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Fry and fathers celebrated at Maple Ridge fish release

The anual ARMS Father’s Day fish release was held at Maple Ridge Park on Sunday

Both fathers and fry were celebrated at a special event in Maple Ridge Park on Sunday.

The Alouette River Management Society held their annual Father’s Day fish release in partnership with B.C. Corrections.

The day was started with a pancake breakfast put on by the Lions Club and the release started at 11 a.m. with 5,000 chinook fry waiting to be let loose into the river.

Children took turns releasing the fry from small white buckets containing around 12 fish each.

The chinook salmon are fry or a smolt size, about 50 grams each, and they are raised at the Allco fish hatchery in Allco Park, explained Greta Borick-Cunningham of the Alouette River Management Society.

The salmon will spend time in the river area getting bigger and then go out to the ocean where they will spend a couple of years before returning to the Alouette River to complete their life cycle.

Borick-Cunningham noted that hatchery raised fish are very different than salmon-farm raised.

“Hatchery are released as young fry or smolts into the river so they get to go to the ocean and then come back and complete their life cycle. As opposed to farmed fish which basically spend their time in containment,” she explained, adding that salmon stocks have improved in the South Alouette.

Now Borick-Cunningham is advocating for a fish passageway program.

“We want to see fish get up into the Alouette rivershed and over into the reservoir under their own actions,” she said.



Colleen Flanagan

About the Author: Colleen Flanagan

I got my start with Black Press Media in 2003 as a photojournalist.
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