The Fraser is one of the world’s greatest salmon rivers. Despite the Lower Fraser representing only 5% of the entire watershed, it supports more than half of the watershed’s Chinook and chum, 65% of its coho, 80% of its pink, and significant populations of sockeye salmon.
Since the removal of sections of the Steveston jetty in February, we have been sampling our new jetty ‘breaches’ and have consistently caught juvenile salmon moving through them! This is a huge success and was realized just weeks after…
When we began our research in the Fraser estuary in 2016, the presence of multiple barriers, including the Steveston Jetty, became a significant concern. With the announcement of the Coastal Restoration Fund in 2017, an opportunity to begin addressing these barriers appeared…
The aim of this research is to inform salmon management strategies given the importance of allowing adults to return to their natal streams to spawn. Considering this life cycle is imperative for management agencies…
The Great Bear Rainforest is home to over 2,500 salmon runs from more than 5,000 spawning populations. Many of these rivers are still intact, offering a unique opportunity to study the linkages between salmon and the larger food web. However, salmon in this region are faced with increasing threats, many of which have depressed and extirpated salmon populations throughout the Pacific Northwest. Some of our previous work to understand ecology, status of, and threats to coastal salmon populations is linked below.
Raincoast’s Chum and Coho Stream Ecology Project is part of a larger research program at Simon Fraser University (SFU) that focuses on the interactions between salmon and their environments.