echo-location device that scans the water in narrow bands from the side, like peering into the murky water through venetian blinds. A second scanner sweeps the waters on the far bank.

Hydroacoustic specialists Andrew Gray and Fiona Martins man a small trailer on the river's edge where the data is collected and crunched for daily reports to the Pacific Salmon Commission (PSC). Computer screens show a cut-away view of the river with dozens of dots; one for each fish counted. A second screen displays an image like a pre-natal sonogram. Schools of fish are visible swimming through the machine's field of view.

The first side-scan sweep beam system was added about eight years ago, Gray says, to help resolve some nagging issues with the moving array. "We didn't know if fish avoided the boat and, if the fish are hugging the banks, the boat can't get in there to measure them."

Even with all this technology, not every fish is being counted; estimating how many salmon pass by requires a mathematical leap of faith. The boat captures about one per cent of the fish moving past, Gray says. The side-mounted systems on the river banks can only "see" 40 to 60 metres into the river. And the fish can be tricky; the second side-mounted array was added when some runs started moving up the north bank of the river. Why, is a mystery.

"The data we get for the first 60 metres is phenomenal," Gray says. After that silt, air bubbles and debris create too much noise. But within that effective range the data stream runs deep. "We are getting direction of movement and speed of travel that are very accurate."

According to Mike Lapointe, PSC chief biologist, nets at Whonnock and Cottonwood pull fish from the water for a closer look.

"That helps us determine which species are in the river and which stocks are migrating at any given time," Lapointe said. The data helps PSC decide when to open fisheries and set catch quotas.

rshore@png.canwest.com

TRIP DIARY

People: Mission (pop. 32,000) once shared the province's berry industry with Abbotsford, just across the Fraser. Mission's berry farms were wiped out in the devastating flood of 1948.

Landforms: Stave Lake and Hayward Lake are reservoirs of hydroelectric dams; the Stave River runs free for three km before it joins the Fraser.

Sockeye life stage

Physiology: From this point the females' egg mass can triple before the end of their journey.

Behaviour: The current picks up and the fish start to expend more energy swimming upstream; many stretches lack eddies and tidal assistance that the fish use to save energy in the lower part of the river.

Risks along the way: In the diagram below, each of the 100 fish represents 25,000 of the 2.5 million sockeye starting the journey. Watch over these 18 days how parasites, predation and fisheries cut into those numbers so only the fittest survive. Red fish represent today's survivors:

ON THE WEB

Each day's report can be seen at:

www.vancouversun.com

Learn more about the Fraser River and its challenges:

www.heartofthefraser.bcit.ca

For more information on Salute to the Sockeye 2006:

www.salmonsociety.com

[GoldHammeredCroc]

Perfect.  Thats exactly what I was looking for.  Any chance you can post this each day until its done? 

[weizen]

I'll do my best to remember, if I foget just drop me a Reminder

[fishfinder]

Here's the story...

Incredible journey
The sockeye look homeward
 
Here's Day 1 split into two parts.


Maurice Bridge
Vancouver Sun

Thursday, September 21, 2006

First in an 18-part series

- - - - - -

Early on a mid-September morning, the Fraser River is quiet.

The water is broad and calm, with a few tugs and barges moving slowly on it. Lumber mills, factories, docks and condos crowd the banks, and the bridges high overhead are packed with crawling traffic.

But the activity along the river is only a fraction of what is happening here. Beneath the surface, the sheer flow of life is staggering.

Since the end of July, the Adams River sockeye have been streaming into the Strait of Georgia through Johnstone and Juan de Fuca straits, dodging nets and lines as they make for the mouth of the Fraser.

Returning from the Gulf of Alaska, they can smell the fresh water far out in the salt, and the same sense will guide them as they move upriver, tracking the trace of their own spawning streams among the tangle of scents in the water.

They will follow it into countless gravelly shallows in mountain rivers and streams, where their lives will end in the cycle of rebirth.

Near the entrance to the river, about 2.5 million Adams sockeye have gathered, spending weeks roaming restlessly as far north as Gibsons and as far south as the U.S. waters below the 49th parallel.

In peak condition, averaging around three kilograms, they have stopped eating. They are waiting for the mysterious call to begin their journey, the warning that their time to spawn is less than three weeks away. When it comes, they will wait for the first rising tide and begin their climb into the river.

