QCI -Iron Dump

Legal jargon by he judge....all to say, gee I want to know what is in those records to fully assess the assertion this is a scientific "placement" of material. Rather doubt the court will eventually accept the placement argument. It's just a fancy legal play, nothing more.

I do hope however there is a positive outcome for fish. Wouldn't be the first time government was dragged kicking and screaming into taking action when they would just prefer to do endless studies that waste scarce financial resources.
 
Some say that last years Coho run was the result of this project.
Also heard that this years Sockeye run should benefit from same experiment.
Hope DFO is tracking changes caused by this project.

Looks like the HSRC website has update content since I was last on their site.
http://haidasalmonrestoration.com/
 
The big question is... did it work?

This is what I want to know too...

Any fry/smolts heading to sea early in 2012 would have been prime beneficiaries I would think...

Pinks returning last fall would fall into that category. I don't have numbers for everywhere, but:
1) Puntledge River opened for Pinks for the first time in my (although still short) fishing career.
2) The trickling Quinsam River got over 1 Million pinks! That's a tiny river filled with a heck of a lot of fish!
3) Fraser Pinks were estimated to have a return of 8 Million. ...30 Million came home.

Coho are a 3-year fish, smolting after a year in fresh water. So last fall we saw coho returning that went to sea as smolts in 2012. We all know how the coho numbers turned out last year...ever the inside was crazy.

I think sockeye spend on average two years at sea...that puts this years' run at sea in 2012. 1.4 Million forecast to return in Alberni this year. Crazy!

Was the dump a factor in these good returns? Who knows... I would like to see more tests. What are the repercussions to dumping this stuff in the sea? Marine Scientists should be a dime a dozen right now thx to Harper. Lets hire one to find out. :)
 
Lol. That's exactly what I was driving at in my post. Funny how govt types are so quick to crush someone who simply wants to stop studying stuff to death, instead taking action to make a difference. Amazing what can happen if we suspend disbelief!
 
Legal lingo stuff.


The big question is... did it work?

Based on other attempts of adding things to the ecosystem to boost one part of it, I would suggest it will be at least another decade or more before one can start to say yes or no. Despite any short term positive results in size and survival numbers of fish that may be attributed to this over the next few years, it will take many more years to truly know all the ramifications .My hope is that they do not see early signs of success as a license to ramp up before knowing what else is happening throughout the ecosystem as a result of their efforts.

Here is a small example of what I refer to. Different in many ways I know ,but I feel it holds enough similarities to be relevant.

http://www.greatcanadianlakes.com/british_columbia/kootenay/eco_page2.htm

i Coppied and pasted the Key paragraph from the above story. What they do not address very well is how many lakes including many from Europe even, that followed this on the same assumptions coming from the early appearance of success.Most if not all suffered the same fate. To my knowlage,Many have since been running lake fertilizing programs in an effort to bolster production of Zoo-Plankton and the likes.I would be curious to learn what the long term results of this effort hase been.

Here is the excerpt none the less:

"Mysid Shrimp Introduction – In 1949, in a well-intentioned but apparently misguided attempt to bolster the flagging Kootenay Lake Gerrard rainbow trout fishery, biologists stocked the Lake with crustaceans known as “mysid shrimp.” The shrimp had been identified as the major food source of large rainbow trout in Alberta’s Waterton Lakes. It was reasoned that the transplanted food source could provide a boost to the Kootenay Lake Gerrards.

About 10 years after the mysid shrimp introduction, during the late 1950’s, sports fishers noticed a sudden surge of trophy-sized kokanee in the West Arm of Kootenay Lake. The salmon were big and plentiful, and for several years, recreational kokanee anglers flocked to lakeside communities such as Balfour, just east of Nelson. Eventually, however, kokanee populations began to decline throughout the Lake, and by 1990, the fish had all but disappeared from the South Arm.

A similar pattern of kokanee surge and decline following mysid introductions in other lakes has led some biologists to speculate that young kokanee – just-hatched alevin and slightly larger fry – are actually competing with the crustaceans for plankton as their essential food source. (The major food source for both young kokanee and mysid shrimp is the zoo-plankton species Daphnia, commonly known as the water flea.) Furthermore, it is a competition in which the crustaceans have the advantage: unlike the kokanee, they feed both day and night, they reproduce more quickly, have few predators, and inhabit different zones of the lake.

Scientists suggest that the cycle which led to the decline of the Kootenay Lake kokanee population may have followed this pattern:

• At first, kokanee size and numbers surged because the large, mature kokanee ate the newly-available mysid shrimp.
• As subsequent generations of kokanee were produced, they had to compete at an early stage for the most critical part of their diet.
• As young kokanee lost ground against the mysid shrimp, and starved or failed to thrive, mature kokanee either reached their lifespan or were fished out.
• Gradually, overall numbers began to decline."
 
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I have to agree with Jencourt on this one. I don't think the question is "did it work?" I think the questions are much more complex than that. Here's a few:
1) Is there a sound theoretical basis to expect such an approach to work? By this I mean does the scientific community believe this is a valid approach?
2) If so, are there other consequences that can be predicted (good or bad)?
3) What is the best way to validate such an approach? E.g. what kinds of experiments (PLURAL) must be done and what kinds of data must be collected to determine if such an approach is having the desired effect w/o any unanticipated effects? My feeling is that this is the key question and one that should be answered PRIOR to doing such a large scale environmental engineering experiment. Also, once one defines the full set of experiments and data that must be collected to fully understand if the idea is doing what it should, you need to sure you have sufficient funding to follow through on the minimal set of experiments and data collection.

