Who's at the Smolt Trap?
Three employees from the City of Parksville Engineering Department joined us yesterday at our salmon smolt trap on Shelly Creek.
From left to right are Marie Whibley (GIS Mapper), Shawn Boven (Director of Engineering and Technology Systems), and Kate Pocock (Emergency Program Coordinator). They helped count and measure the Coho Salmon smolts captured in our trap during their migration out of Shelly Creek to the Englishman River on their way to the ocean.
The trap includes a fence and pipe (seen in the above photo) and a metal box (left-hand photo). The fence directs the fish swimming down the creek through a pipe into the smolt box.
Before we installed the smolt trap on March 28, MVIHES Board Member Terry Baum made a lot of much-needed repairs and improvements to the smolt fence with funding from a grant from the Pacific Salmon Foundation. Thank you, Terry!
Thomas Negrin and Ally Badger of the BC Conservation Foundation (BCCF) worked alongside our volunteers to install the trap which we much appreciate.
Each morning at 9 am, volunteers open the smolt box to identify and count the fish. We measure the length of 10 out of every hundred salmon smolts. The photo to the right shows MVIHES Vice President Maggie Estok and Shawn measuring the length of smolts using little water troughs with built in rulers. Once counted and measured, the fish are placed in a pail with an aerator. Rainbow and Cutthroat Trout are also captured and measured, some exceeding 30 cm in length! This important data is entered into a spreadsheet and sent to Department of Fisheries and Oceans AND the BC Ministry of Water, Land, and Resource Stewardship by our awesome Team Leader, Shelley Goertzen.
In the above photos Kate scoops out some fish with a small net and counts them as she places them into a pail, and Marie shows off one of the fish she measured. The smolts and trout in the pail are then placed into a “holding box” for Ally at BCCF to PIT Tag before she releases them into the creek. You can read all about the fascinating PIT Tagging program here.
Yesterday we counted 110 smolts and today we counted 275 plus 2 Rainbow Trout. That makes 2969 Coho Salmon, 75 Rainbow Trout, and 9 Cutthroat Trout counted since March 28 and there are still a few weeks to go before the migration ends. It's not too late to participate in this year's smolt count. You can sign up here.
Learn more about Shelly Creek and its importance to salmon and trout at this link. Shelly Creek - MVIHES (Mid-Vancouver Island Habitat Enhancement Society)
Many thanks to Shawn, Kate and Marie from the City for their participation, and to our volunteers: Shelley Goertzen, Terry Baum, Denis Cote, Dick Dobler, Maggie Estok, Gene Gapsis, Jeff Allen, Carmel Lowe, Bob Williams, Pete Law, Craig Wightman, Tyler Dobler, and Jessica Stockholder.
Look who showed up on Martindale Pond (part of Shelly Creek) across the road from our trap. It's Martin the turtle (on the right) and friend. Would his friend's name happen to be Dale, you know, Martindale? They're basking on the log installed by BCCF for just that purpose following our restoration of the pond. You can read about that here. Restoring Martindale Pond Fish Habitat - MVIHES (Mid-Vancouver Island Habitat Enhancement Society)
