You are likely most familiar with the coho salmon conservation efforts of A Rocha’s Northern BC project, the Buck Creek Hatchery and Nature Centre. We operate a small coho salmon hatchery, raising up to 10,000 coho fry and releasing them into the Upper Bulkley River each year. We have also been supporting chinook salmon conservation. Known as “king” salmon, chinook are the largest of the salmon species, weighing up to 57 pounds!

Upper Bulkley chinook migrate up the Skeena and Bulkley rivers in the spring and then wait in the Upper Bulkley until late August to spawn. While this means they bypass the recreational fishing season in the Skeena, they must sometimes endure prolonged periods of warm water temperatures in the Upper Bulkley.

Over the past number of years we’ve assisted Toboggan Creek Hatchery with capturing chinook adults for their broodstock program which has been running since the late 1980s in partnership with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO). Despite releasing between 20,000 and 50,000 chinook smolts into the Upper Bulkley each year, the return of adults does not appear to have improved. Estimates are in the few hundreds, whereas historically there would have been a few thousand.

However, population estimates through stock assessment have been limited because broodstock capture is such a huge effort. Capture also puts additional stress on the fish who are already struggling through warm water temperatures. Therefore DFO made the decision to suspend the broodstock program starting in 2024, and to begin trialing new assessment techniques.

A Rocha is partnering with DFO on this project to perform field work. In 2024 this is taking the shape of a trial “dead pitch” program. We are walking, floating and snorkeling the river to find the chinook. We’re aiming to find out where they’re spawning, and then search for the carcasses afterward to take length measurements, determine male/female and hatchery/wild and then collect the head and a DNA sample. The peak time for this is in the last couple weeks of August and first couple weeks of September. Unfortunately we’ve found a few dead pre-spawn chinook, meaning they died before they could lay eggs. This is most likely due to heat stress.

DFO, A Rocha and the Skeena Fisheries Commision have also partnered to apply for funding for the next year of this project. This includes purchase of an ARIS (Adaptive Resolution Imaging Sonar). The plan is to have the ARIS installed in the river for spring to fall 2025 to detect any fish swimming by. This could help determine how many fish are migrating into the river and how many survive to spawn.

What are ways you can help? In late August and early September, if you see chinook in the Upper Bulkley River or Buck Creek while you’re walking the dikes or trails in Houston, please let us know. Other good places to look out for them are at the swimming holes near Houston, or at the Knockholt and Topley bridges. It is our hope that these studies will help us learn how to steward and care for the chinook well, and to advise decision makers in this.