The Medusa Fora

Beautiful moon, tonight, enhanced by cooler temperatures which have otherwise been sorely lacking 'round these parts. Glorious!

LittleCupcakes wrote:Beautiful moon, tonight, enhanced by cooler temperatures which have otherwise been sorely lacking 'round these parts. Glorious!

Yeah, it was a nice coupla' days. But that is about to change.
Next Sun, Mon, Tues no bueno.

My friend Dan passed away suddenly the other week, but i've just learned his partner is pregnant, with their second child. He got to feel the first kicks the night before he passed.

For the first time in 80 years, salmon are running up some urban creeks in Burnaby/Vancouver, including Still Creek - which 20 years ago was one of the most polluted waterway in the province. Years of creek rehabilitation have not been in vain.

I just took the kids to go look at the huge salmon working their way up tiny Buckingham Creek at Deer Lake Park, right next to the parking lot and playground - in fact, the creek runs under the parking lot!

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-c ... rnaby.html

Low D wrote:For the first time in 80 years, salmon are running up some urban creeks in Burnaby/Vancouver, including Still Creek - which 20 years ago was one of the most polluted waterway in the province. Years of creek rehabilitation have not been in vain.

I just took the kids to go look at the huge salmon working their way up tiny Buckingham Creek at Deer Lake Park, right next to the parking lot and playground - in fact, the creek runs under the parking lot!

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-c ... rnaby.html

Will I get kicked off here if I say I would appreciate a "like" button in this case?

And so sad about your friend, Low D, but he must have been happy feeling the kicks.

Low D wrote:For the first time in 80 years, salmon are running up some urban creeks in Burnaby/Vancouver, including Still Creek - which 20 years ago was one of the most polluted waterway in the province. Years of creek rehabilitation have not been in vain.

I just took the kids to go look at the huge salmon working their way up tiny Buckingham Creek at Deer Lake Park, right next to the parking lot and playground - in fact, the creek runs under the parking lot!

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-c ... rnaby.html

Well that just confuses me. I thought salmon would return only to the stream from which they spawned. Unless these buggers are 80 years old, how are they returning to the stream?

Still - Yay!

DzM wrote:

Low D wrote:For the first time in 80 years, salmon are running up some urban creeks in Burnaby/Vancouver, including Still Creek - which 20 years ago was one of the most polluted waterway in the province. Years of creek rehabilitation have not been in vain.

I just took the kids to go look at the huge salmon working their way up tiny Buckingham Creek at Deer Lake Park, right next to the parking lot and playground - in fact, the creek runs under the parking lot!

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-c ... rnaby.html

Well that just confuses me. I thought salmon would return only to the stream from which they spawned. Unless these buggers are 80 years old, how are they returning to the stream?

Still - Yay!

I have to admit i was wondering the same thing, i don't know the answer.

Still Creek feeds into Burnaby Lake, which itself is drains into the Brunette River. Salmon have continued to run up the Brunette, so it would appear that some of these smaller urban waterways have attracted salmon out of the Brunette. Do salmon return to the exact tributary they were born, or just the main one (ie: Brunette, in this case), and then follow their nose? No idea. Are these salmon descendants of salmon whose ancestors started in those smaller waterways? No idea.

It's worth noting, though, that there's a much larger, more easily passable creek just a couple hundred meters over, and no salmon are leaving Deer lake that way. For whatever reason, the salmon are only trying to make their way up teeny tiny Buckingham Creek.

Could possibly be stocked salmon (fed into the headwaters as fingerlings) I suppose. Do those return to the stream they were fed into? Dunno.

DzM wrote:Could possibly be stocked salmon (fed into the headwaters as fingerlings) I suppose. Do those return to the stream they were fed into? Dunno.

They do, actually, but I can assure you there has been no stocking of this creek. Weird. Maybe it was their great-great-great grandparents, and they have been waiting generations to make it back to the proper place? Dunno if that's the case, but it's an awfully romantic thought.

Here's what a friend, who works for the Dept. of Fisheries & Oceans, tells me:

Hmmm. Dunno the answer to that. There's been lots of fry-release in the Burnaby/East-Van area over the years though, and it's not just Still Creek that's experiencing the run. I'll ask around and see if anyone knows. It is very exciting!

(Note: "Fry" are baby salmon)

And salmon fries up good. (Thank you! I'll be here all night!)

We'll get to the bottom of this yet, and then we can give The Pogues credit for solving yet another of the world's mysteries. Go Pogues!

Low D wrote:Here's what a friend, who works for the Dept. of Fisheries & Oceans, tells me:

Hmmm. Dunno the answer to that. There's been lots of fry-release in the Burnaby/East-Van area over the years though, and it's not just Still Creek that's experiencing the run. I'll ask around and see if anyone knows. It is very exciting!

(Note: "Fry" are baby salmon)

So here is the answer, as definitive as it is likely to get:

This is what one of our Lower Fraser Salmon Biologists wrote to me in response to your question:

(love. love these fish geeks!)


Try this as one possible story of this Still Creek return...

When the glaciers left this land and it rebounded from the sea some salmon came from nearby spawning streams into these newly formed habitats and there have always been some salmon in each run that will look for new areas close to their home spawning grounds.

These colonizer individuals are what have allowed the salmon to survive the glacial ages and other dramatic changes in the environment over the last million years.

Stoney Creek on the lower Brunette River had a very strong return this year and many hundreds of chum salmon were on the grounds. Last year a new fish way was installed at the Cariboo Dam that is very easy for migrating chum salmon to swim up, to the upper Brunette river watershed, including Still Creek.

Perhaps some of these Stoney Creek fish decided that rather than take the chance of having their eggs dug up by others in this crowded space, there they would investigate if there were other suitable spawning grounds upstream of Cariboo Dam in parts unknown. This has always been the way of salmon since this land was new.

Or..perhaps they are from some of the Kanaka hatchery chum salmon fry that were released into the lower Brunette River that did not have a fully imprinted recollection of where their spawning grounds were...

I prefer the first story...the best part of salmon are their mysterious ways...

Christine wrote:And so sad about your friend, Low D, but he must have been happy feeling the kicks.

Thanks Christine. Although everyone i've told that to has told me i'm trying far to hard to see the happy side.

DzM wrote:And salmon fries up good. (Thank you! I'll be here all night!)

Dan, who would have been as curious about this whole story as the rest of us, would have loved that terrible joke, and times like this i catch myself about to email him. His smiling face still pops up on my smartphone when i open contacts.

Thanks for the additional background on the fish questing for something new and better.

Email Dan the terrible jokes anyway.

Something Nic Or Something Nice
Nice buy a mile .