The Cortes Island Streamkeepers are looking for volunteers, and also hoping that the community steps up its efforts to combat climate change.
“There’s quite a few tasks we have to do,” explained Leona Jensen.
One of them is in the Klahoose hatchery.
Continue reading The Cortes Island Streamkeepers need help
A great many fisherfolk once worked out of Whaletown. The Cortes Island Museum’s list goes back to the 1930s, at which point there were 7 men and a woman. Three of them used rowboats.
“There used to be a huge fleet rafted out, both six and seven abreast all along both sides of the dock, in Whaletown. In the last 10 years or so, there’s only been three or four boats in there, fishing. The main one that I know of in the last little while is the ‘C-Fin,’ but he goes outside of the Vancouver Island area and fishes tuna. When he comes back he doesn’t sell it to a fisheries, he sells it from the dock, and the same with his prawns. So he’s not using a middle man to sell his products, which I suppose is one of the few ways you could make a little bit of money now,“ said Lynne Jordan, former President of the Cortes Island Museum, in the latest instalment of her history of Whaletown.
Continue reading When fishing was an industry in Whaletown
By Greg Osoba, CKTZ News, through an LJI grant from Canada-info.ca
So far, monitoring of creeks and streams on Cortes Island indicates a very poor return of chum salmon to their spawning grounds this year, according to Christine and Cec Robinson. They’re longtime members of the local stream keepers project, overseen by the conservation and stewardship organization Friends of Cortes Island (FOCI). Monitoring of the chum return occurs from mid-September to early December each year.
Continue reading Low seasonal return of chum salmon to spawning grounds ‘a mystery,’ say local monitorsIn partnership with Cortes Community Radio & Cortes Currents, Folk U Radio offered its first Reporter Roundtable: Fish farms and seaweed production.
The panel:
When the Chum salmon returned to Cortes Island four years ago, they entered every creek. Approximately 1,050 swam up Basil Creek this year, but the numbers were far lower everywhere else. Some Whaletown residents saw Chum in their creek, these did not make it to the official tally – which is zero. Despite the disappointing returns, Streamkeeper Cec Robinson describes 2020 as a year in which steps were taken to ensure future Chum runs.
Continue reading Cortes Streamkeepers: to ensure future Chum runs
