That Sea Lice thing is happening over there now too is it? 1 million dead farmed fish wonder if they still sold them on the cheap or got the government to reimburse.
Aquaculture improving?..The Fish Farm Thread
- Thread starter islandboy
- Start date
Dave H
Well-Known Member
When was the farm last de-loused?
What time of year was this photo taken?
Lots of questions can be asked about one photo used by someone claiming it means something.
Real research is just slightly more comprehensive methinks.
Take care.
Dave H
Well-Known Member
I certainly hope your comment is meant to be facetious.
If it's not, then it's an incredibly ignorant one to make.
Take care.
wildmanyeah
Crew Member
Does that work both ways or just one way? because you never took offence with the other photos
he also provided the science for it
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G
gone fishin
Guest
Yes Dave. a very poor attempt at sarcasm.
It's what I would expect the fish farm owners to say
All in all another example of why Open Net Pet Atlantic Salmon fish farms need to be put on dry land on both coasts!
Salmon Seeker
Crew Member
This reminds me of your photo of the drainage flume...
wildmanyeah
Crew Member
Dave H
Well-Known Member
Given I rarely look in on or reply to this thread the answer is no, I didn't take offence with the other photos, most likely because I didn't see them.
I had a quick look today and saw the photo I commented on.
My comment is accurate, in the context the photo was shown in and with the comment on it.
Take care.
Dave H
Well-Known Member
Sorry.
I think globally but act locally, and every little bit of protection I can offer to small Coho rearing creeks I will offer.
That drainage flume is simply another in a long list of thoughtless things we've done over the years and needed to be commented on and shown as an example of bad planning. In this city, proudly claiming to be Salmon Capital of The World, one would think the city planners would have a map of salmon bearing creeks and streams and that a miniscule amount of effort could be put into not making things like that drainage flume.
I guess I'm just too idealistic in my old age.
Take care.
Bryan Allen
Well-Known Member
Dave--- If you have questions about the streams in your area, there are many good sources of information . To start, email Stacey.Larsen@dfo-mpo.gc.ca. Stacey is the DFO Community Programs Community Advisor and is in contact with all the volunteer salmon enhancement groups for that area.
Dave H
Well-Known Member
Hi Bryan,
Thanks for your reply, but I'm long aware of Stacey and we communicate regularly about small creeks locally.
I am particularly active on Haig-Brown's Kingfisher Creek and have been since 1998, when I served as Secretary-Treasurer of the Haig-Brown Kingfisher Creek Society when the East Branch of that creek was constructed.
Breaks my heart to see the "campers" on the creek in a couple of places these days.
Seems like one spot is the place where a lot of stolen bikes and the like are broken down into parts which are sold somehow somewhere.
Anyway, thanks for being helpful. I appreciate it.
Take care.
wildmanyeah
Crew Member
love the passion Dave, we all want to see salmon succeed.
as Bob Hooton says
everyone wants to go to heaven but no one wants to die.
Bryan Allen
Well-Known Member
So true Dave. Riparian corridors are the first places, after local parks that the camper crowd hit. I wish I had a solution. But how do we separate the unfortunate ones that deserve help and compassion from those that treat our streams as toilets . Talking to Stream Keepers , it's not going away-- its getting worse. But the effort that the HBKCS has made on this little creek has spread through out the province, as you know. Imagine what it would have been like if CR had been allowed to just culvert the whole creek as they first intended. One of these days, I would like to sit down with you over a coffee ( or something more substantial) and tell you about sitting in the library at Above Tide with The Magistrate and a bunch of UBC students including myself,. And us getting into a discussion on why "bait" was unnecessary and harmful to the angling ethics of the day and into the future.
Dave H
Well-Known Member
It's a dark and stormy night so I thought I'd post the story of my relationship with Haig-Brown's Kingfisher Creek. I wrote this 20 years ago so things have changed somewhat.
In 1963, Roderick Haig-Brown lived across the road from Kingfisher Creek. It had not yet had it’s name changed to Haig-Brown’s Kingfisher Creek, but he, pipe in hand, had often observed it, delighting in the life the tiny trickle sustained.
By then, he was undoubtedly aware of its history. The creek had once run through his property, long before he came there. It had meandered downstream, turning to parallel the Campbell River, before finally finding its entrance to the larger flow. In the very year of his birth, 1908, loggers had pushed a railway into the Campbell River valley. During that construction they changed the course of the creek, moving it further from its original path and pointing it towards what is now the intersection of the Island Highway and Willow St.
Despite all this, a few coho found it again. They followed it back to the safety of the wetland, known as Peases’ Swamp, then pushed upstream seeking the tiny gravel patches where they would spawn.
In 1923, the first road was punched up the valley, and again the creek was re-routed. Later developments saw more of the East Branch lost to culverts and fragmentation. The West Branch suffered also, but because most of it flowed through the property across from his home, Roderick mused that it might be brought back. Nobody can know when the idea first struck him, but he became determined to release the creek from its culverts and tunnels. He envisioned the two branches running free from their headwaters to the culvert under Campbell River Rd, then turning in the old channel to cross the property of his neighbor.
