Big Bar – The Fraser River Aboriginal Fisheries Secretariat posted an update to the situation on the Fraser River and the effort to assist salmon to migrate and navigate the new rapids created by the recent landslide.
As of Thursday approximately 2300 Sockeye and Chinook salmon have been transported upstream from the slide. View the attached pdf to see the call out out for FN fishing crew support.
http://frafs.ca/…/20190801_Landslide%20FN%20call%20out_0.pdf
Highly skilled experts plan to conduct a controlled blast on-site. This will increase the amount of material available for the scaling personnel, who continue to strategically move boulders on the rivers edge to change the flow of water. The goal is to allow salmon to bypass the obstruction, avoid strong currents and continue their upstream migration.
A Fish Ladder is now on site as part of the ongoing implementation of multiple strategies to facilitate fish migration upstream.The temporary and adjustable fish ladder will be installed at the landslide site when conditions allow. This will allow fish to jump into tiered pools, where they can gradually pass the obstruction, using the pools to rest between jumps.
Salmon are continuing to be radio tagged and monitored while simultaneously undergoing bio sampling for stress testing, which involves measuring their fat content, lactic acid levels, hormone levels and a blood analysis in order to monitor and assess their health.
Sonar will be used to make a closer evaluation beneath the water’s surface of the ongoing placement of boulders to improve fish passage.
As anticipated, the number of salmon counted by the Big Bar acoustic monitoring equipment continues to increase daily due to their natural migration up the Fraser River.
Fish capture operations continue to ramp up with the activation of an additional beach seining site yesterday. Furthermore, a second medium-lift helicopter is operational today. These additional resources will increase the efficiency of capture and transportation of fish upstream of the slide. The capture and transport operations continue to be successful, and remain ongoing.
