NEWS

Thursday, August 30, 2007

Fish wheels may improve data for in season management

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Community: Fraser Valley

The Fraser Salmon & Watersheds Program (FSWP) convened a briefing in Mission on August 30 to discuss the purpose and promise of the fish wheels that were installed on the Canadian Pacific Railway Bridge earlier this summer. Stan Morgan of the Matsqui First Nation offered a welcome.

Paul Kariya, Executive Director of Pacific Salmon Foundation, said that the fish wheels are being evaluated as a tool that may provide better information to manage fish, which is one of FSWP’s strategic priorities.  The need to identify and enable such strategic priorities is the reason FSWP was created. FSWP and Pacific Salmon Commission jointly funded LGL Limited to work with the Matsqui First Nation and Canadian Pacific Railway to develop a Lower Fraser River live capture and tagging facility using the fish wheels deployed at the Mission Railway Bridge.

Scientist Brian Riddell, Division Head of Salmon and Freshwater Ecosystems, Fisheries and Oceans Canada explained how multiple kinds of data will improve estimates of fish abundance each year and thereby help in season management. Karl English, who leads the project and is President & Director of LGL, described the initial results and challenges of their efforts to deploy the three fish wheels in the lower Fraser and the promise the technology offers for a new stock assessment system over the next few years. 

More briefing information and PSC information, including the counts of fish caught by the wheel, are available.