1) Next Membership Meeting: The next meeting of the members will take place on Thursday,
October 3 at St. Stephen’s Anglican Church starting at 7:30 p.m.
2) Adopt-A-Fish: This year the event was held under sunny skies on Saturday, April 20. Youngsters, after receiving an adoption certificate at the Memorial Library, proceeded to Memorial Park to received a coho smolt from the Fisheries truck. These coho smolts were then released into McDonald Creek soon to depart to the ocean for their next stage of life. This year approximately 300 children and their families participated in this wonderful experience. Adopt- A-Fish is hosted by The Coho Society of the North Shore, West Vancouver Memorial Library and West Vancouver Streamkeepers.
3) Streamkeepers Seaside Social: A good turnout was enjoyed by our members and invited guests at this annual event at Hollyburn Sailing Club on Thursday, April 25. Speeches were minimal, door prizes extensive and a great selection of appetizers and beverages completed a superb social gathering in a fabulous marine setting.
4) Streamkeepers Annual General Meeting: The Annual General Meeting took place on May 9 at St. Stephen’s Church. The current board of directors were re-elected – John Barker (president), Mike Perley (vice president and secretary), Bill McAllister (treasurer), Bill Chapman, Don Harrison, Liz Leduc, Jan Moger, Keith Moger and Keith Pelletier.
5) Pacific Science Enterprise Centre: On June 8, a celebration took place marking the second anniversary of the facility at the DFO laboratory in West Vancouver. Streamkeepers are represented on both the Science Partners team and the Community Leadership team.
6) Coho Festival: On September 8 we will once again be on station at the Coho Festival at Ambleside Park. If you wish to help out please contact Liz Leduc at liz.leduc@shaw.ca.
7) The Urban Salmon Project: The Members Meeting held in January featured guest speaker Fernando Lessa, a career photographer. His collection of photographs of salmon in creeks and rivers around the Lower Mainland have now been compiled in a book called The Urban Salmon Project. Fernando, at our request, will be on hand at the Members Meeting on October 3 with a supply of books should anyone wish to purchase a copy. The cost is $35.50 (cash or cheque).
8) Youth Recognition Awards: Streamkeepers nominated two students from West Vancouver Secondary School for a District’s Youth Recognition Award. This was acknowledging their leadership in the spawner salmon survey program conducted with secondary school students and Streamkeepers. On May 6, Alice Kang and Chaereen Kim received their awards at the celebration held at the Municipal Hall.
9) CreekTalk: Marlene Loader provide CreekTalks to two groups Grade 2 students at West Bay Elementary School to learn about local watersheds and stream ecology. Her talk also raised the students’ awareness of the importance of taking care of their backyard streams to provide healthy salmon spawning and rearing habitat. Students were eager to learn and make connections to this environment by participating in hands-on activities. They also became keen storm drain painters. 10) Storm Drain Painting: Three elementary school events were completed this spring - two with Pauline Johnson Ecole and one with West Bay Elementary. This was followed by volunteers from Whole Foods Market, Park Royal, who painted storm drains in the Ambleside area. In total these events resulted in 171 storm drains being painted this year bringing the total to 3,059 at 47 events over the 12 years of running this program. Thank-you to Sherry Parrott and Marlene Loader for their leadership. 11) Capilano Trap and Truck Program: Metro Vancouver have for many years operated a coho and steelhead smolt capture program well north of the Capilano Dam as these fish start their out-migration to sea. These smolts, to avoid the voyage over the dam, are trapped further upstream and transported by truck to be released in the Capilano estuary. Coordinated by Mike Perley, several Streamkeepers assisted with both daytime and late evening releases, the latter seeing much reduced bird and seal predation of these juvenile coho and steelhead. 12) Herring Spawn Enhancement: We completed the third year of this program focusing on four new locations this year - Caulfeild Cove, the West Vancouver DFO laboratory, Dundarave and Ambleside. As with prior efforts, we found no evidence of herrings spawning on these nets. The program is on hold at this time as we explore other possible ways of introducing herring spawn activity. Many thanks to all those who participated and to the Municipality, DFO and the private marine facilities that offered encouragement and support for the program. 13) Nelson Creek Hatchery: The chum salmon fry were released into four creeks (Eagle, Rodgers, McDonald and Lawson) on April 15 and 16. The coho salmon fry were released into nine creeks (Nelson, Eagle, Wood and Cypress) on June 12 and Rodgers, Lawson, McDonald, West Brothers and Hadden on June 13. The release of these fry was changed this year to include more release locations for each stream and at each location, multiple release sites providing a much wider distribution of the fry. A big thank you to all the volunteers who provided time at the Hatchery raising these eyed-eggs to the fed-fry stage and then the final release. 14) Invasive Plant Mapping: Coordinated by Annie Faw, 14 members surveyed a total of 12 creeks to identify and map locations of invasive plants in and around local creeks. The data for the 13 invasive species identified were provided to the District’s Parks Department, helping build a database throughout the community. We will be conducting another survey in September. 15) Whole Foods Market: The bag donation program came to an end on March 31. A total of $1,735.00 was received from this initiative. Thanks to all who shopped there and named our Society as the recipient of these donations. 16) Membership: The total membership to date for 2019 is 258.
John Barker, President jrbarker@shaw.ca 604-922-5780