Once a year during the summer months, a creek dries up in Squamish and, under many such circumstances, scarcely a soul would notice. But the Squamish Streamkeepers pay attention and come to Swift Creek to rescue the Coho salmon fry (baby fish) which would otherwise be cut off from the Cheakamus River and die. This is the fourth summer the local community group has taken on the job and thanks to a collaborative effort, the Coho fry are successfully relocated to nearby streams.
The Squamish Streamkeepers website states that the group's mission is "to maintain and enhance riparian habitat of local streams so that fish, especially salmon (adults, smolts and fry), can navigate streams and successfully spawn."
Monitoring streams all the way from Furry Creek to 28 1/2 mile in the upper Squamish Valley, the group has a total of 31 streams it keeps under its watchful eye.
"We have streams that we need to endow with fish," said co-chair Jack Cooley, "so that's what we do. We just transplant the fish from Swift Creek... to a creek that flows into Brohm Lake, that used to have Coho in it, but no longer does [Upper Bratt Creek]."
Cooley said his group is working to restore previous damage to fish habitat in the Brohm.
"There is another stream that flows into Brohm River called West Brohm, and it used to have really big Coho, but when they built the new highway to Whistler, they put in a culvert that was anti-fish," he said. "The Coho population went to zero. So just last week, we put a few Coho fry in that stream for the first time, so in a few years maybe we'll have some adults back in there."
Cooley explained how the Coho rescue operation at Swift Creek was undertaken by the five volunteers on hand. "We have buckets and in the buckets themselves we put in two bubblers which feed oxygen into the water so that the fish can survive for a length of time," he said.
Using pole seines, the Streamkeepers place bait on the mesh and the fry smell the bait and swim upstream into the seine device. Then they are transferred into the buckets and are eventually released into the aforementioned creeks.
Tenderfoot Hatchery has loaned the group a more effective pole seine than the one they had been using, said Cooley.
"It is a little bigger and it is flexible, so we can put it right on the bottom and just walk the bottom, or we can just simply hold the whole apparatus still and scare the fish into it," he said, adding that the Streamkeepers plan to make their own pole seine to use in future rescues.
The first phase of the Coho fry rescue operation took place on the weekend of July 23 and 24, relocating fry to Upper Bratt Creek. "We managed to get about 1,200 a day, around 3,000 total fry," said Cooley, adding that 500 were introduced into West Brohm Creek.
The Squamish Streamkeepers were actively engaged in fry rescues on the B.C. Day long weekend as well. Another 1,200 Coho fry were transferred from the drying Swift Creek to Upper Bratt Creek for a total of 4,200 fry relocated so far this year, Cooley said.
