By Sonal Gupta, Canada’s National Observer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
Ottawa’s $412-million salmon recovery program offers a lifeline to BC’s struggling fisheries — but comes at the same time budget cuts are dismantling monitoring systems conservationists, experts and First Nations say are essential to protect them.
Continue reading Ottawa’s renewed salmon funding spawns both hope and skepticism
In 1995, standing on a Cortes Island shoreline with fellow environmental advocate Delores Broten, Sabina Leader Mense agreed to launch something that had never been done before on the island: a long-term monitoring project for its rocky intertidal zones. “Delores said, ‘We really need to get onto monitoring the marine environment.’ And I said, ‘Okay,’” Mense recalls.
That conversation marked the beginning of FOCI’s very first marine stewardship initiative, The Cortes Island Foreshore Monitoring Program (CIFMP) and today, nearly three decades later, it remains one of the longest-running environmental monitoring programs in the Strait of Georgia.
Continue reading 30 Years of Foreshore Monitoring on Cortes Island
Canada’s National Observer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
A new solution is surfacing for boaters keen to tackle the problem of toxic chemicals in cleaning products that can poison salmon and other important marine life.
A new online dashboard and helpful cheat sheet geared to help people choose the most eco-friendly products and cleaning methods while maintaining their vessels has been created by chemistry researchers at Vancouver Island University (VIU) and the Pacific Salmon Foundation (PSF).
Continue reading Charting a path for boaters to clean up toxic ocean impacts
Canada’s National Observer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
A new scientific endeavour has taken to the sky using high-tech drones and satellite images to understand better the annual spring herring spawn vital to salmon and wildlife on the West Coast.
Between February and March each year, frigid ocean waters transform to a milky tropical-looking turquoise green when male herring release milt to fertilize the countless eggs deposited by females on eelgrass, kelp and seaweed fringing coastal shores.
Unpredictable and dramatic, the small silver fishes’ spawning event is large and best monitored from great heights, said Loïc Dallaire, a researcher with the SPECTRAL Remote Sensing Laboratory at the University of Victoria.
“It’s one of the very few animal formations that we can see from space, excluding human developments and towns,” Dallaire said.
Continue reading Satellites track the tiny silver fish hugely important to marine life
Canada’s National Observer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
A provincewide drought this summer dried up B.C. rivers and jeopardized the survival of already stressed salmon stocks.
But for the first time, localized salmon SWAT teams mobilized quickly to tackle hot spots of concern on rivers across B.C. as part of a new pilot project, said Jane Pendray, manager of the Pacific Salmon Foundation’s (PSF) climate adaptation program.
Continue reading Salmon SWAT teams deployed in B.C to help fish during drought
