Residents and visitors to Gibsons exploring the water front over the past two weeks will have seen thousands of pink salmon returning to Gibsons Harbour and surroundings.
The origin of this mass return was a large release of pink salmon smolts into Gibsons Harbour by the Chapman Creek hatchery two years ago to enhance sport fishing.
Although that has obviously been very successful, the opportunities for spawning in Gibsons harbour are extremely limited, leaving extraordinary large numbers of pink with nowhere to go.
A few salmon made it up Charman Creek which has some possible spawning areas upstream and even up Goosebird Creek which has none, but still attracted some salmon into its fresh water. Gibsons Creek is also attracting hundreds of pink salmon, but the upstream area is separated from the mouth of the creek by the large culvert under Marine Drive, which is a formidable and almost impenetrable obstacle to fish due to its length, the angle at which it is situated and the low water level in this culvert.
Last Friday, having watched this sad spectacle for several days, the Town of Gibsons, and Paul van Poppelen, the local biologist working with Squamish Nation, decided something needed to be done to resolve this sad state of affairs, at least a bit.
A working party was put together consisting of Town Parks staff, Gill van Poppelen, usually manager of the Gibsons Tim Hortons, but who is a qualified fisheries technician, Dan Lewis of Squamish Nation and some others working on site at the Reserve. They were joined later by a bear and her cub who did not help much, but certainly showed the party a thing or two about how to fish.
Using sandbags, a series of temporary pools and baffles was constructed inside the Marine Drive culvert and some fish were caught and released at the entrance of the culvert to see how they coped and whether they would make it to the other side.
Jeremy Hunt from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, who had arrived on site, provided some helpful suggestions and within next to no time the operation swung into action, catching pairs of fish and releasing them into the culvert.
Over the Friday and Saturday afternoon, pairs of fish were being transferred and released into the culvert on their way upstream and finally to spawning.
Higher water later that day allowed other salmon to take advantage and use the series of temporary baffles and pools to make it of their own accord. Although some of the fish were intercepted by a no doubt very grateful bear in the Gibsons Creek ravine waiting at the end of the culvert, others will have made it and it is hoped and expected that some improvements will have been made to Gibsons Creek before their offspring returns, as a natural run this time, in two years time.
- Submitted
