It was a successful transplant of 400 coho parr into Douglas Creek on Saturday, March 4th 2017.

50 volunteers, young and old gathered to introduce these salmon into their new habitat where they will mature and eventually head out to sea. 

Special thanks to the Pacific Salmon Foundation for continued creek restoration support, Saanich Parks, Saanich Creeks & Waterways and Friends of Mount Douglas Park. 

Photo Credit: Darrell Wick

Photo's above were graciously supplied by Shanna Baker / Hakai Magazine & Ben Eardley

"Join us on Saturday 14 January 2017 for our seasonal salmon carcass transplant. We meet at the Edgemont access to Mount Douglas Park at 10:30 a.m. rain or shine. Special thanks to the Howard English Hatchery volunteers at Goldstream who will bring approximately 100 salmon carcasses - partially thawed! - which we will put into Douglas Creek. This transplant mimics the results of a large return of salmon to Douglas Creek. The carcasses will decompose into the aquatic ecosystem delivering marine derived nutrients to riparian vegetation and invertebrate populations thus setting up the system for productive trophic webs. This activity does not take a long time. If we have a good turnout one and a half hours will do it. 

Additionally, the good folks at the Goldstream hatchery will bring roughly 500 coho parr or chum fry which will be transferred to the creek at the same time. 

- PLEASE CLICK HERE TO VIEW LAST YEARS PHOTOS FROM 2016 -

Wear rain gear, or old clothing, and rubber boots if you have them. We will supply cotton gloves. 

These are both great event for older children, but the creek banks are muddy, slippery and steep and the creek can be dangerous at high flows so all under 16 must be accompanied by parents. " 

Source From: http://mountdouglaspark.ca/

"The Goldstream Volunteer Salmonid Enhancement Association was honoured for their achievements in providing salmonid hatchery support in creeks in Saanich.  These volunteers oversee the egg to hatching, then provide coho and chum fry in different life-cycles to local creeks and to the Salmonids in the Classroom program.  They have worked with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) on transplanting fish carcasses from one watershed to another - the first permitted project in Canada. The hatchery runs 6 days per week year round powered by volunteers." ~ District of Saanich (www.saanich.ca)

* Please click on images to enlarge

Goldstream Hatchery had another successful volunteer appreciation BBQ at Beaver Lake and it couldn't have been made possible without all the wonderful people who helped lend a hand.

We enjoyed delicious salmon donated by Marine Harvest, Oysters from Fanny Bay, burgers and hot dogs from Fairway Markets and even home made baked beans! We would also like to thank the Pacific Salmon Foundation for some draw prizes that were graciously accepted by our volunteers. Here are a few pics from the afternoon's festivities. 

​Thank you to all of our wonderful volunteers for your countless efforts and dedication to local salmon enhancement. We hope everyone had an enjoyable time at this years BBQ. Until next year! 

experiences that, combined with classroom and field studies, serve to develop and maintain a strong environmental ethic.​ 

Local funding partners for “Stream to Sea” include volunteer strategic enhancement facilities, public school districts, the Watership Foundation, and the Pacific Salmon Foundation. Of these, the Goldstream Volunteer Salmonid Enhancement Association (GVSEA) is the most significant contributor, largely due to its commitment to the Classroom Incubation Program.


Classroom Incubation Program – 120 Liters of a Local Stream

Each year, coastal communities witness the return of spawning salmon to local rivers and streams.  Before they die, the spawners deposit and fertilize their eggs, then cover them with a protective layer of stream gravel.  The development of a new generation, from egg to adult, is more of a mystery than the spawning stage, mostly because the process is hidden beneath the gravel and in the deeper, darker pools of the native stream.

The Classroom Incubation Program provides a portal to this early stage of salmonid life. Using a 120 liter aquarium cooled to local stream temperatures, students can incubate up to 200 salmonids in their own classroom or library.  A program coordinator brings eyed eggs to the school in January.  Students witness the hatching process and begin feeding them once they emerge out of the gravel.  

Until they are released as fed fry to a local stream in late April or May, students observe and record development and maintain a healthy habitat for their charges. This includes daily monitoring of water temperature and quality.

During the 2015/16 school year, DFO supported classroom incubation projects in 105 classrooms in the Capital Regional District, including the Southern Gulf Islands. The Howard English Hatchery provided eyed eggs for 98 of these projects – a total of 19,600 eggs.

GVSEA volunteers also conduct school tours in the fall when they are collecting broodstock, and annually raise funds for participating schools to purchase classroom incubation equipment.

For more information on programs or inservice opportunities, please contact Don Lowen, DFO Education Coordinator,
at 250-213-8582, or donlowen27@gmail.com.


Blog Article By: Don Lowen
Photography By: Shawn Kerr (Community Advisor, Fisheries and Oceans Canada) & Don Lowen

"They can swim, they can hide, but fish always leave a trail. Wherever animals roam, they (and we) leave behind a smattering of cells—whether from skin, fur, hair, mucus, or waste. Scientists have learned to detect these genetic calling cards, or “signatures,” to determine whether a species is present in a given ecosystem without ever having to spot an actual animal.

Jeff MacAdams, a Hakai researcher and graduate student at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, is developing a method for using environmental DNA (eDNA) to calculate salmon density in a stream. At his study site, a hatchery along Goldstream River on Vancouver Island, he correlates how many coho salmon in a specific amount of moving water it takes to detect genetic material in a given number of two-liter samples. Out in the field, the equation can be reversed—the researcher can estimate fish abundance based on the number of positive samples.

