Man with large bucket releasing fry back into a creek
Rivers & Oceans

The difference using hatchery fry made to Basil Creek’s gene pool

It has been almost a month since 5,000 hatchery raised Chum fry were released back into Basil Creek, in Squirrel Cove. They were the survivors of 20,000 eggs harvested from wild salmon and later placed inside ‘in-stream incubation boxes.’ Most of their siblings perished when the rising creek waters silted up their boxes. This remnant were taken back to the Klahoose hatchery for a month, before being returned to the creek. Someone asked if using fry from the hatchery weakens the local gene pool? Cortes Currents passed the question on to Stacey Larsen, DFO’s Community advisor for our area. 

Screenshot of Stacey Larsen taken during a previous interview

She admitted there is a potential risk, depending on a variety of factors such as how large the fish are and how long they are weired in a hatchery. 

“In this case, the benefit of the chum salmon program on Cortes is preventing the loss of eggs in the creek during flood events,” explained Larsen. “The fry are only reared in the hatchery for short periods, so they will still be subject to most of the natural selection factors.”

She added that giving fry even a brief rearing and feeding greatly improves their chances of surviving.  

A large cluster of salmon fry school together in yellow brown waters
Chum fry schooling in a trough at the Klahoose hatchery – Photo by Roy L Hales
The fry scooped up in a net just prior to release – Roy L Hales photo

“There are a lot of factors that are contributing to salmon decline. Healthy watersheds with good habitat, good water quality and supply are critical. Enhancement is a tool, but there are other dials that we can adjust. One of the major ones is also harvest,” said Larsen. 

“With the stewardship, volunteers, monitoring stocks and habitat we have more information to make decisions as we move forward with enhancement and restoration in Basil Creek. The broodstock are returning chum that we were able to use last fall are mostly returns from our very first year of trauma enhancement. The natural returns of that year were quite low. So the returning fish would have been a small component of the fish that were returning to Basil Creek.” 

Top image credit: Releasing Chum fry back into Basil Creek – Photo by Roy L Hales

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