Vancouver Island, Campbell River, BC - Volunteering with the Gillard Pass Fisheries Association

This blog post follows my Pacific Northwest Odyssey and previous blogs on time spent in Olympic National Park at www.ofthewoods61.blogspot.com

The Gillard Pass Fisheries Association works with the Campbell River Salmon Foundation and the Kwiakah First Nation to conduct salmon enhancement projects including tagging, biological data collection, broodstock seining, hatchery rearing and smolt releases that have contributed significantly to Chinook returns in the Phillips River.   Volunteer opportunities on the river occur from mid-August through late October each year.

Wed - Phillips Arm

We got up early and had a hasty breakfast and packed up our waders, boots, extra layers and clothes and rain gear and left for the Campbell River harbor.  Kelly had arranged for Sheridan, Ken, and me to join him volunteering with the Gillard Pass Fisheries Association in the Phillips Arm.  We would be seining, tagging, and collecting biological data from Chinook salmon to assess return success.  As a former fisheries biologist, I was psyched to be getting back to my scientific training roots!

We boarded a hired water taxi that would take us to the Phillips Arm.  We headed north with a fair degree of wind and swell, through the heavy current and whirlpools between Quadra Island and Vancouver Island.  We passed Sonora Island and then made our way up the Phillips Arm and the taxi docked at some sort of a outpost compound.

Workman were regrading the site after a devastating flood and mudslide knocked a few buildings off their foundation and generally wreaked havoc on the site.  The crew's hardscrabble dogs greeted us happily.  We unloaded the volunteers' and the seine net divers' gear on the floating dock.

While we waited for the shuttle jet boat we poked around but our freedom was limited by the threat of bears.  We did spot a grizzly poking around so we kept our distance.  

The jet boat came soon enough but the tide was low so it could only ferry a third of our party of volunteers at a time.  Kelly, Sheridan, Ken, and I were the last of the volunteers to be ferried up the river.

 Rupert expertly maneuvered the jet boat up the Phillips Arm eventually dropping us off on a large gravel bank where we met up with a quad driver who took us the last bit of the way to the Gillard Pass fisheries Association's research facility and bunkhouse.

 We donned waders and boots and Ruppert explained our duties.  We then had to watch a mandatory video on how to interpret bear behavior and avoid or fend off bear attacks.  No time to second guess our volunteering, so we grabbed gear and headed down to the riverbank.  The seine net was loaded into a rubber dingy and connected to a series of lines and pulleys so that we could effectively harvest the salmon in a deep pool below a series of rapids.

 Once set up, it was a firehouse drill setting the net and hauling it in.  Volunteers were clamoring back and forth to help haul the ends of the net to draw the ends closed.  Divers in the water gingerly worked the lead line over large boulders in the pool so that the net wouldn't rip and the fish wouldn't escape.

As the net was encircling the Chinooks, volunteers lined up the bags that would hold the captured fish until they were ready for measuring and tagging.

Once the seine net was pretty close to shore, you could see the large Chinooks blasting through the enclosed space.  Divers got in the net bag, dove down, and wrestled out large Chinooks and put them in landing nets and then they were transferred into the holding bags.

The bags were then clipped with a caribiner to a sort of hookless trotline in the river where the fish could breath and perhaps relax before we tagged them.

While the fish "relaxed" we had lunch.  After a nice box lunch, we helped with the tagging and data collection.  We opened the bags one by one and the fish got a tag just below the dorsal fin.

 Next, the paid staff got a couple length measurements - a total and a forked length I believe.

The GPFA staff would sex the fish and then take scale samples to age the fish.  The fish scales were carefully stored in envelopes that corresponded to the tag numbered fish.

In the net, there were some recaptured fish, and some "Jacks" - juvenile, pre-spawn males that had followed the spawners one their arduous upstream journey even though they couldn't spawn. Both were returned to the river without collecting data. Only returns of spawners count - sorry Jack!  

Our lovely master data collector Sheridan made sure we got all our data straight!

 Once the data was collected from one fish, it was rinse and repeat.

Here are a few more pictures of the lovely jewels we got to touch, if only for a brief moment.

The releases were pretty spectacular too!

Explosive even...

Once all the fish in the net were processed, we stored the net, collected all the gear, and made our way back to the research station/bunkhouse.  We stripped boots and waders and aired out wet clothes as we recounted this unforgettable day.  Thank you Ruppert and the GPFA!

In small groups, we shuttled on the quad back to the gravel beach and then boarded the jetboat and were ferried back to the outpost camp where the water taxi soon arrived to take us home.  

 

 We were worked so the ride home was mostly quiet. but with a deep sense of satisfaction.  We arrived back at the Campbell River town docks, made our way back to Kelly and Sheridan's house and had some dinner and a round of cocktails as we watched the sun go down and cast it's fiery orange afterglow.

Tomorrow we fish!