Thriving fish a tribute to volunteers' hard work
But, of course, success also costs money
By Brian LewisDecember 18, 2008
Students help hatchery volunteers return young salmon to one of the Nicomekl River's feeder creeks.Photograph by: Nicomekl Enhancement SocietyMost of the Langley-based Nicomekl Enhancement Society's 60 volunteers are avid recreational fishermen but, when pressed, they'll admit they're even more hooked on saving salmon.
During the past 10 years, this incredibly dedicated, diverse group has reared and released more than three million salmon into the pristine Nicomekl River, which flows from Langley Township westward through Surrey and into the ocean near Blackie Spit and Crescent Beach.
The Nicomekl is one of several delightful, small waterways south of the Fraser River. Since its headwaters are fed by underground springs near 232nd Street and 56th Avenue, the little river is ideally suited to hosting salmon and several species of trout.
But it wasn't always such a prolific host for fish.
By the early 1900s, the once-highly productive Nicomekl wasn't much more than a dumping canal; salmon runs had pretty well been wiped out.
"The river was badly neglected for many years," says Ed Kociuk, the Nicomekl Enhancement Society's president.
"For example, we know that, at one point many years ago, Langley had its sewage running into the river."
And even as recently as the early 1990s, when the society was incorporated by a handful of concerned individuals, some salmon species such as the chinook had disappeared completely from the Nicomekl.
"We reintroduced the chinook about 10 years ago and now we have a healthy run of that species," Kociuk says.
As proof, he shows me a recent photo of one of the society's members holding up a 55-pound chinook from the Nicomekl -- and, clearly, lifting this whopper was no easy task.
The society's success in re-establishing chinook, coho, chum and pink stocks in the Nicomekl stems from an incredible number of volunteer hours by members, and the salmon hatchery they started from scratch on their five-acre property near the river's headwaters.
It's where members and many other volunteers from the community at large capture spawning salmon, remove their eggs and rear the young salmon in special tanks before returning them to the river.
While they also allow some of the returning salmon to spawn naturally on the upper Nicomekl's excellent gravel spawning grounds, using hatchery methods gives Mother Nature a significant boost.
"The hatching rate of salmon eggs from natural spawning is about three per cent, whereas we get a hatch rate of 95 per cent in the hatchery," Kosciuk says.
The society also sponsors a Classroom Incubation Program in which about 30 schools now participate. Classes are given "nesting boxes" with eggs and are taught to raise the young fish and then return them to the Nicomekl.
And all the society's fish-rearing efforts are made under the auspices of Fisheries and Oceans Canada's Salmonid Enhancement Program.
But financing also keeps members busy because the hatchery operation alone can cost $20,000 to $30,000 annually.
And now a new, 2,400-square-foot education and administrative building is on the drawing board and to construct it will cost about $50,000.
The hatchery (
www.nicomeklhatchery.com) is at 5263 232nd Street, Langley, and is open for public tours on Sundays between 9 a.m. and 11 a.m.
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Topic: Volunteers Make It Happen On The Nicomekl River (Read 2306 times)