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Record chum salmon return in West Vancouver

Welcome back, chums. Brothers Creek in West Vancouver’s Cedardale neighbourhood is on track to have its largest number of returning chum salmon in recent memory.
chum

Welcome back, chums.

Brothers Creek in West Vancouver’s Cedardale neighbourhood is on track to have its largest number of returning chum salmon in recent memory.

The West Vancouver Streamkeeper Society and more than 70 student volunteers from West Vancouver secondary have been making daily trips to the creek to conduct surveys. Three weeks into the seven-week study, they had tallied 1,123 fish. The highest return ever was in 2012 with 2,262. That was the generation of salmon that spawned the current stock.

“You would expect the cycle year to be strong, but it looks like it could be even stronger,” said John Barker, Streamkeeper Society president. “It’s a very positive sign.”

In the field, the students are paired with Streamkeeper members to scour the creek and its banks to count fish, dead or alive, and open up the carcasses of females to see if they’ve successfully spawned.

“Some students like (that part) more than the others. I think the smell usually gets me first but after a few tries, it actually gets pretty fun,” said Cindy Zhou, Grade 12 student and statistician for the salmon survey.

There is no agreed upon explanation as to why the stock is so healthy this year but chum returns are high all over the Fraser Basin. In any case, Zhou finds it inspiring.

“You hear in the news all the time about species going down so it’s nice to see that in our streams, we’re actually getting higher numbers and it’s still a thriving population there of a number of different species of salmon,” she said.

Chum aren’t the best eatin’ species of salmon, although they are staples for other wildlife like eagles.

The most important thing bipeds can do to help salmonids is make sure their streams remain healthy habitats, Barker said. “Believe it or not, we find everything from old tires (to) computers, footballs, garden hoses, plastic bags – it’s just embarrassing to think that people could think these creeks are a place to throw your garbage.

“But there’s an element of people that still don’t get it,” he said.

Garden trimmings too are a problem, he added, especially as it’s a way to spread invasive plants where they don’t belong.

It bodes well that so many young people have shown an interest and don’t mind getting a little damp and dirty in the name of salmon, Barker said, noting the students seem to have been bitten by the fish in the same way he was. “From the very first time I realized we had salmon coming into these urban streams, I never have lost interest or excitement over seeing these fish come back every year. It doesn’t capture everybody’s interest but I just think it’s something marvelous that we have in British Columbia,” he said.