There, combined, they could enter the Campbell.
Van Egan, friend and neighbor of Haig-Brown; “I think he shared this idea with Dennis Pease in 1974. I didn’t hear of it until later, when meetings began to be held.”
The first minor setback occurred when the neighbor nixed the idea of having the creek flow through his property. After all, this was the same creek which contributed to the chronic flooding problems suffered by the people and businesses located on the floodplain around that area.
He wanted nothing of it.
Quickly enough, Haig-Brown allowed how it would be fine to have the creek run through his property to the Campbell, thus clearing the first hurdle. Soon the main players had been contacted and initial planning was undertaken. Requiring the co-operation of Federal Fisheries, the Department of Highways, the School District and Provincial and Municipal authorities, the initial plan to relocate the creek seemed a “Go”.
Inexplicably, Federal Fisheries then backed out, and by the end of 1975 the project sat in a file folder. Sadly, Haig-Brown passed away in 1976, his dream unfulfilled.
Fortunately, his idea did not die with him.
In 1979, Bob Hurst, the new local SEP Community Advisor, discovered the plan for Kingfisher Creek. He read the folder on the Haig-Brown proposal, liked it, and contacted a few of the names he gleaned from the file.
Soon, people like John Grant, Bill Husband, Kevin Storrie, Dave Brown, Van and Maxine Egan, Jay Stewart, Tony Sarich and others realized that some form of organized effort might best facilitate Haig-Brown’s plan, and in 1980 the Haig-Brown Kingfisher Creek Society was formed.
Says Van Egan; “After the Society was formed we were able to establish what we wanted to accomplish and how to achieve it. At first, we wanted to purchase the Pease Swamp property, but we couldn’t afford it. There was a lot of letter writing, telephone calls and much support, but eventually the property came into the hands of Barrie Brown, a local land developer. In 1981, we commissioned a
Conceptual Plan for a scaled down project that would divert only the West Branch. In 1984, eight years after Rod died, we were able to do the West Branch diversion through a new channel excavated on the Haig-Brown property. To our great glee and surprise, coho found their way into and up the new channel that first fall”.
By spring of 1985, the progeny from the spawn of the previous fall were swarming in the creek. Nature is not always benevolent however, and the summer of 1985 proved to be long and hot, the first of three such summers in a row. Drought-like conditions prevailed and the creek ceased to flow, its waters diminished by evaporation and lack of replenishment. Soon, only a few pools remained, each the refuge for hundreds of coho fry.
Van Egan: “Maxine made a small net from a pair of stockings and an old frame. She dragged me out to the creek and we netted hundreds of fry from the remaining pools. We took them down to the Campbell and let them go. I’m not sure that was the right thing to do, but we had no choice. I wonder if we didn’t lose part of that run as they may have imprinted on the Campbell instead of the creek”.
The fall of 1985 arrived with its rains, and again coho found the new creek. 1986 seemed a repeat of the year before, as a long hot summer prevailed and the creek nearly dried again. Van and Maxine kept a close eye on it, net close at hand and ready. Somehow, during each following year a few juveniles survived to become smolts and migrated out. And every fall brought a few adults back to spawn.
Over ten years later, in 1997, on a frosty frozen February day, Ken Enns, Rory Glennie, George Vardey and this writer walked the course of the East Branch of the creek from where it entered the Campbell upstream. Ken remarked on how easy it was to follow. At every manhole cover, you could hear it, burbling along underground. At the few places it was above ground, it was frozen and easy to walk on. We followed it to where it first enters the culverts at the end of Willow St. after curving down the ravine from the golf course area, its headwaters.
“Right here is where I see the water being diverted,” Ken said. “It would be good water still. Cutthroat live above here, and coho fry have been found. If this water were diverted into the wetland through a new channel, maybe the system would be better. The new highway bypass will be going right through here so this is the time to act.”
His companions asked a few questions and pondered the idea. George, a biologist by trade, asked about the property adjoining the Haig-Brown area. “Would the landowner be interested in having a creek run through what would someday be a housing development.”
“We’ll have to ask him,” Ken replied.
Fortunately, Barrie Brown liked the idea and without hesitation gave his permission to build a new East Branch channel along the edge of his property.
cont..
Dave H
Well-Known Member
Part Two.
After that, there were a series of meetings leading to the formation of an Ad-Hoc Committee. The committee brought together all of the stakeholders. These included DFO, MOELP, the District of Campbell River, Barrie Brown, of Sequoia Springs West Development, School District 72, the Haig-Brown Kingfisher Creek Society and a few other interested people. From that gathering a consensus was reached. The idea was viable, and efforts were started to get all the necessary permits and financing in place. DFO kicked in $105,000.00, and the Society received a further $69,000.00 from fines levied by the courts against the Provincial Ministry of Transportation and Highways who were found responsible for putting deleterious substances into the upper East Branch during construction of the new highway, and via an out of court settlement with the contractor involved.