By mid-September, most of them are on their way, with no more than 30,000 a day entering the river. Weeks before, they were moving at a rate of better than 100,000.

But their lives will play out for nearly three more weeks. When they are over they will have travelled 500 kilometres and climbed to an elevation of more than 400 metres.

Moving upriver at an average 30 kilometres a day, the Adams sockeye -- just one of at least six late-summer runs from major river systems that will fight their way up the Fraser -- will return to spawn at the southwestern end of Shuswap Lake, about 50 kilometres northwest of Kamloops.

They will swim ceaselessly to fulfil their destiny, with death waiting for them. For many, it will come even sooner: Of the 2.5 million that enter the river, only about one million will arrive at their destination.

They don't have to run the gamut of the commercial nets again; there are no openings for commercial boats on the Fraser. But other hazards await them.

Figures from the Pacific Salmon Commission, the joint Canada-U.S. body that provides regulatory advice and recommendations for managing salmon, indicate first nations fisheries will take at least 330,000 and sport fishermen will account for another 60,000 or so.

Even more lethal is the parasite parvicapsula, which slowly destroys their internal organs, particularly the kidneys. It is endemic in the salmon, and is activated when they reach the warmer, fresh water.

After that, it is a race against time to see whether they can complete their spawning before the parasite renders them unable to do so.

Combined with the stresses of travelling upstream in fast-moving water, the death toll will rise by another million that will give up the fight, sliding helplessly into the backwaters and on to the banks where the vultures, eagles and bears wait.

But the remaining million-plus will push on relentlessly, resting in eddies and behind rocks to gather strength for another dash of 50 or 100 metres before they pause and do it again.

n

"See them jumping?" asks Dan Hartlen, pointing from the wheel of his seven-metre jet boat at the shallow water along a gravel bar downstream from the Agassiz-Rosedale Bridge.

"The sockeye porpoise along and jump one after the other. The chinooks just jump once or twice."

By now, their progress is largely unheeded. The sport-fishing season for sockeye has been closed since the end of the first week of September, and the sport fishermen along the gravel bars are hoping for one of the larger chinook salmon, which will still take an irritated snap at a lure.

In August, Fred recalls, the bars were crowded with folks anxious to put a few in the freezer, their anticipation heightened by the vivid and endless parade of life in the water.

"With the salmon fishing, you're watching them flop and splash all day long while you're fishing," he says. "Sometimes that can be a little frustrating, but at least you know when they're there."

The salmon have him hooked. He grew up in Cultus Lake and found motorcycles more interesting than fishing, but a successful fishing trip with a friend during a visit from a job in the oilpatch marked him permanently.

Four years ago, he walked away from the security of a government job and went full-time as a guide, working with his friend Fred Helmer, one of the main guide-outfitters on the lower Fraser.

[fishfinder]

Day 1 Part 2


He's never been happier. With a massive 8.1-litre Chevy engine and a Hamilton jet, he slips through the shallows at 50 kilometres an hour, drawing a ridiculous 10 centimetres.

"When the water's this clear, if you don't see bottom, you're okay," he says cheerfully, as the depth-meter winds down below 30 centimeters in a choppy reach.

"Just follow the funnel," he recommends, pointing out the convergence of two sets of ripples in the current. "That's where the most water is."

He knows the river and its stories inside out; he can point out the last of the old wooden pilings where paddlewheelers docked on their way upriver to Yale, packed with gold-seekers bound for Barkerville.

He thinks he knows where the gold is now -- in the salmon and the sturgeon.

"They're starting to figure out, compared to commercial and native fishing, how much money is put back into the community with sports fishing, the price per pound.

"Everybody gets a boat, then they need a bigger truck, then they need a bigger boat, and it keeps going."

The Oregon-built jet boat is his second, and he invested $80,000 in it. When he got his first one, less than 10 years ago, it was a novelty on the river; now it's the standard.

A handful of boats just like it are anchored in the current where the guides hunt for the best spot to lock their clients into a sturgeon.

Some of the fishermen are from far away: Brian Wheeler, British by birth, has come from Bahrain, where he captains Gulfstream corporate jets. He saw a TV program on the Discovery Channel and followed the Internet links, landing up in a jet boat with guide Yves Bisson from Helmer's outfit.

