West Vancouver Streamkeeper Society
NELSON CREEK SALMON HATCHERY
The Nelson Creek Hatchery is located on the edge of the Nelson Creek canyon, on the mountain slopes above the Upper Levels Highway. Water for the hatchery is drawn from Nelson Creek using an intake dam built in 1923 which supplied water to Horseshoe Bay until the late 1980s. The hatchery was built in 1991. Initially it was managed by students of an alternative high school program and the West Vancouver Streamkeeper Society took over supervision in the spring of 1997. The group supplies a pool of local volunteers for all aspects of hatchery work - from harvesting spawning salmon for the eggs and milt, to daily feeding of young fry, to releasing fry to local creeks. Volunteers work under the supervision of a Fisheries and Oceans Community Advisor.
The hatchery consists of three troughs and two tubs to hold fry, a shed containing 32 egg incubation trays and a storage shed all within a securely fenced area. Chum eggs are obtained from the Tenderfoot Hatchery in Squamish and coho eggs from the Capilano Hatchery in January of every year. They are ponded (moved from the incubation trays to the troughs outside) in late March. The fry are released to creeks across West Vancouver in April and May.
2011
On January 26th 2011 we received 67,000 eyed coho eggs from the Capilano Hatchery. In other years we have also obtained chum eggs from the Tenderfoot Hatchery in Squamish. However, the chum returns in the fall of 2010 were less than ten percent of normal levels, so there were no chum eggs to spare for our hatchery.We knew beforehand that the coho eggs had thin and fragile shells, an occasional natural occurrence. Our volunteers gently coddled the eggs through to the alevin stage and lost just under thirteen percent, leaving us with about 59,000 coho. The eggs hatched to alevin on March 14. The alevin buttoned and were ponded on April 29th. Our fry were very healthy and aggressive feeders, and like natural jumpers that coho are, they were often observed trying to jump up the falling water entering the troughs. The coho averaged 1.4 grams at release. West Vancouver District staff removed the silt from the settling tank upstream of the hatchery on June 9th without first contacting hatchery staff or DFO. Water flow to the hatchery was cut off during the cleaning, and the result was the deaths of approximately 15,000 coho, one quarter of the fish at the hatchery. Volunteers were devastated. The District has proposed several improvements and changes to the hatchery system to lessen the possibility that this will happen in the future.
The Nelson Creek Hatchery coho were released on June 12th to Eagle, Nelson, Willow, Cypress, Lawson and McDonald creeks. A few hundred coho were released to Wood Creek at Parc Verdun on June 10th with the help of school children from Eagle Harbour Primary School and other neighbourhood kids. Surplus coho fry from the Capilano Hatchery were released to West Brothers, Brothers, Marr, Godman, Pipe, Caulfield, Larson and Hadden creeks. A small number of coho smolts were released to McDonald Creek at Memorial Park as a children’s fish release on April 30th. A full summary of the 2011 fry releases is available here.
Summaries for salmon raised at the Nelson Creek Hatchery in previous years are available here
