Favourable ocean conditions are likely the main reason behind Burnaby's recent record return of chum salmon.
"When you have a big return like that, it has to be good ocean conditions for the juvenile fish when they are feeding at sea," said John Reynolds, an SFU professor and the Tom Buell B.C. leadership chair in salmon conservation. An abundance of food and "low predation" are two examples of favourable ocean conditions for the tiny fish, Reynolds explained.
Chum salmon are very small when they first go to sea, he said. They don't spend a year in fresh water first the way sockeye do.
"These are very small fish, and they are going to be riding the waves of ocean productivity in a very acute way," he said.
Local streamkeeping groups have been reporting chum returning in higher numbers and in further reaches of Burnaby's network of waterways. Elmer Rudolph, president of the Sapperton Fish and Game Club, said in a typical good year, he may see around a dozen chum return to the Brunette River at the Cariboo Dam.
This year, he's counted 475, and that's not including the 1,300 fish that have been counted in Stoney Creek, downstream from the dam. (The most they've had in recent years is 1,000.)
"We've seen an absolute record number of chum come over the dam," Rudolph said. "We have absolutely no idea why. We don't know whether it's a trend or a one-off deal."
Eagle Creek Streamkeepers president Nick Kvenich is also reporting extraordinary numbers of chum returning.
"The fish are going everywhere. We have them up our creek, where they've never gone before," he said, adding they've reached as far as Broadway, close to Burnaby Mountain Golf Course. "I've never seen salmon return up in that area. It's like I've died and gone to heaven."
Eagle Creek Stream-keepers have counted roughly 200 returning chum - the most they've ever seen before on that creek was 27. The chum have also made it to Still Creek and into Deer Lake, Kvenich added.
According to Reynolds, who played a key role in the recently concluded Cohen Commission on the Fraser River sockeye decline, just because the chum are doing well doesn't mean other species are out of the woods yet. Pink, sockeye, chum and coho are the typical salmon species seen in the Lower Mainland, and Burnaby streamkeepers have yet to see coho return in strong numbers this season.
Maurice Coulter-Boisvert, a Fisheries and Oceans Canada employee who works with local streamkeeping groups, attributed the strong chum numbers to minimal fishing and favourable ocean conditions. Part of Coulter-Boisvert's work involves partnering with stream-keepers to release hundreds of thousands of tiny salmon in local creeks every year.
"If we have favourable ocean conditions, the extra release of chum we've put in over the past few years should result in an increased number of chum as well," he said.
