There is work being done at the Kanaka Creek Park Fish Fence that will help a local salmon group in rearing fish.
The Kanaka Education and Environmental Partnership Society (KEEPS), which operates the fish fence and rears salmon at its hatchery, is reinforcing the fish fence with a new steel and concrete structure.
"The old wooden A-frames have taken a lot of hits over the years," said Ross Davies, spokesperson for KEEPS.
There has been high water and floating debris piling up at the fish fence in the recent past.
Davies said the basic configuration and operation of the fish fence off 232nd Street will remain the same. Salmon are trapped there, and their eggs used in the hatchery operation. The Bell-Irving Hatchery is the largest community partnership hatchery in the Lower Mainland. Some 4,500 hours of volunteer work goes into producing the hatchery's licensed quota of 325,000 chum, 80,000 coho, and 150,000 pink salmon in odd-numbered years.
The work on the new fish fence will be completed by fisheries experts in time for this fall's spawning, which should start strong.
Davies said the prospects for Fraser River pink salmon are great this year, with median forecasts calling for a run of 27 million. Pinks are the first salmon run on the Fraser.
"Some of that action has to spill into Kanaka," said Davies, noting it should be a dramatic natural spectacle when the fish arrive in the river – as early as the last week of September in Kanaka.
The Watershed Watch Salmon Society offered a prediction on salmon returns for 2025, and it says pinks are forecast to return in numbers exceeding their long-term averages, calling the Fraser pinks a "bright spot" in wild salmon returns.
"The Fraser River pink salmon return is forecast to exceed 29 million fish at the 50 per cent probability level, meaning it could well be smaller, or much larger, than the 29 million," said the Watershed Watch report.