MacAdams is one of a growing number of scientists employing eDNA in their work—researchers recently used eDNA to determine the density of chinook salmon in the Upper Columbia River of Washington and British Columbia, for example, and others are mapping the same species in the Yukon—though this may be the first time eDNA has been applied to coho, a particularly elusive salmon species.
​
Eventually the technique could replace—or at least complement—traditional fish-counting methods. “The real strength is how sensitive it is,” MacAdams says. With eDNA, fewer researchers can monitor more streams, requiring only fragments of cells to quantify even the most evasive of fish.

Jeff MacAdams’ research is supported by a grant from the Tula Foundation, which also funds Hakai Magazine. The magazine is editorially independent of the institute and foundation."

• by Gord More and Shanna Baker
  
• Published December 9, 2015

Gord More, Shanna Baker, “Counting the Invisible Fish,” Hakai Magazine, December 9, 2015, accessed February 18, 2016, http://bit.ly/1QXnfXz.

• by  Jacob Zinn - Saanich News
• posted Jan 26, 2016 at 4:00 PM
  ​

Peter McCully gets asked a lot about why he throws dead salmon into local rivers.
Since 1992, the biologist from the Howard English Hatchery has worked with the Friends of Mount Douglas Park Society for its annual salmon carcass toss at Douglas Creek, which sees members plant salmon carcasses in the water to encourage spawning.

“It’s like fertilizing the river: the nutrients that are carried in the carcasses of the salmon have been acquired at sea,” said McCully. “They’re called marine-derived nutrients, and they’re what make our streams and rivers so bountiful.”
Dozens of volunteers turned out for the salmon toss, along with Saanich councillors Judy Brownoff and Vicki Sanders, and Saanich South MLA Lana Popham.

Because of the rainfall on the west coast, McCully said the rain tends to wash out the nutrients from local streams, making them nutrient poor and negatively impacting their ability to support production of the bottom of the food chain.
However, with a little help from volunteers, Pacific salmon have a way of overcoming the washout of nutrients and eventually making streams more bountiful.

“The fish will come back and spawn once and then it will die,” he said. “All of that carcass is recycled into the food chain, and when the salmon is out at sea and it’s feeding, it accumulates what we call marine-derived nutrients. Things like nitrogen and carbon and phosphorus, and they’re the building blocks of the food chain in fresh water.
“That’s why we’re putting dead fish into the stream.”

The hatchery provided dozens of carcasses for the event, which gained permission from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans to move the salmon between watersheds. Volunteers also released juvenile coho into the creek, which are expected to stay in the creek until May before heading into the ocean and, with any luck, returning to spawn 18 months later.
“We did this last year, and we actually had coho come back last fall,” said McCully. “Things are happening, things are working.”

While the creek still needs nutrients to build the salmon population, McCully said the combined efforts of the society and the hatchery over the last 24 years have already made a significant impact to Douglas Creek. 
“In the ensuing years, habitat restoration has been conducted, the water quality has improved to the point it supports fish,” he said. “All of this work, it doesn’t happen overnight – it involves a lot of people, a lot of effort, and in this case, a lot of time. It’s a work in progress.

“This is very much evidence of a community initiative that brings people together. It’s really a great showpiece of how volunteer power can make things work.”  >> Click on the above image or this link to go to original Saanich News Article.

​In the process of beginning habitat rehabilitation of Tseycum (Wsikem) Creek, through excavating and dredging sediment, the BC Ministry of Transportation (guided by biologist, Sean Wong) discovered evidence of fish weirs used by the Tseycum people to catch salmon. According to people of Tseycum village, the return of spawning Pacific salmon had not been observed for almost twenty-five years. The salmon had been the basis of a local, active fishery: the return of the salmon had been a foundation for diet, livelihood, education, culture and spirit.

Beyond their oceanic sojourns, Pacific salmon tend to inhabit freshwater environments built by glaciers, powered by precipitation, housed by forests, and nourished by salmon returning to spawn. A salmon stream may be many thousands of years in the making. Habitat rehabilitation of Tseycum Creek began with the excavation and development of spawning pools, the removal of sediment that would suffocate salmon eggs, the replacement of cobble and gravel to hold salmon eggs, and the re-planting of native flora to prevent erosion and help stabilize creek banks. The habitat rehabilitation and stewardship of Tseycum Creek has been a task undertaken by several parties: Tseycum First Nation; BC Ministry of Transportation; Victoria Airport Authority; Goldstream Volunteer Salmonid Enhancement Association (GVSEA). 

For the last two years, coho salmon fry from the Howard English Goldstream Hatchery have been placed into Tseycum Creek for the purpose of re-building a self-sustaining salmon run. Last year, chum salmon eggs (in a cassette incubator) were placed within a pool of Tseycum Creek for the very same purpose. This year, on January 21st, 2016, about 45000 chum eggs (at 360 accumulated thermal units) and 500 coho fry (nearly 1 year old) were placed in Tysecum Creek. It is the hope of this stewardship project that the young salmon will find a new home in Tysecum Creek. The continued rehabilitation of Tseycum Creek and the restoration of a tragic, historic loss depends on the return of these young salmon as spawning adults.

The salmon have returned.

Since the Autumn of last year, members of the Tseycum First Nation have participated in the enhancement of chum and coho salmon from the Goldstream river. During this time, they have practiced fishery management assessment techniques, fish husbandry techniques, and stream habitat surveys. It has been a privilege to share these teachings and experiences with Archie Jones and Robert (Bobby) Louie. It is our hope that they continue, and improve on this sharing with others.

As for the results of the Pacific salmon transplant at Tseycum Creek, the ideal return of chum will be 150 mature spawning adults (from the 45000 eggs) in 3-4 years. If successful, the coho salmon fry will be expected to return to Tseycum Creek in 18-20 months. To learn more about Pacific salmon, and other fish, consider a visit to “http://www.fishbase.org/search.php”. 


Blog Article By: Ben Eardley
Intro Text By: Adam Wilson
Photography By: Alexandra Scott