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[arimaBOATER]

Salmon go to the rivers & creeks to spawn. From what I know they bury the eggs under gravel & sand & in time we get hatched fish.
So the question is: Do these heavy rains that totally make the rivers & creeks into "raging" waterways would this not displace the fish eggs & destroy them ?
How could eggs survive in this flooding
Would like your more knowledgable opionion as I haven't a clue.

[Rodney]

Absolutely. At every stage of a salmonid's life history, the mortality changes when natural/environmental factors change. It is part of the selective process that has made the populations what they are in tens of thousands of generations. Will ALL eggs be crushed or washed away? It is highly unlikely at the current discharge level. The system has gone through harsher condition than this. The optimistic view would be that with a post-season estimate of over 20 million pink salmon return this season, the amount of eggs that survive through this winter will most likely be above satisfactory level.

Beside human factors, one should remember that the return of spawning adult salmon highly depend on the environmental condition. If the overwintering river condition is good, spring predation is low during juvenile rearing, sufficient amount of food is present in the estuaries during smoltification, predation by warm water species is absent during juvenile outmigration, predation during adult years is low, then one may just see a good salmon return. In the real world, these favourable conditions almost never coincide with each other.

[camtheman]

another question rod
is it possible for an egg to be swept into the salt and survive there?
provided it dosent get eaten

[arimaBOATER]

Thanks Rodney .
Welcome to the world little salmon ...now all they have to do is survive & swim through the all the watery "minefields".
No wonder salmon have that "fearful expression " on their faces.

[Matt]

another question rod
is it possible for an egg to be swept into the salt and survive there?
provided it dosent get eaten

They would perish in saltwater if they made it there.

[living_blind]

What concerns me is the already low sockeye returns more so than the pinks. The pink runs, as mentioned in another thread, were strong, and not all eggs will be lost. The sockeye however in many systems were not very abundant this year, and the less flooding the more likely a higher rebound in the years to come.

[DragonSpeed]

What concerns me is the already low sockeye returns more so than the pinks. The pink runs, as mentioned in another thread, were strong, and not all eggs will be lost. The sockeye however in many systems were not very abundant this year, and the less flooding the more likely a higher rebound in the years to come.

On the flip side, if some of those pink eggs get washed out there will be less competition for food for the young sockeye... could be GOOD for them.

[Dave]

Pink fry feed very little, if at all, before they migrate.  Sockeye fry rear in lakes.  There is no competion between these species in freshwater.  Pinks are about the perfect salmon for nutrient deficient coastal rivers as all they require is good gravel and stable water conditions.  And they return the investment in 2 years.

[Sam Salmon]

Mortality from high water conditions was less of a concern when we had real rivers-now much of what's left in Southern BC are literally ditches-dyked on both sides with water scouring the bottom.

A wild river like the Gold  hardly blows out at all with high water-of course it's runs have collapsed anyway but that's another story.

[clarki]

What concerns me is the already low sockeye returns more so than the pinks. The pink runs, as mentioned in another thread, were strong, and not all eggs will be lost. The sockeye however in many systems were not very abundant this year, and the less flooding the more likely a higher rebound in the years to come.

Not to worry about the socks. The rain on the coast has little impact on the big sockeye producing rivers which are largely up country