Yes. It was extremely disappointing in the final minutes to have the department keep the eggs and do a fry release instead of allowing us to pick them up to grow them as S1s. Just so you know, for the Henderson project, we had a five-year private commitment to pay for the entire enhancement program. Released as fry, they will have 160 fish come back. Released as our S1s, there would have been 1,100 or more adult returns.
As for the frustration, I think Rebecca Reid stated that they rely on private and public involvement and participation because without it they wouldn't be able to complete as many projects as they do in the department. There are a lot of good things going on. However, it appears that for our private hatchery, once all these results have come in for the S1s, it's as though they've dug in their heels and they don't want to allow us to participate.
I don't know. All I can say is that given the results, it needs to be transposed in a bigger scale to rebuild the stocks, and should [Technical difficulty—Editor] After 40 years of enhancement, they're down to 70 fish. It means that in 40 years of enhancement, with a return of 260 on average. When they started 40 years ago, 200 fish were in the system. In Clayoquot Sound, all the chinook stocks are now at a high-risk level because the returns were so low.
I have demonstrated that if you grow them more naturally, they behave differently and you will get way more fish back because there is greater survival. I don't know. As I said, I am here today saying that maybe we need to set up a special committee to make these decisions in real time. I wrote to the department 18 years ago and stated that their 0.02% to 0.06% survival could be increased to 5% to 10% and all they had to do was change how they grew the fish. They have their results now, so here we are.