Fish stuck between rock, hard place
Seymour River rescuers fail to dislodge giant boulder blocking coho spawning run
The fate of a wild salmon run on the Seymour River hangs on a giant rock the size of a bus.
The rock is barring the way to spawning grounds for 40,000 coho — the biggest wild run of its kind on the North Shore.
A summer of rock-blasting costing $300,000 failed to dislodge the monster, leaving fish rescuers at the Seymour Salmonid Society in a quandary: Do they move it — or leave it in place and hope a passage can be cleared for the fish on either side?
Society president Shaun Hollingsworth said blasting apart that single rock could take a whole year and cost several hundred thousand additional dollars. He’s mindful of the need to press ahead as soon as possible: The natural fouryear spawning cycle has already been stopped for two years by the 50,000-tonne slide.
“The rock could be left where it is. The engineers think they can bolt the rock in place and the salmon could swim around it,” said Hollingsworth. The decision is one of many facing the society, which is in the second year of a five-year program to save the fish-bearing river, which boasts 18 kilometres of waterways upstream.
Six weeks of blasting operations in September reduced giant boulders to the size of microwaves; fish actually swam partway up the river just 24 hours after a partial path upstream was opened. Hatchery manager Brian Smith said it proved the fish are smart.
“If the salmon are given a chance, they’ll find the spawning grounds,” he said.
The price being paid by the coho is heartbreaking and “sad,” said Smith. Countless mature salmon have died by bashing their heads against solid stone at the rock wall. Pictures of the bloodied salmon have provided staff with graphic evidence of the need to reopen the channel quickly.
All decisions are on hold for several months until water flows subside. A total of 800 millimetres of rain were recorded in October and the channel is off-limits for safety reasons, so staff can’t see if the toe of the slide has been smoothed out by Mother Nature: Staff are relying on water pressure reaching 250 metres per second to rearrange the pile in a configuration acceptable to the fish.
The sight of the destruction wrought by the slide is impressive — green water tumbling over a waterfall and a mess of mud and downed trees. The location is in a deep canyon where public access is restricted by Metro Vancouver for safety reasons.
Rocks aren’t the only obstacle facing rescuers; there are layers of rules as well.
Environmental oversights from a variety of government departments exceed anything that the society anticipated. The concerns can all be satisfied, said Hollingsworth, but they require numerous reports from specialists.
A dangerous tree count was mandated and an active birds-nest survey conducted before crews were allowed to descend to blast rocks with low-impact explosives. Although no active nests were found, the specialist was required to monitor activity while 80 trees were taken out.
Access was problematic. Hikers’ trails on the east side presented safety issues, so the remote west side was chosen to set up operations. The west side is even harder to get at than the east, requiring rope climbers to lower themselves 60 metres. The air compressor assisting with drilling operations couldn’t be left in place overnight due to fire risks; it had to be moved off-site at the end of each day. “Nothing about this project is cheap. A year ago, I didn’t have a clue where I’d find the money,” said Hollingsworth.
The society is the lead partner in a big group that includes six levels of government: the feds, the province, North Vancouver District, Metro, the Squamish First Nation and the Tsleil-Waututh Nation.
There are high hopes for 2017. Plans call for a 12-week blasting period, double that of 2016, at a cost of $8,000 per day. Hollingsworth has pegged upcoming costs at $500,000; he’ll keep plugging away until someone tells him it can’t be done.
Private funds are available from the Pacific Salmon Foundation and the Freshwater Fisheries Society of B.C., as well as gifts in kind from local fuel and hardware suppliers. Rock-breaking will start again in the summer.
“We’ll keep cracking rock until we are sure these fish are moving,” said Smith.
For more on the project, go to seymoursalmon.com.