Fisheries Committee on March 10th, 2020

[Mel Arnold, Conservative, North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

I mean monitoring flights on the Fraser. Can you send that report back to the committee so we can take a look at that? I know they're done regularly during the fishing season to monitor how many fishermen are on the river, but how many other monitoring flights does DFO do on the river?

[Andrew Thomson]

To clarify, we do monitoring flights for stock assessment purposes and we also do monitoring flights for enforcement purposes, looking for nets and also doing counts.

[Mel Arnold, Conservative, North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

Could you provide the committee with a report on all monitoring flights done on the Fraser River over the past four years?

Next, how many days were the fish transfer operations conducted last fall?

[Rebecca Reid]

I can't tell you offhand.

[Andrew Thomson]

I think we started in mid-July and we ended in the first week of September.

[Mel Arnold, Conservative, North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

Was it approximately two months, 60 days?

[Andrew Thomson]

Approximately.

[Rebecca Reid]

That sounds about right.

[Mel Arnold, Conservative, North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

The report said that 30,000 fish per day were passing through the slide unassisted. A quick calculation of 30,000 times 60 days would be what, 180,000 fish?

[Andrew Thomson]

No....

[Mel Arnold, Conservative, North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

No, it's 1.8 million fish.

[Rebecca Reid]

I think at certain points there were those numbers of fish passing, but you want the numbers and we'll clarify, because we have the numbers. They're a bit unclear at this point.

[Mel Arnold, Conservative, North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

Thirty thousand fish per day passing unassisted is certainly a misleading report, and that's DFO's official report on the website.

[Andrew Thomson]

It is the number that passed. Once the level of the river came down to a point where natural fish passage could occur, you saw a very significant increase very quickly in the numbers of fish that could pass.

[Mel Arnold, Conservative, North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

A time reference on that report would probably be very beneficial.

Next, how many smolts will be required to restore that one lost year? How many smolts per year would need to be back in the streams to migrate back down in order to replace that loss? What would be the typical smolt output in that year class?

[Rebecca Reid]

That's a very difficult question to answer. It would depend on the productivity in the ocean, the survivability, the conditions. I can't answer that offhand.

[Mel Arnold, Conservative, North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

How many smolts would typically be produced in that run class from the expected passage rate? Of the natural spawning and rearing, how many smolts would be expected to be migrating out from that year class?

[Rebecca Reid]

I'm sorry. I don't have that number.

[Mel Arnold, Conservative, North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

Could you provide that to the committee, please? Thank you.

Earlier you mentioned that you're looking at current DFO hatchery sites. Why are you not looking at private or NGO hatchery capacity as well, to help with the restoration?

[Rebecca Reid]

We have an enhancement team that's looking at all viable options. Where there is hatchery capacity, we'll be looking at it. However, DFO is going to need to have some management oversight of those hatcheries in order to ensure that the enhancement activities take place in the way we need.

[Mel Arnold, Conservative, North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

Yes, that's understandable.

What other contingency plans are being put in place to increase the in-stream habitat to possibly boost the natural reproduction to rebuild those stocks?

[Rebecca Reid]

Related to this incident itself, we don't have any restoration activities of that nature as part of our contingency, but there are broader restoration activities going on.

[Mel Arnold, Conservative, North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

Then there's nothing focused on restoring these particular stocks that have been impacted so severely.

[Andrew Thomson]

There is an overlap, because the stocks that migrated above the slide were already stocks that in some cases were in some difficulty.

Some of our restoration activities focus on those stocks and were already focused on them prior to the slide.

[Mel Arnold, Conservative, North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

We're out. Thank you.