The payoff is to wrap his arms around a sturgeon nearly three metres long. After a 45-minute battle that ends in the tagging and release of the fish after the obligatory smiling photos, he's ecstatic.

Others come from closer to home. Dora and Bob Thompson came from Maple Ridge to celebrate Bob's 70th birthday, and she's thrilled to reel in a fish more than a metre long after less than two hours on the river.

"I've already had my present," says Bob, looking on happily. "A six-footer first thing this morning."

Upstream from Chilliwack, a handful of trucks are parked along the gravel that was covered with water only a few months ago. About two dozen fishermen are bar-fishing, hoping to catch some of the big chinooks that are muscling their way up.

One cleans his prize at the edge of the water, while the others concentrate on their slack lines.

The sockeye, with no desire for food and no interest even in snapping briefly at a bright flash the way the chinook still occasionally do, go on their way unmolested.

n

John Murray is deeply skeptical about federal management of the salmon fishery.

He's 59, he's been fishing since 1970, and last year he made $1,000 doing it -- not enough to cover his gas, his insurance or anything else.

"All we got to fish last year was chums, and they're worth 30 cents a pound," he says.

He's the son-in-law of Bruce McEachern, who started Bruce's Country Market in Maple Ridge in 1948 as a hedge against bad fishing seasons. Murray is part of the business as well as the family, and says the only people who can afford to fish salmon in the Fraser any more are people like him who have another source of income.

He admits to having fishing "in his blood," and while he says he doesn't fight and speak out the way he used to, the fires are only banked, not out.

"We're emotionally attached to the resource, and we're not stupid," he says, anger not far below the surface.

"There's no one in fisheries management that really has any experience in fishing. They don't believe our observations on things. If it's not scientific, out of the book, they don't believe it."

He says the runs are better than they used to be, but the commercial boats are shut out.

It's an argument Bert Ionson, regional resource manager for salmon at Fisheries and Oceans Canada, has heard before, and he's not buying it.

He says the paramount concern of the regulators at Fisheries and Oceans Canada is to get as many stocks as possible back up to strong levels.

By that, he means an optimal return of four salmon to the spawning grounds for each one that made it back four years before. In good years, that ratio has hit 10-to-one; in bad years, less than one-to-one.

But Adams River sockeye are only part of the late run; fish from at least six major river systems are fighting their way up the Fraser together. The Adams sockeye are regarded as a strong stock, but the Cultus Lake run has come close to being declared a species at risk in recent years, and efforts to rebuild it have meant clamping down on all catch allotments for the late run.

Commercial, sport and first nations fishermen are largely united in their displeasure with Fisheries and Oceans Canada as they watch large numbers of fish return to the major spawning grounds, sometimes resulting in overspawn, where too many fish compete for too few resources on the gravel.

Overspawn can produce a net reduction of the stock, with each returning breeder accounting for less than one fish on the spawning grounds four years later.

But Ionson is adamant that Fisheries and Oceans Canada must stick to its guns.

"You have to build it to a level where all stocks are operating at that [four-to-one] level," he says.

He maintains that letting the weaker stocks take their chance in a larger catch allotment will result in some runs "winking out" -- ceasing to exist in measurable amounts.

"It's the department's approach that this is not really appropriate. What we're trying to do is get as many systems as possible up to maximum productive levels, and if that means in some years there are going to be escapements that are greater than what's actually required for the stocks, then that's okay."

Day 1: GEORGIA STRAIT

People: The Strait of Georgia is home to popular sport and commercial fisheries, as well as busy shipping lanes and ferry routes that connect Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands with the mainland.

Topography: The fish are holding off at the Fraser plume with the option of staying in the deep salt water or moving forward into fresh water.

SOCKEYE LIFE STAGE

Physiology: Lower enzyme activity in the gills prepares the fish for the transition to fresh water, where the sockeye began life four years ago.

Behaviour: About 2.5 million Adams River sockeye mass in the Strait of Georgia for four to six weeks before entering the mouth of the Fraser River. About one million will reach the Adams.

