OldBlackDog
Well-Known Member
The Barkley Sound Rountable met today (December 13th) for its official post-season meeting. Barry and Arnie also attended, I will post my notes below, and they can comment with additional info.
It was a very full day. I will organize the info into 1) Concerning things, 2) Interesting things, 3) post season analysis by species, and 4) Any info we have for next year.
Concerning Things:
-Jeff Radford from the Regional Salmon Team(DFO) opened the meeting with a presentation on section 6 of the new fisheries act, and how 2 parts in particular will be affecting Area 23 soon, regulations 6.1 and 6.2. These regulations prescribe how the DFO has to identify SMU's (aggregated CU's for management purposes), identify limit reference points for all the stocks within a SMU, and identify things that are threatening or surpressing that stock and then come up with a rebuilding plan for the whole SMU (even if only one stock is in trouble). An example of a SMU is Barkley Sound Sockeye, which has three CU (Conservation Units) Sprout Lake, Great Central Lake and Henderson Lake. So by the time this new part of the fisheries act is fully implemented, the feds will be required by regulation to protect and rebuild each fish stock all over the entire province. At the moment they have completed no rebuilding plans, and are in the pre-consultation phase. They plan to start with Barkley Sound Sockeye because (they think)it will be fairly easy to plan around because of the robust work we have already done ay the roundtable. One challenge from our point of view in starting with Barkley Sound is that their are no lower reference points for Henderson Sockeye, we historically just try to avoid them, so that is going to involve some work to come upmwoth a run size and escapment target. So far they don't have any answers to our questions "how are you going to engage the harvesters in this process?" and "are you going to tackle logging or farming or fish farming or any of the habitat threats to fish" (spoiler alert - they are not)
- The Province of BC had a biologist there and he gave a presentation on Somass Steelhead, and on how important they are for "societal use" and he wanted us to be aware that they are looking for threats to Steelhead, and warning us that they want to be involved in making sure any "Steelhead problems" can be fixed before they result in serious consequences for the fishery. There were over 1000 adult Steelhead spawners in the Somass summer run, as well as more in the fall and winter runs. We were left with a general feeling of unease, although I cannot say for sure whether they think there is a current problem or not.
Interesting Things:
- The ocean survival rate is forecasted to be higher last year and next year, compared to the regime we have been living in lately This is based off the amount of food they find in the ocean at various spots (plankton and zooplankton. If this is true, then we could see some relief from poor returns for a few years, depending on many other things.
- The province of BC is forecasting a better Steelhead return province wide, based on better ocean conditions, and the fact that Steelhead are usually quite productive when their populations are low, and ocean conditions swing to the positive. Just for reference, we estimate a 5% survival rate from outgoing smolt to returning adult Steelhead in 2021, whereas the highest ocean survival rates were from 1986 when Steelhead were everywhere and they had a 30% ocean survival rate, which is astronomically high.
-Henderson Sockeye came back at 25,000 last year. This is substantially higher than the forecast, and higher than we have had recently, and this will help them be more optimistic with the Henderson forecast next year. The target TAC at 25,000 run size was 5,000 pieces, and we took approx 6,500 between all the users, so still more than they wanted, but a large escapement regardless.
SOCKEYE
2022 final run size ended up at 882,000. Preseason forecast was 400,000. Escapement ended up at 557,000 (366k to Sprout, 191k to Stamp). The harvest rate ended up being 37%, which is very low for a run of nearly 900,000 - largely because the bulk of the fish came through all at once and straight up the river at the end of June, and then the conditions changed and got hot and the rest of the fish became hard to catch.
Sockeye Forecast for 2023 is not officially out yet, although they have done some work on the sibling model, which is used in building the eventually forecast. The sibling model predicts over 700,000 for 2023 (this is not a forecast). Henderson Sockeye don't get a official forecast done, but they are anticipated to be on the level 2 range, (12-15,000) which is better that what we have had to work with in recent years (stage 1 - under 12,000).
CHINOOK
2022 run size was 153,000. There were over 40,000 extra spawners, although 80 percent of them were males, so its hard to say whether or not there where many extra female spawners or not. The hatchery did get their egg take target, although the severe drought this fall has made it very hard to manage the hatchery at all, the wells and creek went dry and they had to rent a huge pump to pump water from the lake to keep the fish alive.
There is no forecast yet for Chinook.
COHO
2022 Coho run was approx 34,000. This is a good return to the Somass for coho, and is largely because the hatchery has gone back up to releasing 200,000 fry. As long as they release that much, then there are lots of hatchery coho for the sporties to play with in the river and they are happy.
They don't normally make a "forecast" for coho, so we shouldn't expect one for next year. I would imagine the run should be much the same, since they are raising the same amount of hatchery, and the ocean conditions should be much the same for the wild.
We covered a lot more territory, but that's the basics, ask any questions right away and we will answer what we know when it is fresh.
