Stream Keepers May 2014-05-03

Stream keeping in the rain out in the forest is a real pleasure at this time of year.

 Everywhere life is bursting forth from emergent fry to nesting birds, trees beginning to flush with spring growth. Salmonberry sprouts emerging from the forest floor makes a nice snack when walking along the streams, just realized that’s the perfect snack in the bush for a stream keeper.

We have our smolts counting fence in place with around 20 fish so far moving through all around 115mm to 135mm with a couple of nice trout around 200mm.

Giant Water Bugs find there way into the box on occasion, around 35mm they look formidable with the ability to suck the meat out of a fish leaving only skin and bone. Handle with care and off they go back into the stream.

Some Hog Weed eradication is another project we tackle at this time of year and after several years we seem to be holding it at bay isolated to one spot.

Removal is by hand with extreme care not to get the sap onto your skin, as it is toxic.

Clearing Broom is safer though more daunting as it seems to grow as fast as you cut it. Broom now can be found way up in the bush as well as around suburbia, though a nice looking flower it does out compete native plants.

Down in the estuary life also is bursting forth with Geese nesting, Red Wig Blackbirds, Ducks of all shapes and sizes and even the Beaver is busy at this time repairing there dams and building them higher to contain more water for the upcoming summer months.

With the huge returns of Wild Salmon last year we are expecting that this years fry salvage project will be a big one with more fry emerging from the big spawn last fall than we have seen for over 25 years.

Wild Coho are a species that was so abundant within the Salish Sea that fishing the adults was the easiest salmon fishery around. In front of Lantzville every resident that had the ability to fish would be found morning and night trolling or mooching out in front of Winchelsea Islands.

It did not take too long to limit out your catch and this was true for the whole of the Salish Sea. For some reason, loss of habitat, Hatchery over production, the stocks of Salish Sea wild Coho plummeted from the early 80’s onward.

Pumping thousands of Hatchery [fish factory] Coho into every stream from here to there in a vain attempt to bolster stocks proved to be a catastrophic failure with the continued decline of genetic diversity the stocks of wild Coho declined almost to the point of collapse.

Back in the height of the Coho crisis DFO applied a coast wide closure with the exception of certain fishing lodges who had whined that there businesses would suffer so they got exclusion zones around there lodges.  Habitat loss along with over zealous transplanting of these factory fish almost brought the Wild Coho to extinction.

A few but sad to say not all stream keeper groups around the coast stayed away from the hatchery model of recovery even though this meant they did not get access to the huge funding opportunities that installing a hatchery would entail.

As with every thing in life when money enters the picture it seems all common sense goes out the window.

I have heard many times that if you would only build a hatchery you would have lots of funding and something for the volunteers to do over the winter.

Real stream keepers have no problem finding projects to do if they are truly active and want to really help the environment not only fish but also all flora and fauna.

Many groups fall into the trap of bureaucracy becoming heavy with meetings, planning committees etc, chasing funding leaving no time to walk the streams and see how nature works without money or frivolous endeavours to sate the ego more than help the environment.

When decisions are made without regard to what is actually happening in nature and money becomes the driving force then failure will surely follow.

Most stream projects have no follow up or ongoing monitoring once the checks are cut.

The best projects come from years of watching how the streams function then you come to the conclusion that most of what you may think needs doing does not.

Leaving well enough alone does not come easy as humans we have a tendency to think we know best.

Stream Keepers April 2014-03-30

April is upon us, cherry and plums trees flowering everywhere you look, buds on the trees and fish emerging from the substrate. Soon all the Wild Chum fry will be gone from the streams and the young wild Coho will be occupying the pools. Chums become free swimmers very quick and once this takes place off they go to sea going on their great trek around the north Pacific having the largest range of all the Salmon species. According to records the largest Chum caught was in Edie Pass BC weighing in at 42 pounds and 44 inches long, now that is one big Chum. I have caught many in the 10 to 20 pound range and believe me when you get a Chum on a light rod and reel you have a good fight on to land the fish. If in the river you have no chance if they decide to head down stream at a alarming rate of speed peeling off your line until it breaks or if strong enough line the fish becomes exhausted and then you can muscle them to shore so I can only imagine hooking into a 42 pounder. One of the longest migrations back to the spawning grounds takes place on the Yukon River, Mackenzie River and on the Amur River in Asia a true marathon swimmer by any standard. Last week we placed our smolts’ counting fence and box at Swan Lake to catch any early outgoing Coho. With the box in place we will visit it twice a week until the main out migration begins in earnest then every day to count and empty the box.

 This last week we have had some torrential downpours that have brought high levels of flow to all our streams and being a warm rain it seems to be melting any snow still laying in the upper watersheds contributing to flows.

From February to May is the spawning time for Sea Run Cutthroat Trout often the unseen visitor to our streams. Wandering into and out of the streams all year and sometimes to over winter within the stream. The young can spend up to 3 years in the stream before heading out to sea living for about 10 years if they can survive being over fished and habitat loss due to urban planning placing many of there traditional small streams within storm drains.

