SVIAC has just completed the 2020 Sooke Harbour Net Pen with the successful release of the 2nd batch of Chinook smolts from Nitinat Hatchery for a total of 650,000 this year. Glen Varney and his dedicated volunteers did an excellent job again this year with a very low mortality rate..even the fish did good too. lol Had to put some Covid humour in there. This project is the only net pen in the province this year and a portion of these fish are the only ones in the province to have wire coded tags implanted. All of this was once again done without government/taxpayer funds. However the current pandemic has created funding challenges because some of our generous and loyal corporate backers are themselves under extreme financial hardship this year. The local whale watching companies have been without revenues to date and visitor traffic for this summer is questionable at best. This means we have to rely on others to step up and fill this void. So for those of you who can offer financial support and who haven't to date...here is your opportunity to support a very worthy Chinook salmon recovery effort. I believe the project budget has an annual average cost of about $70,000.00. This includes moorage for the pen, food, Nitinat labour in collecting the eggs and caring for the fish, clipping and wire code tags, repairs to the net and pen and transport of the fish to Sooke. This summer will see the first brood of 4 year old Chinook return to the Sooke River from our initial out planting of 250,000. 100,000 of those fish were clipped and tagged. It is vital that we provide as many recovered tags as possible this summer to validate the pens success. Please turn in any hatchery marked Chinook heads this summer recovered from JDF Strait. I know DFO is making that difficult with the regs...but that only makes it even more important to get as many in as we can during the retention months.