hope ponds

The stretch of the Fraser River that runs between Hope and Mission, BC is known for its gravel substrate and highly productive biotic communities. It contains over thirty species of fishes including the endemically endangered white sturgeon, an array of minnows, sculpins, suckers, and sticklebacks, as well as supporting critical spawning habitat for all five species of Pacific salmon.

The stones that make up the gravelly bottom of this river turn and roll with the fast-moving current, smooth polishing, edges worn, they become a veritable speckled rainbow of marbled stones, as remarkably coloured and diverse both under the moving water as they are in the drying light.

I'm working with a crew of three others, students of salmon and moving water; we are studying the habitat viability of ponds adjacent to the Fraser’s gravel reach near Hope. Using a thirty-meter seine net, we dream and map the pathways where we drag out our net, encircling and capturing fish to identify, count, mark, and puzzle over. The hours spent with our hands pulling rope, waist-deep in moving currents, and careful handling of small fish in cold buckets gives us a sense of the species representative of these ponds and their mother river.

Many of the fish we capture are young salmon. Coho, Chinook, and sockeye have all been netted, weighed, measured, and set free back into the Fraser and the adjacent ponds. It is often challenging to distinguish between these species, as the fish are very young and lack many of the distinct features of these three salmon species as they mature into their adult life phases. Their parr marks, or small oval circles along the lateral line of their bodies, are often indistinct or underdeveloped; the tell-tale colouration and speckles on their fins is difficult to distinguish. Chinook have a sickle-shaped anal fin, with a light white edge to them, their eyes large and their parr markings oval and evenly spaced apart. Sockeye are silvery-bright and particularly slippery. They jump out of our cold hands much with quicker agility than their coho cousins. We puzzle over our captures, making lists and lists of these individuals, learning to distinguish between species, tripping over the various shapes, colours, sizes, and markings of each group.

We hope to answer questions about our study sites in the coming months: what is the relationship between the spring river flows and species found in these sites, their type and population numbers? Do our ponds aid in the survival of these little salmon, or do they act only as a fish trap, starving these young creatures in the winter months?
And we hope to see if there is a possibility of making these ponds more productive and safer habitats for juvenile fish. As we know, the challenges they face on their alluvial and oceanic journey render their chances of return to these spawning sites tenuous and reserved for only a lucky few. We hope to give a few more of these fish a protected and healthy beginning to their journey before they head out to sea on fantastic migrations, to aid their return to the gravelly Fraser.