Martha Abelson sent in this delightful short form video of Chum salmon spawning in Basil Creek. It was taken on taken on October 27, 2024.
“I was surprised by the size and black colour of the chum and, their vigorous efforts travelling upstream.”
Continue reading Video: Basil Creek, Fish WaterThe faint stench of rotting salmon greets visitor’s nostrils just beyond the Squirrel Cove Store. Further down the rocky beach, at the mouth of Basil Creek, clouds of seagulls feasted upon the corpses. A few of the dead Chum Salmon were reduced to skeletons, but most have been left to rot. The only body part missing is their eyes, a delicacy among sea gulls.
Continue reading Nature’s Salmon Feast at Basil Creek
There are more Chum swimming up Basil Creek than we’ve seen for years. According to Matthew Clarke of Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO), Cortes Island isn’t the only place where the Chum run is good this year.
“As a general rule this year things are looking much better for Chum than they have looked, albeit with a couple of places that are not quite as strong as we would have hoped to see,” he explained.
Continue reading DFO: Chum runs are looking much better throughout most of our areaThe Chum started returning to Basil Creek a week ago. To an inexperienced eye, the water levels seemed too low on the 16th, but dozens of large salmon were progressing upstream beyond the culvert. Christine Robinson said that she and her husband Cec had seen them the previous day. That was when we agreed to do this interview.
“We know it’s the big year in their four year cycle. Chum primarily have a four year cycle, a few of them three, and a few of them five, but the majority have a four year cycle. In 2020, four years ago, approximately 1100 fish came back to Basil Creek. Four years prior to that, in 2016, there were about 1100. We’re not alone in this. All the creeks are in a similar cycle. Basil Creek, of course, is the main stream on Cortes for salmon return. So we’re optimistic that it should be a big year this time,” explained Cec Robinson, one of the principal Streamkeepers on Cortes Island.
Continue reading The Chum Return to Basil CreekWhen we think about environmentalism, we tend not to consider the oceans because we don’t live on or in them, and they are just there as they have always been, defining the edge of the land that we occupy. Of course, oceans provide us with most of our fish, but in the popular understanding, they are mostly experienced as vast spaces of waves and wet that separate the faraway continents that we visit. So we tend to give much more importance to landscapes that we occupy. And because we live within the thin layer of air that girdles the globe, weather is also a concern to us. But we generally don’t consider that much of our climate and weather is determined by what happens in the oceans.
Continue reading The Quadra Project – Deep Water
