Squamish Streamkeepers Update-The herring are in.
An interesting article from Jack Cooley (Squamish Streamkeepers)

 

This organization has done so much over the last few years to aid in the return of herring to our area....Well done guys and gals!

            

On Friday, February 2nd,  the Streamkeepers went to the Squamish Terminals East Dock to put in two float lines for herring to spawn upon. Their timing couldn’t have been better as the myriad of seagulls wheeling off the south end of the Terminals showed that the herring had already spawned on the intertidal bladderwrack there. With the lowering of the afternoon tide, the seagulls were getting to feast on the exposed herring caviar. No doubt a welcome treat in mid winter.

            The 200 pilings that had been wrapped with safe spawning materials since 2006 had also received a light early spawn which should increase dramatically through February and March and even into early April.

The last few years the Streamkeepers had put out one 350 foot floatline, but this year the float lines were more than doubled that to 850 feet. There are several advantages to float lines over wrapped pilings. First, since the herring can spawn on both sides of a floatline, the spawning surface area is doubled. Second, Since the float line goes up and down with the tide, the eggs lain on the float lines are never exposed to surface elements such as frost, sun, wind and floating surface contaminants. Last year many of the wrapped intertidal piling eggs died while the subtidal float line eggs and the nearby intertidal bladderwrack eggs survived, indicating there had been an unidentified surface contaminate under the dock last year. Therefore the decision was made that this year the expansion of herring spawning aids would be limited to sub surface materials, that is expansion of the float lines until it is certain that there is no surface contaminants under the dock that could kill intertidal eggs.

As always, a big crew makes for lighter work, and this year we had the biggest crew so far. Cal Hartnell, Jen Smalley, Brad Ray, Ana Santos, Patrick MacNamara, Lyle Wood, John Rodgers (Alaskan visitor), Mike Pawluk, Eric Andersen, Jonn Matsen, and Jack Cooley. The next step will involve routine monitoring of the herring spawn and it’s hatch out quantity and quality, followed by pulling and hosing down the float lines in mid April.       

            Many thanks to Squamish Terminals for their ongoing support in bringing back the herring to Howe Sound.