Wednesday April 2, 2025
Global Seafood Alliance —
Each spring, Atlantic salmon biologists in Canada gear up for the installation of smolt wheels in rivers – big rotating drums that collect smolts as they travel downstream – offering critical data on salmon migration, river productivity and population health.
When conducted over multiple years, the results from smolt wheels are gathered and modeled against known changes to monitor the effectiveness of conservation and restoration.
Last spring, a smolt wheel was set up for the first time in the Terra Nova River in Newfoundland. John Baird, a project manager with the Freshwater-Alexander Bays Ecosystem Corporation in Glovertown, told the Advocate that it will give scientists a wealth of information to drive their conservation work forward.
“We are an organization of volunteers that has been around since the late 80s,” Baird said. “We embarked on the smolt wheel initiative with the Atlantic Salmon Federation (ASF), while the Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) supports us and helps with salmon assessments and research. We want to determine the health of the smolt population and how to improve and sustain it.”