Side Channel Salmon

Enhancement f Newslett‹., din i Vol .1V No.1 1979 FISHER1Eg AND OCEANS - Small PÉCHE Fry At Big Qualicum Small fry at a fish hatchery are not always the finny kind found in the rearing ponds. Kids by the thousands traipse through each year, shephered by teach- ers who have discovered the high interest a field trip can arouse in human ment of a salmonid from egg to spawn- How do the kids react to it all? The "small fry". ing adult. The Big Qualicum Project is, pictures that decorate this article (on as Dick Harvey says, "something more page 2) were drawn after a visit to Big Youngsters fortunate enough to visit than a hatchery", combining controlled Qaulicum by children from elementary Big Qualicum Project on Vancouver Is- flow of the river, naturalized rearing schools in the Nanaimo, Courtenay, and land are likely to be guided by project ponds, spawning channels, and natural Port Alberni areas. Their thank-you manager Dick Harvey himself. Before spawning areas, along with the usual letters to the hatchery are even more they leave they will have received a hatchery facilities. There is a lot to be revealing. (Spelling and grammar are short, graphic course in the develop- seen there. the kids' own.) Continued on page 2 see "DEAR MR. HARVEY" EmbleyFishway The Ladder of Success The salmon milled about the mouth of the spawning run - succumbed, un- of the stream, pushing into the heavy spawned. Out of all that multitude only water where it spilled from between seven thousand fish won through to the rock walls and spread out into the salt spawning beds to seed the gravel for the water of the lagoon. Some, exerting all next generation. their strength, fought their way into the turbulence, propelled by an internal ur- That was the scene at Embley Lagoon gency to get through to the spawning in 1976, as it had been in varying grounds that lay beyond. Many fell degrees for all the years the pink salmon back, battered and exhausted, dying or run there had been observed. In 1954 dead, after being flung back into the sea only seventy-five hundred fish out of an time and again by the unrelenting estimated total run of 37,500 succeeded violence of the river. Their limp gray in ascending the Embley River. There carcasses drifted aimlessly and were have been smaller losses in many other washed against the shore by waves and years. Yet there have been times -- as tide. When the tide dropped there was recently as 1970 and 1972 -- when no relief for the living, the recession of Embley River pink runs numbered the salt water only added height to the 100,000 fish, and all, or nearly all, got dimensions of the barrier at the stream through to the spawning grounds. When mouth. conditions are right the stream is a The struggle went on day after day, major producer, but it has not been a and in the end nearly forty thousand Continued on page 3 The fishway channel was cut through pink salmon - more than eighty per cent see "EMBLEY FISHWAY" bedrock by drilling and blasting. Dear In frl/dy) Continued from page 1 Still, the feeding operation was not Equally frank was Grant, a born statis- "I liked everything and I hope I can everybody's favourite. "We enjoyed feed- tician with an eye for the grotesque. "I come again one day it was all so interest- ing the fishes, but I like the observation had a nice time at the fish hatcheries," he ing," Diane K. wrote, defying punctua- room the most because I got a chance to wrote, "There was a dead fish laying on tion in her enthusiasm. Hers was the look at the fish in the wild habitat and the road his eyes were out and he had common reaction, though where was one beastly world!" A short walk upstream two holes in his body. There were e7 jaded 10-year-old who seemed to feel a got Gail H. even closer to that "wild dead fish." Tracy D. strove to be gracious walking tour of the complex was not habitat and beastly world". A keen in her assessment of the atmosphere sur- essential, "The best thing I liked there observer, she wrote, "Thank you for rounding the spawning grounds. "Maybe was the ride there. We have books about showing us were the spawning grounds things don't smell very nice but every- the fish hatchery." He was an exception. are. I saw some eggs on a rock three were thing is well taken care of," said Tracey. Most of the youngsters were greatly im- fertilize and one wasn't. I had lots of fun pressed, especially by the numbers of fry watching the fish swim up strim. I was Death, birth, growth and regeneration and fingerlings in the rearing channels. planing on meating a bear." are all vibrantly visible at a fish produc- tion complex like the Big Qualicum Pro- "I couldn't beleive that there was If Gail was disappointed not to ject, and the kids miss none of it. Though 800,000 but I know it's true, "April B. "meat a bear", think of the chagrin of each one sees it a little differently, per- conceded. Steven C. was even more Charlene P., who said she found a salmon haps they all begin to get some under- astounded: "I think you sure have a lot egg and was going to put it in some water standing of the unending cycle of life. of fish 800,000 you have the most fish and try to hatch it, "but someone sat on Certainly they gain some appreciation of I've seen in my life", he exploded in a it." And one wonders about Willa's gour- salmon and trout as fascinating living single burst of awe. The youngsters en- met friend -- the one who "...let the eggs creatures."You gave us lots of, informa- joyed feeding the coho fry by hand, but dry and is going to eat them." tion," Sherry J assured Dick Harvey and they had some reservations. Nick, grade his staff. "I leamed how the fish spawn 4, was not happy with the personal con- The egg-take operation engendered a and how the egg forms into a salmon," sequences of hand feeding, "I liked feed- variety of reactions. There was Johnny, said Teddy B. "Make sure the fish are an ing the finger lings but when you smelled who "was surprised when the man got the right," Randy J. admonished. "The Sock- your hands they stunk," Nick advised. He fish up with a net and the other man hit eye were clobered I think." probably preferred the automatic feeders the fish on the head with a club." Nick that intermittently swirl food pellets over thought it as "crule" and Rodney agreed When the Small Fry take over our the surface of the rearing ponds, "going but knew that "they die anyway". And adult world, let's hope they remember so fast I could berly see it", as Eddy D. then there was Oscar, downright enthus- their day at Big Qualicum and strive to reported. When the feeders were on iastic: "I like how they bang the fish and see that none of the salmonid species are "...the fish jumped so fast that it looked get the eggs out", "...like tomato juise", ever "clobered" beyond recovery. like rain drops", Johnny B. observed. as Cheryl put it. ward the ocean, and after some eighteen Embley Fishway months of rapid growth in salt water, the adult pink salmon migrate back to their Continued from page 1 home stream, there to spawn and die. Un- like other Pacific consistent producer, for nature designed salmon, all the fish in a poorly, from a fisheries point of view, run of pink salmon spawners are fish that when she assembled the Embley water- have hatched in the same year: there is no shed. overlap between year-classes. Thus the odd and even year stocks of pinks run- Huaskin Lake, the prime element in ning to the same river are as distinct and the watershed, is a 10-square mile body separate races as if they had originated in of fresh water on the British Columbia widley separated streams. mainland, about 30 miles northeast of the Vancouver Island community of Port EVEN YEARS BEST far Hardy, and 25 miles north of Alert Bay. On the Embley, the even-year run The lake has two outlets. Huaskin Creek surpasses the odd-year stock. In the odd- flows westward in its brief course, to numbered years from 1957 to 1975 the drop into Actaeon Sound in a precipitous pink run averaged only 80 fish, while over fallà always impassable to fish. The sec- the same length of time (1958-1976), ond outlet, the Embley River, flows even-year spawners averaged 33,850. southeasterly for 31/4 miles from Huaskin Lake to saltwater at Embley Lagoon in The obstruction problem at Embley Mackenzie Sound. At certain tide levels Lagoon has been known for a long time. the Embley too is impassable to pink sal- Records of the even-year spawning runs mon because of the drop into the sea. over a period of two-and-a-half decades Embley River outlet and a portion of the show that in six out of thirteen even fishway at Embley Lagoon. The natural VELOCITY DEFEATS FISH years a significant portion (ranging up to river mouth is to the left of the fishway.

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