Sept 6, 2012 – Some people might look at this and see a sad image, but I think it is a happy one. Why is a dead sockeye buck a happy sight? Because it means he made it back. It means he survived to leave the river as a juvenile, and that he survived the big black box that is the ocean, and he survived the return trip to spawn. After all of that, his carcass will decay and feed the various organisms in and around the river system, and he will help to fertilize the river for the next generation.
The first salmon enhancement in the Upper Pitt was back in 1898 when 1.85 million fry were transported from Morris Creek to the Pitt. In 1915, in an attempt to rebuild sockeye stocks on the Fraser River following the Hell’s Gate slide, the federal Dominion Hatchery program was initiated and a hatchery was opened in 1917 in the now abandoned town of Alvin. During its existence it out-planted green and eyed eggs and released both fed and unfed fry. Additionally, it was involved in numerous transplants of eggs and fry to and from other areas in the province including the Birkenhead, Lillooet, Harrison, Chilliwack, and Shuswap river systems.
By 1960, many upper Fraser River stocks of sockeye had grown rapidly because of enhancement and with increasing “incidental” catches of smaller numbered, non-enhanced stocks such as Pitt, a stabilization program was initiated. This included the construction of a “temporary” facility on Corbold Creek , a tributary of the upper Pitt River. Eggs taken were held to the eyed stage before being planted into upwelling gravel beds. Over the next 23 years many millions of unfed fry were released, producing an estimated 800,000 adults. In late 1985, the Federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans absorbed the facility and continues to operate the project today. In brood year 2003 sockeye production was transferred to a new isolation facility at Inch Creek Hatchery.
In Corbold Creek, during the first two weeks of September, mature sockeye are captured by hand using seine nets and eggs and milt are collected and transported back to Inch Creek for fertilization, incubation and early rearing. When they are big enough, they are transported back tot he watershed and released as fry.
Unlike coho and Chinook salmon fry, which normally rear in streams before migrating to the ocean, sockeye salmon fry usually spend an additional year in a fresh water lake environment feeding on zoo-plankton before they head for the sea. Many die of predation or starvation during this period, therefore hatchery rearing through this early period helps them reach the size needed to better survive the conditions in the wild.
Today’s egg take on the Upper Pitt was awesome. The weather couldn’t have been better, and the fish were plentiful. We caught our full quota in one seine set, and the fact that there were plenty of fish, and that they were in great shape, was heartening. So don’t think of this photo as morbid or sad, consider it as a very happy moment – this was one of the few survivors, one of the small number that survived the years in the ocean to return to pass on his genes to the next generation.
That is something worth celebrating! That is the circle of life.
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