Tiny coho get better start thanks to study

Dan Maclennan
March 19, 2010
Courier Islander

A Campbell River based plankton study now in its fourth year is getting down to the bottom of the food chain and helping to give tiny coho a better start in life.

The Discovery Passage Plankton Monitoring Program was initiated in 2007 in an effort to determine the timing of spring plankton blooms in local waters - to maximize the availability of food when coho smolts are released from the Quinsam River Hatchery.

Just back from a major fish conference in Nanaimo, Dave Ewart, Campbell/Quinsam watershed enhancement manager, said more and more attention is focusing on the first weeks of fish life.

"Everybody's talking about the same thing, the same idea," he said. "It's food abundance, early in the life cycle, the first month, to get those fish growing. They have to hit a certain growth rate or they will not survive. That's where things are heading right now.

"It's all that environmental condition that leads up to that phytoplankton bloom in the spring that starts everything. If it's good at the right time that salmon can use it, they do really well. They have to hit the ocean and begin feeding and growing really fast. That gets them enough energy to swim away.

"In the last four years it's amazing how much science has changed in the Strait of Georgia. You've got IOS (Institute of Ocean Sciences) and PBS (Pacific Biological Station) and UBC and Simon Fraser and UVic, everybody's got this on their plate and they're really starting to look at the Strait of Georgia to see what is impacting it as far as productivity."

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