Friday April 8, 2022
CTV News —
Volunteers are seeing their restoration work at Bowker Creek in Oak Bay pay off after chum fry hatched in the urban waterway for the first time in 70 to 90 years.
The Friends of Bowker Creek Society have spent the last 20 years restoring the creek to make it clean enough for salmon to survive. In January, working with Fisheries and Ocean Canada (DFO), the society secured an incubation box filled with 28,000 chum eggs in a manufactured gravel bed.
This week, the chum fry were spotted swimming in the creek.
“It means that we’ve taken one little successful step forward in re-establishing chum salmon in this creek,” said Gerald Harris, director of the Friends of Bowker Creek Society, as he stood at the bank of the creek.
The society hopes this success means DFO will continue to provide it with eggs for the next few years so chum will continue to hatch in the creek.