It's my sense that the "experiment" that was done was so poorly designed and the data collected so minimal that we cannot determine if the experiment "worked".
 
Got to factor in much improved ocean conditions (La Nina) the past couple of years too methinks.

If poor ocean survival during warm water periods is a valid claim then one would hope to see better ocean survival rates during cooler ocean regimes..................logically of course and not too scientific I know.

Interesting stuff though.


Take care.
 
Agreed that we should not do "willy-nilly" experiments but I must confess that I think mother nature did one for us when that volcano did the same thing but on a larger scale.
http://haidasalmonrestoration.com/index.php/science/ocean-micro-nutrient-replenishment

We have some serious issues with the direction Canada is heading with it's policy on GHG production. I can't help but think that this solution is perhaps a way forward without having Tarper catch on that it's not just the salmon we are trying to help. I can't do much here except cut back my own use, plant trees and restore kelp beds. All this only covers a tiny amount that is negated by likes of the denial crew that run the show. Until they are forced to get their collective heads out of the sand we are only left with finding ways to mitigate the problems they are causing. Not looking forward to paying higher taxes and insurance rates so the tar sands can add value to their shareholders.

Anybody have any better ideas?
 
It's my sense that the "experiment" that was done was so poorly designed and the data collected so minimal that we cannot determine if the experiment "worked".
Maybe - if you were actually interested in making a difference in the world rather than selling greenhouse gas credits on the open stock market - the science would be the focus. Like how the USA put NASA together. Maybe that kinda says it all right there.

Anybody have any better ideas?
Fortunately - YA!

1st of all - you wouldn't dump it past the 200km boundary in the hopes that you wouldn't get charged by EC. You would carefully design where to get the biggest bang for you buck. As I wrote at: http://www.sportfishingbc.com/forum/showthread.php?21337-Iron-sulfate-dumped-off-B-C-coast/page4

GLG posted a good link at http://www.csa.com/discoveryguides/oceangard/overview.php about a Southern Ocean experiment where they used a hexafluoride tracer to prove that it was their iron that made a difference. Has/is this group doing the same? Should they? Should they use a less toxic tracer? How do you tell it was your iron that made a difference?

Apparently in the Southern experiment they noticed a 10% drawdown of carbon dioxide and a significant increase in diatoms which use silica to make their shells called tests. Did this group test for CO2 and silica before and after at surface and at depth where diatoms sink to? Did they look at oxide, methane, or dimethylsulfide levels at depth where diatoms would decompose before and after? What are the implications of an increase in diatoms – who benefits, who looses?

For the Southern Ocean experiment they sowed an area of the ocean that had abundant plant nutrients but lacking plankton - formally termed high-nitrate low-chlorophyll (HNLC) areas. Biggest bang for the buck there. A little iron for the photosynthesis reaction, and BINGO a bloom since the other nutrients are there.

Did these guys look at that? Do we have areas that could give a big bang for little tweaking?
 
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"The first rule in intelligent tinkering is to save all the parts." Aldo Leopold
 
It should be pointed out that we have been adding nutrients to our rivers for years.
I myself will be adding 200K chum eggs into our Coho river again this year.
Some will even make it past those hungry coho fry and make it out to the ocean.
They will return in 4 years to spawn and die in the river and add nutrients one more time.

Again I agree we need to do it right but we need to look at this as a possible extension to what we already do.
Make darn sure we track this to see if this helps.
Do it right and do it now.
 
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It should be pointed out that we have been adding nutrients to our rivers for years.
I myself will be adding 200K chum eggs into our Coho river again this year.
Some will even make it past those hungry coho fry and make it out to the ocean.
They will return in 4 years to spawn and die in the river and add nutrients one more time.

Again I agree we need to do it right but we need to look at this as a possible extension to what we already do.
Make darn sure we track this to see if this helps.
Do it right and do it now.

which river r u adding these chum eggs?....
 
which river r u adding these chum eggs?....

The one I help out at is next to the Powell River Ferry here on VI.
I can tell you that this is being done at a lot of small community run hatcheries.
Another method is to use spawned fish from DFO hatcheries and put them in rivers.
There are way's to "pin" them down so there are less problems then simple dump from the truck.
Mother nature use to do all this work for us when the runs were strong.
Now.... not so much...
 
The one I help out at is next to the Powell River Ferry here on VI.
I can tell you that this is being done at a lot of small community run hatcheries.
Another method is to use spawned fish from DFO hatcheries and put them in rivers.
There are way's to "pin" them down so there are less problems then simple dump from the truck.
Mother nature use to do all this work for us when the runs were strong.
Now.... not so much...

hey not sure how to say this.....putting chum eggs in a coho river(or any river) is not good....chum spawn the latest of all salmon, and wipe out the nests of all the other salmon....here on the island, rivers r short, springs and coho have nowhere to go...since we have intoduced chum to the cowichan, goldstream, sooke rivers, they have taken over and r the dominant fish return. adding chum to a river, could have catastophic results...
 
In our river the chum come first then the Coho.
The chum spawn in the lower reaches and the Coho in the upper reaches.
I do see your point that it's not for ever river.
Might be worth rethinking and capture, bonk and plant.
Thanks for the info.
 
In our river the chum come first then the Coho.
The chum spawn in the lower reaches and the Coho in the upper reaches.
I do see your point that it's not for ever river.
Might be worth rethinking and capture, bonk and plant.
Thanks for the info.

Hi GLG, have you seen what the beavers have been up to beside the bridge where the trap was?
 
No but after this rain it will be gone....
Not to worried but will check it out in the next couple of days.
thanks for the info
 
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