-Ryan
1818
7 comments
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It was a very full day. I will organize the info into 1) Concerning things, 2) Interesting things, 3) post season analysis by species, and 4) Any info we have for next year.
Concerning Things:
-Jeff Radford from the Regional Salmon Team(DFO) opened the meeting with a presentation on section 6 of the new fisheries act, and how 2 parts in particular will be affecting Area 23 soon, regulations 6.1 and 6.2. These regulations prescribe how the DFO has to identify SMU's (aggregated CU's for management purposes), identify limit reference points for all the stocks within a SMU, and identify things that are threatening or surpressing that stock and then come up with a rebuilding plan for the whole SMU (even if only one stock is in trouble). An example of a SMU is Barkley Sound Sockeye, which has three CU (Conservation Units) Sprout Lake, Great Central Lake and Henderson Lake. So by the time this new part of the fisheries act is fully implemented, the feds will be required by regulation to protect and rebuild each fish stock all over the entire province. At the moment they have completed no rebuilding plans, and are in the pre-consultation phase. They plan to start with Barkley Sound Sockeye because (they think)it will be fairly easy to plan around because of the robust work we have already done ay the roundtable. One challenge from our point of view in starting with Barkley Sound is that their are no lower reference points for Henderson Sockeye, we historically just try to avoid them, so that is going to involve some work to come upmwoth a run size and escapment target. So far they don't have any answers to our questions "how are you going to engage the harvesters in this process?" and "are you going to tackle logging or farming or fish farming or any of the habitat threats to fish" (spoiler alert - they are not)
- The Province of BC had a biologist there and he gave a presentation on Somass Steelhead, and on how important they are for "societal use" and he wanted us to be aware that they are looking for threats to Steelhead, and warning us that they want to be involved in making sure any "Steelhead problems" can be fixed before they result in serious consequences for the fishery. There were over 1000 adult Steelhead spawners in the Somass summer run, as well as more in the fall and winter runs. We were left with a general feeling of unease, although I cannot say for sure whether they think there is a current problem or not.
Interesting Things:
- The ocean survival rate is forecasted to be higher last year and next year, compared to the regime we have been living in lately This is based off the amount of food they find in the ocean at various spots (plankton and zooplankton. If this is true, then we could see some relief from poor returns for a few years, depending on many other things.
- The province of BC is forecasting a better Steelhead return province wide, based on better ocean conditions, and the fact that Steelhead are usually quite productive when their populations are low, and ocean conditions swing to the positive. Just for reference, we estimate a 5% survival rate from outgoing smolt to returning adult Steelhead in 2021, whereas the highest ocean survival rates were from 1986 when Steelhead were everywhere and they had a 30% ocean survival rate, which is astronomically high.
-Henderson Sockeye came back at 25,000 last year. This is substantially higher than the forecast, and higher than we have had recently, and this will help them be more optimistic with the Henderson forecast next year. The target TAC at 25,000 run size was 5,000 pieces, and we took approx 6,500 between all the users, so still more than they wanted, but a large escapement regardless.
SOCKEYE
2022 final run size ended up at 882,000. Preseason forecast was 400,000. Escapement ended up at 557,000 (366k to Sprout, 191k to Stamp). The harvest rate ended up being 37%, which is very low for a run of nearly 900,000 - largely because the bulk of the fish came through all at once and straight up the river at the end of June, and then the conditions changed and got hot and the rest of the fish became hard to catch.
Sockeye Forecast for 2023 is not officially out yet, although they have done some work on the sibling model, which is used in building the eventually forecast. The sibling model predicts over 700,000 for 2023 (this is not a forecast). Henderson Sockeye don't get a official forecast done, but they are anticipated to be on the level 2 range, (12-15,000) which is better that what we have had to work with in recent years (stage 1 - under 12,000).
CHINOOK
2022 run size was 153,000. There were over 40,000 extra spawners, although 80 percent of them were males, so its hard to say whether or not there where many extra female spawners or not. The hatchery did get their egg take target, although the severe drought this fall has made it very hard to manage the hatchery at all, the wells and creek went dry and they had to rent a huge pump to pump water from the lake to keep the fish alive.
There is no forecast yet for Chinook.
COHO
2022 Coho run was approx 34,000. This is a good return to the Somass for coho, and is largely because the hatchery has gone back up to releasing 200,000 fry. As long as they release that much, then there are lots of hatchery coho for the sporties to play with in the river and they are happy.
They don't normally make a "forecast" for coho, so we shouldn't expect one for next year. I would imagine the run should be much the same, since they are raising the same amount of hatchery, and the ocean conditions should be much the same for the wild.
We covered a lot more territory, but that's the basics, ask any questions right away and we will answer what we know when it is fresh.
-Ryan
1818
7 comments
3 shares
Like
Comment
Share
