Chum salmon splashing as it makes its way up a creek
Rivers & Oceans

Final Numbers for Cortes Island’s 2024 Chum Run

The final numbers for Cortes Island’s 2024 Chum run are in. Local streamkeepers Cec and Christine Robinson gave a rundown. 

Christine Robinson: “I think we all know that this was  a stupendous year for Chums up and down the coast. So not just Cortes, not just Quadra, not just the Sunshine Coast, but from the mainland all the way up to Alaska and down through to Puget Sound and I think possibly further south.  The numbers on Cortes were the highest that we have seen since we’ve lived on Cortes, which is now 34 years.”

Cec Robinson: “To put it in context, they’re probably three times higher than the best years we’ve ever seen. So it was pretty huge.” 

Cortes Streamkeepers separating the good from dead salmon eggs, in the Klahoose Hatchery, prior to a making a count.

Christine Robinson: “So it was very exciting and the interesting thing was that fisheries did not predict this. They were predicting a very low term return to the coast. They were caught off guard, and everybody probably was.” 

“The numbers that we keep are an approximation given that we don’t have a fish fence across the creek that counts every fish.  We’ve had a pretty high degree of accuracy, but there were so many fish that we couldn’t count accurately this year. We did several bank walks, and at some point we stopped counting because we couldn’t count – which is always what we hope for.” 

Cortes Island Streamkeeper Spawner Counts 2013-2024

“All eight creeks that we have kept an eye on over the years had something to report this year. In Basil Creek, we have about 2,500 Chum.”

Cec Robinson: “At least.” 

Christine Robinson: “At least, they were higher up in Basil Creek because as more came in the lower parts of the creek it pushed them higher up. So it extends the spawning area. Squirrel Cove Creek, which is a little creek around the corner of where the Klahoose village is, was a huge surprise. It often has no fish and it often has no water. We figured there were 350 Chum there one day. Another 300 were in Hansen Creek. In James Creek, flowing through the Children’s Forest into Carrington Lagoon, there were 220 – which was tremendous. The exciting thing about Whaletown Creek is with the new arch culvert, they all got through easily and they were further up the creek than we have ever seen. There were probably a hundred. For the little Frabjous Day Creek, which flows into Cortes Bay, our best guess is 20. There were probably more, but they weren’t counted in the stream so much as in the intertidal area. Manson’s Lagoon was the lowest, seven were counted.”

Cortes Currents: Have you heard any explanations as to why there were so many Chum this year?  

Cec Robinson: “I think that the consensus lies with ocean conditions  and so the bottom line would be feed. I’m  not sure why. I know that the  El Nino was backing off and the waters were cooling, which certainly favours more food, but it’s only in the last year that  cooling has been taking place. Those fish were relying on the ocean for three and a half years, so I’m not sure that even the El Nino phenomenon explains that, but probably conditions at sea and most likely food.”

Christine Robinson: “ The fisheries people that we talked to would say the oceanic conditions, the food, was so right that they came into the creeks bigger, stronger, healthier than we typically see. That was everybody’s observation. That wasn’t just us and streamkeepers. Everyone who came to look at the fish that we talked to said, we talked to said,  ‘my gosh, they’re big and they’re strong. Certainly they’re healthier than we’ve ever seen come in.”

There were droughts during the summers and early falls of 2022 (above) and 2023.

Cortes Currents: Do you think a large run this year had anything to do with the fact we didn’t have many fish last year?

“We started asking ourselves that question last year because there were almost, I think, 20 that we recorded coming into Basil Creek. Last year, we kept scratching our heads because they could have gone into the creek. There was enough water.  Where were they? They weren’t out there in the bay. Could they have held off? Could they have stayed at sea?  They returned this year as four and five year olds, which could be an explanation.” 

Cec Robinson: “Talking to the manager of the Tla’amin Hatchery in Lund, he did specifically mention that they had noticed this year the fish were predominantly four and five year olds. There was a higher than usual number of five year olds, which could potentially have been last year’s fish.”

