Monday September 29, 2025
North Shore News —
Deep in the Seymour River valley – many kilometres beyond where the public is allowed to tread – a brief struggle ensues.
Reece Fowler dips his net into a trailer-mounted tank absolutely aboil with adult coho salmon. He and other helpers wrangle the flopping fish into a PVC pipe and, a moment later, the coho splashes down into the river, getting its first taste of the pristine Seymour water.
It’s part of an ongoing effort by the Seymour Salmonid Society and Metro Vancouver to re-wild a river network that’s been cut off from natural spawning since the construction of the first Seymour Falls Dam in 1927.
“Aside from some reasonably small-scale logging that the water district did from the mid-’60s to mid-’90s, this is really some of the best fish habitat left in North America because it’s effectively been largely untouched for 100 or so years,” said Jesse Montgomery, Metro Vancouver’s division manager for the watershed. “Certainly, these transports upstream of the dam are highly beneficial to have salmonids raised in natural habitat conditions.”
Coho, chinook and steelhead runs have been kept alive on the Seymour thanks in large part to the Salmonid Society’s hatchery about 16 kilometres north of the river mouth. It’s only since 2019 that they’ve experimented with putting mature coho above the reservoir.
This year, the salmonid society and Metro have been given permission by Fisheries and Oceans Canada to move 200 male cohos and 200 females above the dam. The numbers are based on DFO’s calculations for that stretch of the river’s carrying capacity. If all goes well, the reintroduced coho will spawn before they die and their eggs will hatch in the spring.
But as always, the odds are stacked against them.
“They might lay 2,000 eggs, but only two or three might make it back as adults, because all of the others have been taken out by predators or fishermen,” Fowler said.
Better ecology, better fish
There will be a difference, though, for those taken above the dam. Unlike their hatchery-bred cousins, natural selection will make the wild salmon populations, for lack of a better word, tougher.
“Taking advantage of the wild habitat we have upstream of the dams is genetically very important for salmonid species. It’s very much a survival of the fittest. The young fish up there have to hunt and find food and survive on their own, and it really brings the strength of the gene pool to the forefront,” Montgomery said. “The natural populations certainly need to be more versatile and resilient in the face of challenges posed by climate change.”
And the presence of salmon in the Upper Seymour is good news for more than the fish themselves, Fowler said. The entire forest ecology of the region north of the dam has been missing a critical ingredient for almost a century.
“If you’ve got 400 adult salmon coming into the upper watershed, that’s 400 fertilizer pellets that can then go and feed this forest. And then there’s all of the fry that would hatch – things that get eaten by other fish and the heron and various things, and that just helps that nutrient cycle continue,” he said.
“Pacific salmon are a keystone species in this part of the world. They are critically important and support the rest of the entire ecosystem,” Montgomery added.
Despite what the fish may be doing in the water supply, people opening their taps at home shouldn’t haven any public health concerns, Montgomery specified.
“We’ve got extensive, world-class water treatment systems downstream of the dam,” he said.
Return on investment
It’s been six years since the first adult coho were placed in the Upper Seymour, meaning there’s a good chance they have descendants returning to spawn today.
Apart from the fish, no one is more pleased to see things progressing as they have than Shaun Hollingsworth, president of the Seymour Salmonid Society.
“Moving those fish above the reservoir, allowing them to spawn into their creeks that they spawned in over 90 years ago, is something that I’ve just dreamed of my whole life, honest,” he said.
But at what point can the reintroduction of adult salmon be deemed a success? Because of their wild nature, the Salmonid Society doesn’t know how many of the Upper Seymour fry are making it out to the ocean and back. They only know for certain which ones came from the hatchery because all hatchery fish have their adipose fins clipped before release.
Marc Guimond, executive director of the non-profit and hatchery manager, said they’d like to see a 50/50 mix of wild and hatchery salmon when they return. Today, it’s more like a 70/30 split in favour of the hatchery fish.
“So that’s still that imbalance. We still want to see more of the natural production coming out of the river,” he said.
But the total numbers of fish that do survive and come back to the Seymour is most definitely on an upward trajectory. When volunteers did their first seine netting of one of the pools outside the hatchery last week for population research and collecting brood stock, they found one of the largest returns they’ve seen in decades, possibly ever.
“The numbers of fish that are returning to the river are very impressive,” Hollingsworth said. “I’m thrilled. I mean, this is great news.”
Slide into home
The dam, though, isn’t the only impediment fish have faced on the Seymour. In December, 2014, a naturally occurring rock slide sent 80,000 cubic metres of granite down from the canyon wall into the river in the Twin Bridges area. It choked the Seymour to a trickle and made it impossible for even the strongest swimmers to make it through.
Hollinsworth and the Salmonid Society co-ordinated with the municipal, regional, provincial and federal governments and the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw (Squamish Nation) and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh Nation) on a plan to re-open fish passage.
Each summer for the next five years, highly-trained experts rappelled down the canyon walls and used low-velocity explosives to break apart the massive boulders, some the size of minivans. High river flows in the winter months would then push the debris down to the canyon floor, gradually opening up channels for the salmonids to climb.
In 2019, the society confirmed for the first time that coho could make it through once again.
But precarious as life on the Seymour can be, recreational fishing hasn’t been allowed on the Seymour since the time of the slide. Hollingsworth said pink salmon still struggle to pass the rockslide site and they may have to keep chipping away it in the years ahead.
Perhaps the best sign of the river’s recovery will be when DFO and the province lift the ban on fishing. Hollingsworth will be ready with his rod and lures when that happens.
But if he catches a coho with its adipose fin still intact, that’s one he’ll want to throw back. It might just be fighting its way against the currents and the odds, back to the wilds of the Upper Seymour River.