The Board was hopeful in the spring of 1998 that all their efforts would someday create a salmon-producing creek, but it all seemed so nebulous, even with $174,000.00 now in hand. When they received the “go ahead” they were slightly shocked, but not unprepared. With additional funding from a variety of sources, the plan was to excavate from where the West Branch meets Campbell River Road, upstream to where the bifurcation structure would divert the waters of the existing East Branch into the new channel, a distance of nearly 1000 meters.
A project manager was hired, along with an excavator and operator, a site supervisor and a couple of laborers from the North Island Fisheries Initiative program. With everything in place, including an office complex donated by Finning Ltd., the project opened.
Campbell River Mayor Jim Lornie attended the opening, as did representatives from most of the co-operating agencies, and with that the excavator started working.
The project moved along, not without some initial problems, but soon good progress was being made. Carefully following the engineers plan that incorporated bio-engineering, landscape design, bottom contours, riffle areas and spawning platforms, was not an easy task, but the perseverance shown by the crew prevailed, and the new channel became more and more a reality.
Part of the planning incorporated the digging of back channels into the existing wetland area to create more rearing habitat for coho juveniles. By monitoring those channels during the previous two winters, we have been able to identify any erosion problems and taken the steps necessary to mitigate them. Again, nature has dealt an interesting hand as beavers have recently taken up residence in the watershed and have dammed off the two large ponds at the foot of 16th Ave on the new East Branch. This has created a much larger wetland that should prove very beneficial to coho and trout. Enough water still flows through to keep the creek flowing below the dams and another channel has found its way to the newly created creek, just a few meters away. During the heavy rains of the past few weeks (Nov. 2001) we have opened the lower dam when salmon were seen below it, allowing access to the lower pond. We also discovered a low spot in the old roadbed where water flows from the upper pond to the lower. By enlarging it we have effectively created a new route into the upper pond around the upper dam. From there, salmon have free access to the upper part of the new creek.
cont...
Dave H
Well-Known Member
Part Three..
The summer of 1998 saw the completion of the first part of the plan. At that time, the District of Campbell River had not announced what their contribution would consist of, and the new channel sat without water. The bifurcation structure was yet to be installed and the large box culvert promised by the District had not been put into place. The belief of the Society was that the District would fulfill their commitment as part of their Storm-water Management Plan and replace the culvert through which the combined waters of the East and West Branches would flow, plus enlarge the creek from the new culvert to the Campbell River.
The District came through and by the end of summer, 1999, everything was in place and the new East Branch flowed free, in the daylight.
The Society contributed funding for the building of the bifurcation structure plus a number of other aspects relative to the project. Those included re-vegetation, trail and bridge restoration, an upper watershed storage plan, project coordination and an educational program. The local branch of the Steelhead Society of BC contributed some $15,000.00 to the project and part of that was used to replace the bridge near the mouth of the creek.
It is now called Bruce’s Bridge, in memory of Bruce Gerhart, and a brass plaque identifies it as such.
As I write this today, November 20, 2001, the creek is fully functional and the latest count of salmon showed well over 100 adults busily spawning away. To our surprise, both Pinks and Chum have discovered the new creek and the bottom section opposite Haig-Brown House is full of Chums right now. Earlier, we counted a small number of Pinks using the same area, so now we have three species of salmon, Cutthroat trout, Stickleback, Sculpins, Crayfish, Beavers, Deer and Bear all inhabiting either the creek or the area around the creek.
To a person, we think Roderick would be pleased.
NOTE: I have a particular interest in this creek as I helped build a large concrete block tunnel that covered one of the last open areas of it in the summer of 1963. I was 18 at that time and never dreamed I would someday be President of a society that would be able to accomplish the dream of Roderick Haig-Brown and daylight the creek bearing his name.
I cannot properly express how that makes me feel.
Special thanks are owed to Kevin Brown, Site Manager of the Haig-Brown Heritage Properties then.
Without the countless hours he contributed to this project it would not have happened.
Note: Below is the tunnel I carried most of those blocks for in 1963 when local business owner Mac MacDougal paid to have it built so coho could still go through to the swampy area where the Chevron Town Pantry now is in Campbellton, then go under Willow St. and in behind the school that was there into the wetland area.
A little background for you all. LOL
Take care.
Great story thanks for sharing.
Bryan Allen
Well-Known Member
Its great that this history has not been lost Dave. My involvement was after Bob Hurst moved to Nanaimo, I got a transfer to the Island from the Lower mainland . Kingfisher Creek was one of the first streams I walked. It is a small salmon enhancement project compared to others, but it illustrated what could be achieved when a few dedicated people enlisted the community to get behind them and achieved remarkable results. Well done ! So many names in your history that I had forgotten.
wildmanyeah
Crew Member
watched a show about freshwater shortage. Cattle ranches in the US are draining aquifers at an alarming rate and could be all a thing of the past in some areas by 2050.
Made me think about the fish farms that have moved to land that are pulling water for aquifers.
won't surprise me if we go full circle on this.
Made me think about the fish farms that have moved to land that are pulling water for aquifers.
won't surprise me if we go full circle on this.
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