An estimated two million young salmon were destroyed in the Fraser River last month during a gravel mining operation that had the support of the federal Fisheries Department, a new report from B.C. Institute of Technology fish and wildlife department researchers alleges.
BCIT program department head Mark Angelo said Monday that an investigation by students and staff shows that the gravel mining operation rerouted the river and left several hectares' worth of spawning beds high and dry, leaving millions of pink salmon to die while they were in the most vulnerable stage of their young lives.
Angelo estimated that under normal circumstances, about 40,000 adult pink salmon would have survived from the original hatch of 2.25 million fish, which are known as alevin when they first emerge from their eggs. A copy of the report, obtained by The Vancouver Sun, asserts that the federal Fisheries Department failed to properly monitor the gravel operation and failed to ensure that it would not threaten salmon spawning beds located in the immediate area.
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Downstream below the road, the causeway had shut off the flow of the river through the Big Bar Island side channel and left high and dry a spawning area several hectares in size. The report says the river above the causeway was a metre higher than it was below, just a stone's throw away. Salt said the students, guided by BCIT instructor Marvin Rosenau, could tell at a glance that the river had only recently receded from the area. The exposed gravel surface was pockmarked with about 6,500 nest depressions that served now as the grave markers for millions of salmon who were in the most delicate stage of their tenuous life cycle, developing from tiny red eggs into alevin.
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http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/story.html?id=cd688451-7e0f-44a2-86cb-3f47156de012&k=53774
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