[fishfinder]

Day 2    Mouth of the Fraser

Friday, September 22, 2006

Out in the salt chuck, along the edges of the silt-laden plume of the Fraser, the sockeye wait.
Starting in August, about two million shimmering fish which hatched out of the gravel of the Adams River in the spring of 2003 congregate near the mouth of the river.
They no longer feed, but flash restlessly through the waters of the southern end of the Strait of Georgia, waiting for the call.
Since the beginning of their migration down the Fraser in early 2003, they have grown from tiny smolts six or seven centimetres long to mature adults averaging about 6.6 kilograms.
Feasting on plankton through the Gulf of Alaska, they have developed the succulent, red flesh prized by first nations since time immemorial, and subsequently by newcomers. Rich in oil and fat, it will sustain the sockeye in the weeks to come as they fight their way back to the spawning grounds.
But they wait, sometimes as long as six weeks, for the unexplained and soundless signal that tells them when to start their journey so that they can be where they must be before they die.
Scientists remain uncertain about how they know when to begin their ascent. It may be the height of the tides, it may be the length of the days. Only the late-run sockeye wait; other runs go straight up the river.
But in 1996, something changed: The late run went straight up, and some stocks suffered a 90-per-cent mortality rate before they reached the spawning grounds. This year, they have waited, and the mortality rate is expected to be between 10 and 20 per cent.
Mike Lepointe, chief scientist of the Pacific Salmon Commission, thinks the wait may be a way of improving their chances against a parasite called parvicapsula, which attacks their internal organs.
"All the fish in the Fraser pick up this parasite," he says. "If they pick it up and come in early, they die before they spawn, as opposed to having a parasite and coming later, so they could survive long enough to spawn.
"They probably have adapted to delay in the strait, where they aren't going to get the parasite."
When their wait is over, the sockeye start on a rising tide which floods the river as far upstream as the Mission Bridge.
Four years ago, some days saw an extraordinary 500,000 salmon pass Mission in a 24-hour period.
This year, they have peaked at a rate of up to 150,000 a day passing the sonic arrays which count them, and the past week saw about 30,000 a day. Some 500 kilometres of fast-flowing water separates them from their destiny.
mbridge@png.canwest.com
- - -
TRIP DIARY
People: The mouth of the Fraser River is rimmed by a working port, an international airport, agricultural land and intensely urban development in Vancouver, Richmond and Delta.
Landforms: The Fraser flows into the Strait of Georgia over a vast, silty flood plain, one that has advanced 25 km seaward over the past 10,000 years. The estuary wetlands are home to about 500,000 birds.
SOCKEYE LIFE STAGE
Physiology: Before the fish move from saltwater into freshwater, they undergo a change in kidney function to expel surplus water from the blood.
Behaviour: Sockeye stop feeding in marine waters before embarking on the run up to their spawning grounds and must rely on stored fatty tissue, muscle and organs for energy.
RISKS ALONG THE WAY: In the diagram below, each of the 100 fish represents 250,000 of the 2.5 million sockeye starting the journey. Watch over these 18 days how parasites, predation and fisheries cut into those numbers so only the fittest survive. Red fish represent today's survivors:
© The Vancouver Sun 2006

[fishfinder]

Days 3 and 4

DAY 3: Confluence of the Pitt River

Upstream from the Port Mann Bridge, industrial operations along the banks of the Fraser River begin to thin out.
The sockeye pass in their daily tens of thousands, unseen from the condo developments which command views of the river, pushing aside the alder and cottonwood trees that grow quickly in the sandy soil.
On the water, log booms and cedar-shake mills appear periodically, and small docks with two or three fishboats tied to them.
Most of the boats are aluminum or fibreglass, and there is scant evidence of the classic Fraser River gill netters which worked the river for decades.
Their replacements, while efficient, lack the charm of the small boats with the low rounded cabins and small wheelhouses.
Occasionally, a hulk from a bygone era can be seen abandoned along the banks, rotting away in the mud.
But on a dock upstream from Haney the redolent aroma of yellow cedar fills the air as a man in blue coveralls patiently removes a cleat from the bulwarks of a big wooden-hulled vessel.
Part of the bulwark has been cut away with a chainsaw, and the brightness of the wood, revealed behind heavy layers of blue marine enamel, is startling.
For Ed Wahl, it's been a while since he's seen this particular bit of wood in this condition, but he knows exactly where it was -- downriver in North Delta.
"I worked on this boat when it was being built in 1972," he said. "I was 25 years old."
The 17.6-metre Silver Totem was built to fish halibut, and Wahl reckons she's [the boat] got plenty of good years ahead in her current role. At 59, he's been building and working on boats for 40 years.
He remembers when the shipyards couldn't turn fishboats out fast enough. His uncle built them in Prince Rupert in the '50s, and he'd put a new one in the water every week.
Wahl had busy times in the '70s and '80s, but now, he says, the work is mostly in repairs.
From what he sees, the salmon fishery is tapering off, although he suspects there are still plenty of sockeye.
"I think there's a lot of politics," he says. "I think there are a lot of fish out there, but you're not allowed to go after them."
But he doesn't miss the old days; he's had his own companies, and he's had people working for him, and he prefers it this way. He takes the jobs he wants.
"It's much easier to work for yourself," he says, using a ratchet wrench to turn a reluctant bolt out of the wood.