“Christine managed to  communicate a little bit with Alexandra Morton, who shed a little bit more light on the potential impact of the fish farm closures. It seems as though there is some overlap  in terms of timing with the fish that came back this year. We’ve been finding it difficult to get accurate dates as to what closed when, but as Chris said, this happened from Alaska down through to Washington, so that’s more than our fish farms. There’s obviously a bigger factor at play, and I suspect they’re still analyzing things in the office somewhere.” 

Christine Robinson: “Alexandra Morton has put a call out on Facebook to stream keepers on the coast, wanting local stream keeper observations. The small creeks are particularly of interest because they all contribute and are part of the whole. It’s a research investigation that’s underway right now, and she is suggesting that there is some  correlation. It probably will take a while for there to be any definitive answers.” 

Cec Robinson: “The fish that came back this year were spawned in the fall of 2020. They went out to sea, therefore, in the spring of 2021.”

Christine Robinson: “That year there were still fish farms active in the Discovery Islands.  So we’ve not yet seen a clear correlation, but just think about Chum being in a four year cycle 2020 was a big year for us here, not as big as this 2024 return, but 2020 there were over a 1,000 Chum in Basil Creek that we noticed. In 2016 there were again about 2,000.  So we’ve seen  in our record keeping, three sets of spawning years with high numbers, four years apart. We  expect that 2028  should have exceptional Chum returns if everything else works in their favour.” 

Workbee in James Creek – courtesy Cortes Island Streamkeepers

“The other really exciting news, of course, with the numbers, health and vigour of these fish, is that it allowed the stream keepers with Klahoose to capture what we call brood-stock. We fertilized the eggs from 10 females, 10 males, and then a second time, I think it was 14 females and 14 males. So for the second time only we were able to do a wild egg take here on Cortes. We’ve now dispersed them between Whaletown Creek and the hatchery, and for the first time we  received permission from fisheries to put them in James Creek.  We did that on the weekend with some young adults. We dug and created five human redds and put 2,000 eggs in each of them. This was pretty exciting for us because it’s built on some of the stream work that we’ve done in James Creek but have not been in a position to do any enhancement until this year.”

Putting eggs in the incubation boxes – Courtesy Cortes Island Streamkeepers

Cec Robinson: “Next year should be interesting because the wild spawn in 2021 was modest,  and then we had terrible conditions in Squirrel Cove. We had rain on snow in Basil Creek and it just blasted that creek out.  It took our spawning box and flung it up into the bushes.  We would expect that there was relatively low survival of any wild spawn there. Fortunately we did get lots of eggs from the folks at the Tla’aman Hatchery.  So we had fry to release that spring. Whatever comes back in Basil  a year from now, should be  most likely due to the Klahoose hatchery work.  So it’ll be very interesting to see what happens.”  

Chum salmon returned
Chum salmon in front of the culvert at Basil Creek in 2020 – Roy L Hales photo

Cortes Currents: Are there any final comments that either of you want to make?  

Cec Robinson: “I want to thank some other folks here:  the Klahoose, a lot of the work we’re doing, we couldn’t do  without their hatchery; Byron Harry and of course his dad, Flavian, before him; Kenny Hanuse. I guess I shouldn’t give names because I’m going to forget some, but these people have been working for the fish for a lot longer than we have and I would never want that to be overlooked. Johnny Massette: when he was working with the highways together with Bruce, they hauled that truckload of gravel into James Creek. That was the gravel that we were using this weekend to build those redds. Johnny was right up there advocating for that big arch culvert in Squirrel Cove years ago. Dave Ewert, again, the almost retired DFO fellow who’s been our right hand and our mentor, still is.  FOCI, because stream keepers  are as informal as you can get. We don’t have a board or any structure or anything like that. So, being able to work under FOCI’s umbrella is great when it comes to dealing with the Salmon Enhancement Society or DFO or whatnot. I just wanted to make sure that everybody’s recognized here.”

Links of Interest:

All undesignated photos, including the Chum Salmon at the mouth of Basil Creek, by Roy L Hales.

Sign-up for Cortes Currents email-out:

To receive an emailed catalogue of articles on Cortes Currents, send a (blank) email to subscribe to your desired frequency: