Chum salmon released into Oak Bay creek after nearly a century

Volunteers are seeing their restoration work at Bowker Creek in Oak Bay pay off after chum fry hatched in the urban waterway for the first time in 70 to 90 years.

The Friends of Bowker Creek Society have spent the last 20 years restoring the creek to make it clean enough for salmon to survive. In January, working with Fisheries and Ocean Canada (DFO), the society secured an incubation box filled with 28,000 chum eggs in a manufactured gravel bed.

This week, the chum fry were spotted swimming in the creek.

"It means that we’ve taken one little successful step forward in re-establishing chum salmon in this creek," said Gerald Harris, director of the Friends of Bowker Creek Society, as he stood at the bank of the creek.

The society hopes this success means DFO will continue to provide it with eggs for the next few years so chum will continue to hatch in the creek.

In 2024, adult salmon who are from these chum are expected to return.

"This was already as much suspense as we could handle, but indeed that will be very suspenseful," Harris said.

WORK CONTINUES

Even with this positive step forward, the society says more work is needed to continue the progress.

"We need to reduce erosion from up stream and to have better control…. in the various kinds of things that happen in this big watershed that end up with a dirty creek," said Harris.

It’s not known how many of the eggs have hatched, but the society hopes to get a better idea once it retrieves the egg box from the gravel bed.

The chum fry that did hatch will have made their way to open ocean by the time the box is collected.

"Individually, their future is quite gloomy," said Harris.

"What you try to do is send out thousands of chum fry into the sea hoping to get back a dozen or a couple dozen," he said. "I think we’ll be delighted if we get 30 chum adults back."

Harris said the sacrifice those fry make hopefully will have a big payoff in the future.

"Those chum are already contributing to the Salish Sea eco-system because [we] have no doubt that a few of them, maybe lots, have already been eaten," he said.

"But if they are I have every hope that whatever eats them will be eaten by an orca."