Day 4    Fort Langley

The first clue that Bruce's Country Market is no ordinary grocery is the Easthope Museum, a small shrine to the redoubtable engine whose name is synonymous with West Coast fishing.
Four of them -- restored and fully operational -- sit inside the small, glass-fronted shed, and a big three-cylinder job is next to it.
They're the handiwork of Bruce himself -- 86-year-old Bruce McEachern, who decided in 1948 that he needed a hedge against the financial ups and downs of fishing on a *Fraser* River gillnetter.
He went back to fishing six years later, when someone broke a leg and help was needed, but the market has flourished ever since.
At 240th Street on the Lougheed Highway in Maple Ridge, it's just up the bank from the Albion ferry. As the sockeye head upriver, they pass the market on the north and Fort Langley on the south, where Hudson's Bay traders supplied the Sandwich Islands (now Hawaii) with salted salmon in the 1830s and 1840s.
With as many as 2,000 barrels a year going to Hawaii, the trade spawned a return in Hawaiian laborers, known as Kanakas, whose existence is noted in the name of nearby Kanaka Creek.
But just as Fort Langley's prominence faded after the discovery of gold in the upper *Fraser* in 1858, the *Fraser* River fishermen have seen plenty of highs and lows.
With 70 years of it under his belt, McEachern is well aware of the risks.
"It's somewhat of a gamble," he says, "and people like to gamble."
His own strategy to improve the odds has paid off for his family. His son-in-law John Murray, 59, who has been fishing since 1970, is part of the business, which he says allows him to keep fishing the river.
"The runs are better than they used to be, but we're not allowed to fish," he says.
Last year, he didn't catch enough to cover his gas and insurance costs, but fishing is in his blood, and he keeps going back.
McEachern's grandsons are also fishermen, but they have a fallbackposition if the season is poor: "They can go to work in the fish department the next day," he says.
The market processes and retails its own fish, and has its own icehouse and smokehouse filled with delicacies, For McEachern, the sockeye are the best part of it.
"It's a beautiful fish," he says. "It's the right size for a dinner plate and it's nice and red and it's very tasty. My favourite is the sockeye."

People: Fort Langley was established in 1827 by the Hudson’s Bay Company and was a hub for the fur and salmon trade as well as a stopover for prospectors headed to the goldfields of the upper Fraser and Thompson Rivers. Landforms: About 2,700 people live in Fort Langley. The banks of the Fraser are rich with wetlands and hiking trails.
SOCKEYE LIFE STAGE
Appearance: As their bodies change and adapt to the freshwater environment, the sockeye move up and down the river with the tide cycles before beginning their final migration. Physiology: Stored fats supply the fish with most of the energy for this part of the migration; some of that fuel is used to develop mature eggs and sperm.
Risks along the way: In the diagram below, each of the 100 fish represents 250,000 of the 2.5 million sockeye starting the journey. Watch over these 18 days how parasites, predation and fisheries cut into those numbers so only the fittest survive. Red fish represent today’s survivors:

© Vancouver Sun 2006

[hoboryan]

The articles are actually available at Canada.com:

http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/features/journey/index.html

[funfisher]

Wow that sure is a lot of typing.

[weizen]

Day 6:

http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/features/journey/story.html?id=9bfeca7f-443e-477a-a58d-f1624e2fdace&k=52112

[Sam Salmon]

"The runs are better than they used to be, but we're not allowed to fish," he says.

Yeah right!