Lantzville had a very productive Cutthroat trout stream, Slogar Brook flowing from Negrins farm down through the Kennel property over Leyland Rd and Peterson, Sebastion roads finally flowing down the beach into the Salish Sea. I doubt if many even spawn there any more, though ever the optimist I expect there are some sneak in and spawn. There are some resident trout and hopefully some will return to the sea as sea run. One local who lives at the creek told of his son catching them on a regular basis and a long time resident who used to live on the creek tells of listening to them at night making there way upstream splashing along from pool to pool. Bloods Creek has a good run and so does Knarston sometimes they can be confused with a late run of Coho but chances are they are Cutthroat often seen in February heading up to spawn.

This is a important time to be aware of what you allow to enter the watershed via your septic tank, roadside ditch and now the sewer which you may get the false sense of “Oh its okay we now have a sewer so I can dump anything down the drain or toilet but and this is a big but you must remember that all sewers lead to the Ocean as we still have this idea that dumping sewage into the sea is out of sight out of mind. Our sewer system flows to Hammond Bay Road pumping station and treatment facility where it receives minimal treatment [chlorine injection and sedimentation] before being pumped out to sea. If it was just human waste the ocean can easily break that down but with modern living we tend to use all kinds of chemicals usually not even knowing what they are hidden behind that appealing label or slick TV ad. Even medical waste from medication [birth control pills] has been attributed to gender bending among resident river fish where sewer is dumped into rivers. Live smart and think about the bigger picture because we are the only animals on the planet who have the arrogance and ability to effect often to there detriment all other life as we know it on this planet we call Earth as it takes its ever spinning journey through the universe.

 

Stream Keepers

March has come rather fast this year as February goes out with hopefully a last blast of winter weather. Though I herald the arrival of snow for it’s role in watershed re-charge I would like it to remain up in the hills and mountains and not covering my garden just as I start to get more active pruning, weeding etc.

March as I said last month will bring the  [hopefully] Herring spawning along our shores.

 Just the other day I read a paper by -

Iain McKechnie, Dana Lepofsky and Ken Lertzman,

 “The baseline (data) that is used to assess biomass of herring and the allotment to the commercial fishery only begins in 1951,” said McKechnie. “The data doesn’t go back far enough, and it conveniently limits the goal of recovery as well.” The west coast herring fishery was closed for four years between 1968 and 1971 after a complete collapse of the population. DFO documents note that even after numbers rebounded, “some previously-favored spawning locations were no longer utilized on a regular basis.”

Oral histories from fishermen and First Nations people describe spawning areas and fishing grounds that were productive over generations, with native place names such as Ch’axa’y (Sizzling Water) and Teeshoshum (Waters White With Herring Spawn). Bone samples collected at Teeshoshum are composed of 90 per cent herring over 800 years, but no spawning has been recorded there since 1998.

As you can read we have done these very important fish a disservice through miss management which when you take into account the loss of forest cover and further miss management of our wild Salmon stocks you can see clearly why now is the time to take a serious look at the whole ecosystem we call the west coast and lobby government to take some drastic steps to try to get us back on course to a sustainable environment.

When I say sustainable I do not mean sustainability in the sense the word is bandied about these days in a feel good way while ignoring the inevitable collapse of our collective ecosystems.

To be sustainable is to live within the means of our environment, not keep coming up with new reasons to move the goal posts.

This is no more evident than on the central coast where we all get a good feeling at the creation of the Great Bear Rain Forest touted as the savoir of the Bears and the once mighty forests that shrouded the coast which now as you read this the logging corporations are still going along full bore just over the hill out of sight of any marine traffic preserving what they call the visual corridor.

So while we all catch the Herring fever few realize that this is one if not the most destructive fishery we have on the coast which has such nock on effects that we cannot collectively comprehend the magnitude that this fishery has on all other fish stocks along our coast.

When was the last time you enjoyed a plate of fresh Herring for lunch or dinner?? Never I often hear when I ask this question, a sad statement when at one time Herring did play an important role in the diets of the peoples of the west coast.

Among our first nations folk roe on seaweed was a very important food source, fires all along the foreshore roasting Herring was a regular sight now but a distant memory.

So here is a favorite recipe of mine for Star Gazey Pie if you are lucky to get some Herring.

Vegetables of choice or what you have available chopped into small chunks, sauté in olive oil with onions and garlic, remove from heat and prepare your fresh Herring by removing the internal organs and gills but leaving the head intact, [de scale] place veggies in baking dish with a little extra olive oil and some crushed tomatoes or a little water and tomatoe paste , salt and pepper, then carefully place the whole Herring around the pan with heads towards the middle.

Next comes the tricky part, prepare your favorite pastry recipe for a one crust pie, [ the one on the Crisco box works great, freeze the Crisco and then grate into dough] roll out to fit pan, now you have to lay the crust on top and for the tricky bit gently slice the dough so that the Herring heads stick up out of the top of the crust in a nice circle around the centre of the pan. [Star Gazing]

Bake at 425 for 30 to 40 minutes until crust is nice and brown. You can brush with egg white to get a nice even brown to the crust before you place in hot oven.

