Clint Goyette has spent a lot of time on the rivers around Squamish, B.C., over the last two decades as a fishing guide, but even he was shocked to see hundreds of dead fish lying in pools along the Cheakamus River recently.
Clint Goyette has spent a lot of time on the rivers around Squamish, B.C., over the last two decades as a fishing guide, but even he was shocked to see hundreds of dead fish lying in pools along the Cheakamus River recently.
The spawning pink salmon, on their way to lay thousands of eggs, became trapped in isolated pools and died as water levels in Cheakamus River rapidly fell — the result of a nearby BC Hydro facility decreasing the river's flow, known as ramping, at the end of September.
"I was out guiding the day of the [river level] reduction," said Goyette, who runs Valley Fishing Guides in Squamish, about 65 kilometres north of Vancouver.
Goyette said he ran into BC Hydro crews out on the river surveying the damage, one of whom warned him about what he was about to encounter further up the river.
"I passed one of their crew … and he said, 'There's hundreds of dead fish up there so don't be surprised,'" Goyette said.
Biologist Chessy Knight, who captured photos of the dead fish on Sept. 20, estimates about 300 fish were killed when the water levels in the Cheakamus River fell by about half over the course of a day.
The pink salmon were trapped in shallow pools and couldn't return to deeper, flowing sections of the river.
"This has been happening for many, many years on the Cheakamus," said Knight, who's also president of the Squamish River Watershed Society.
"But this is the first time that we saw adult spawners also affected by these flow manipulations."
Oct 5, 2019
