Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[clarki]

A number of urban streams are suffering from the dry conditions and the Little Campbell River is among those. Most years the LC de-waters in a stretch adjacent to 200th Street, but this year the de-watering came sooner than expected.

Today I participated in a wild coho fry salvage operation. The fry were seined from four isolated pools, dip netted into buckets, carried to a DFO truck with a tank in the back, and released about a km downstream where there is uninterrupted flow.

We were just in time as one pool that we seined already had a number of morts.

Several pumpkinseed were seined, but not re-located...if you get my drift. We also seined a large tadpole that we suspect was an invasive American Bullfrog, but weren't certain. A good number of three spine stickleback were incidentally seined and transported too.

In the end, we relocated over 2,000 fry. It was especially rewarding, after all our work, to see the fry finning in their new waters. But it didn't long for the 2,000 to disperse until only a handful remained at the release site.

[Blood_Orange]

Awesome work!

[RalphH]

Nice! Was that organized through the LC watershed society?

[bigsnag]

Catch and release takes on a whole new meaning.

[clarki]

Nice! Was that organized through the LC watershed society?

No, through the organization I volunteer with: A Rocha.

Normally other community partners would have been engaged, but this activity was pulled together very quickly given the urgency of the situation.

[RalphH]

Hadn't heard of them before. Thanks

[clarki]

I’ll be danged, it made the news! And I think those are my hands in the top picture 

https://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/thousands-of-juvenile-salmon-saved-in-langleys-little-campbell-river/wcm/a80a83fc-729b-4196-a91d-0502222e3a46/amp/

[canoeboy]

Right on! Good to see the care and love on our local waters!

[clarki]

However, if care and love had been provided to the river in the first place we wouldn’t need to be rescuing  coho fry in June.

[RalphH]

well I thought I'd put this news story link here as it is related. It's about the de-watering of certain sections of salmon streams in the Yukon River drainage. As referenced in the article,  over recent years the Yukon has began to see serious declines in salmon returns, particularly of chinook salmon, it's the largest run of chinook in Alaska and most of the fish originate in the Yukon.

Salmon are dying in dried-up river beds in northern Yukon

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/chinook-chum-salmon-porcupine-river-yukon-dewatering-1.6878408

[Bavarian Raven]

A number of urban streams are suffering from the dry conditions and the Little Campbell River is among those. Most years the LC de-waters in a stretch adjacent to 200th Street, but this year the de-watering came sooner than expected.

Today I participated in a wild coho fry salvage operation. The fry were seined from four isolated pools, dip netted into buckets, carried to a DFO truck with a tank in the back, and released about a km downstream where there is uninterrupted flow.

We were just in time as one pool that we seined already had a number of morts.

Several pumpkinseed were seined, but not re-located...if you get my drift. We also seined a large tadpole that we suspect was an invasive American Bullfrog, but weren't certain. A good number of three spine stickleback were incidentally seined and transported too.

In the end, we relocated over 2,000 fry. It was especially rewarding, after all our work, to see the fry finning in their new waters. But it didn't long for the 2,000 to disperse until only a handful remained at the release site.

I've done this on the Coquitlam River (sadly) too many times in the past few years while rock hounding and fishing. Usually i find just as many dead, sadly, as the river drops.