Serve with a nice salad of fresh greens with, if you can get some seaweed. The sea weed you see growing along the rocks that looks like a hand waving, [Fucus distichus ssp. Evanescens] common name Rockweed, not too appetizing looking when fresh. Pick from a non polluted spot then blanch in boiling water and it will turn a nice green then add to salad, yum.

When picking seaweed to eat always go to the most remote spot you can find along the foreshore away from any form of pollution.

The Salish Sea has such diversity that due to our collective recklessness we have allowed the depletion of what was once one of the most productive bodies of water in the world.

Pulp Mills, Chemical plants, Oil Refineries, Industrial run off and licensed discharge [so called safe limits, ppm], Storm drains, [road runoff] Sewage discharge, [often unprocessed or at best minimal]

Household chemicals, Etc.

Down the drain and into the sea, out of sight out of mind.

I could go on and on but you get the picture we have collectively allowed all this mostly due to government inaction and always being subservient to industry. [Oil sands, we all know how destructive they have become and the potential for even worse case scenarios if allowed to ship from our coast.]

In the year 2014 there is no sensible argument for any of the aforementioned to be allowed when weighed against the health of not only humans but also all flora & fauna that inhabit this coast. I know its jobs etc but we can have those jobs just not the pollution they create. The root cause is Profit and greed so much so that now greed is considered an attribute to be admired as we all rush to achieve the consumer of the year award.

Stream Keepers May 2014-05-03

Stream keeping in the rain out in the forest is a real pleasure at this time of year.

 Everywhere life is bursting forth from emergent fry to nesting birds, trees beginning to flush with spring growth. Salmonberry sprouts emerging from the forest floor makes a nice snack when walking along the streams, just realized that’s the perfect snack in the bush for a stream keeper.

We have our smolts counting fence in place with around 20 fish so far moving through all around 115mm to 135mm with a couple of nice trout around 200mm.

Giant Water Bugs find there way into the box on occasion, around 35mm they look formidable with the ability to suck the meat out of a fish leaving only skin and bone. Handle with care and off they go back into the stream.

Some Hog Weed eradication is another project we tackle at this time of year and after several years we seem to be holding it at bay isolated to one spot.

Removal is by hand with extreme care not to get the sap onto your skin, as it is toxic.

Clearing Broom is safer though more daunting as it seems to grow as fast as you cut it. Broom now can be found way up in the bush as well as around suburbia, though a nice looking flower it does out compete native plants.

Down in the estuary life also is bursting forth with Geese nesting, Red Wig Blackbirds, Ducks of all shapes and sizes and even the Beaver is busy at this time repairing there dams and building them higher to contain more water for the upcoming summer months.

With the huge returns of Wild Salmon last year we are expecting that this years fry salvage project will be a big one with more fry emerging from the big spawn last fall than we have seen for over 25 years.

Wild Coho are a species that was so abundant within the Salish Sea that fishing the adults was the easiest salmon fishery around. In front of Lantzville every resident that had the ability to fish would be found morning and night trolling or mooching out in front of Winchelsea Islands.

It did not take too long to limit out your catch and this was true for the whole of the Salish Sea. For some reason, loss of habitat, Hatchery over production, the stocks of Salish Sea wild Coho plummeted from the early 80’s onward.

Pumping thousands of Hatchery [fish factory] Coho into every stream from here to there in a vain attempt to bolster stocks proved to be a catastrophic failure with the continued decline of genetic diversity the stocks of wild Coho declined almost to the point of collapse.

Back in the height of the Coho crisis DFO applied a coast wide closure with the exception of certain fishing lodges who had whined that there businesses would suffer so they got exclusion zones around there lodges.  Habitat loss along with over zealous transplanting of these factory fish almost brought the Wild Coho to extinction.

A few but sad to say not all stream keeper groups around the coast stayed away from the hatchery model of recovery even though this meant they did not get access to the huge funding opportunities that installing a hatchery would entail.

As with every thing in life when money enters the picture it seems all common sense goes out the window.

I have heard many times that if you would only build a hatchery you would have lots of funding and something for the volunteers to do over the winter.

Real stream keepers have no problem finding projects to do if they are truly active and want to really help the environment not only fish but also all flora and fauna.

Many groups fall into the trap of bureaucracy becoming heavy with meetings, planning committees etc, chasing funding leaving no time to walk the streams and see how nature works without money or frivolous endeavours to sate the ego more than help the environment.

When decisions are made without regard to what is actually happening in nature and money becomes the driving force then failure will surely follow.

Most stream projects have no follow up or ongoing monitoring once the checks are cut.

The best projects come from years of watching how the streams function then you come to the conclusion that most of what you may think needs doing does not.

Leaving well enough alone does not come easy as humans we have a tendency to think we know best