Vancouver Island hatchery marks huge return of pink salmon

A Vancouver Island hatchery is reporting the biggest return of salmon it’s had in years, exceeding expectations after a challenging spring.

Quinsam Hatchery in Campbell River saw over one million pink salmon return — an increase of approximately 200,000 from the previous year.

Ed Walls, the Watershed Enhancement Manager at Quinsam, says the hatchery releases salmon to the sea annually each spring, where the fish must survive until their return the following fall.

Walls says the typical marine survival rate in recent years is three per cent.

“So for every 100 fry that leave the river in the spring, we are seeing three of those come back as adults a year and a half later,” he explained. 

“And we were kind of expecting to see maybe like 450,000 fish come back at that 3 per cent survival [rate], and then we more than doubled that as a return.”

Walls says it’s too early to tell if this year’s return rate is an anomaly, but he’s hopeful that it’s indicative of improved ocean conditions.

“Something miraculous happened in the ocean.”

Along with pink variety salmon, he says the hatchery has also seen its biggest return of Coho salmon “in at least 10 years, maybe even longer.”

Healthy salmon runs, Walls says, benefit more than future spawning numbers for hatcheries and fisheries.

“We obviously see a lot of dead fish, because after they spawn, they die. It’s super good nutrients for the rivers, like the bear activity we see around on the Quinsam [River] at the moment is kind of extraordinary, and they bring super important nutrients up into the watersheds.”

—With files from Isabella Calissi