Chinook salmon get a leg up
Spawning fish in GTA need help returning to breeding grounds
They have one thing on their minds, but warm water is cooling their ardour.
So net-wielding volunteers in hip waders and nubby rubber gloves are giving the salmon a leg up over the dam in Bowmanville Creek so they can make babies upstream.
“They’re not even trying,” explains fish lift organizer Dave Lawson this week as dozens of dorsals circle the pond at the base of the three-metre concrete dam. “They’re waiting for the water to cool down.”
The chinook have found themselves in a real can of worms. Construction of a fish bypass channel is behind schedule and, thanks to the mild winter, the salmon are a month early returning to their birthplace to procreate before their last gasp.
Even if they had the energy to jump, they probably wouldn’t make it. The existing fish ladder was built for trout and smaller fish, and most of the salmon die trying to get through, Lawson says.
But the rescue doesn’t go swimmingly when 35 pounds of finned fury is fighting back. The plan sounds simple in theory: net a fish from a pool packed like sardines, grab it by the tail, stuff it into a mesh laundry bag, hook it on a zip line to the top of the dam, then release it through a Sonotube into piscatorial paradise. In practice, it’s a whole different kettle of fish.
“This isn’t easy!” pants Bill Selby, standing waist-deep in water churning with slithery torpedoes. Pushing the powerful creatures headfirst into a bag requires up to four wranglers.
“We’re used to getting wet, we’re fisherman,” says Peter Seto. “But they can sense you coming and they’re strong. And we’re trying not to stress them out either.”
After the first two hours, 24 stranded salmon have been saved, leaving 976 to go, according to volunteer estimates in a fishin’ mission that’s likely to take two weeks.
The helping hands are from Valleys 2000, a community group ded- icated to the preservation of Bowmanville’s two river valleys. They’re the ones who are raising money and materials for the $450,000 bypass channel that will consist of four tiered pools when it’s completed in October. The salmon were introduced into the creek by the Ministry of Natural Resources more than 20 years ago. Those that don’t make it upstream — Bowmanville Creek is a major spawning site in Ontario — are left behind to rot, fouling the air and feeding the wildlife. “We would see the vultures circling overhead,” says neighbour John Christian, who’s come to watch the rescue. Lawson, who devised the bag-andpulley system years ago to help trout, says the rescue is a first for chinook and required a permit from the ministry. While they have plenty of spunk to dodge their captors, many are battle-scarred and injured from lamprey eel attacks. But reproductive duty calls. “After five years, they get the urge to come back to the same place they came from,” explains Jack Hampsey, a volunteer with Valleys 2000. “You have one chance at love and then you die.” The whole community has rallied behind the bypass project, which first appeared on the group’s fish wish list 10 years ago, he says. Completion of the channel means the chinook can die happy, come hell or warm water.