Hatchery to gain a second life..

The all but abandoned Oldfield Creek Hatchery is receiving a much needed makeover, and better days will be ahead if the plans of new manager Stephen Leask and his fellow volunteers fall into place.

Leask and his group are launching an ambitious plan to bring the Hatchery back to its former glory days and hopefully to add to the experience there, partnerships between Northwest Community College and Fisheries and Oceans Canada will help the hatchery get back on track and once again educate the local population and repopulate salmon stocks from the creek.

The Friday Daily News had a feature story on the project.

Manager hatches new salmon plan for Oldfield
By Kris Schumacher
The Daily News
Friday, September 07, 2007

The Oldfield Creek Hatchery in Prince Rupert has been deteriorating and barely operational for years, but that's about to change.

Thanks to the newly appointed manager, Stephen Leask, and several other volunteers, the hatchery has been undergoing renovations for the past few months in order to bring it back to its full operating capacity and the splendor it once brought to the community as the Salmonid Enhancement Society headquarters.

"Nobody really knows how many years it was operating properly, because when we took over there was no water capacity," said Leask who's been managing the facility part-time since October.

"There were maybe 2,000 or 3,000 fish at the most being released, and we're supposed to be doing at least 100,000 eggs a year."

The hatchery has always been a place where people from the community could visit, learn and partake in the process of salmon rearing, but in recent years it fell toward a state of neglect. But now with new partnerships between Northwest Community College and Fisheries and Oceans Canada, there is hope that the hatchery will once again be a staple of Prince Rupert community life.

"We have a course in Salmonid and Hatchery Management, and our students are going to do the field component of that course out there at the hatchery, so that will be the outdoor classroom," said Pouyan Mahboubi, Coordinator and Professor for the Applied Coastal Ecology program at Northwest Community College.

"They'll participate in the egg-take out at Kloiya Bay, taking the eggs from the salmon, and our students are going to help with the rearing process and raising."

Mahboubi says that while students have always been able to volunteer there, it's never been an ideal place to conduct classroom activities.

"It's been mostly sessions where they went down there on the weekends, and worked for three or four hours on a particular project. But now we'll actually be able to do class time there, and it'll be a bit more professional now."

Leask is a graduate from the Applied Coastal Ecology program, and it was through his work with the hatchery as a student that he realized what was needed to revamp the facility.

"Through the program, you have to write a funding proposal, so I wrote my proposal for the hatchery, and I ended up getting funding and being the manager as well at the end of the process," he said. "It's such a perfect opportunity for both the hatchery and the program to work together and give students hands-on training."

When Leask first took over the hatchery last year, only one of the eight rearing tanks was operable, but now they are all back at full capacity thanks to another of his successful proposals for a new water shed, which provides full water capacity to the operation.

In fact, funding for the hatchery went from $10,000 last year to $26,000 this year, through partnerships with the Pacific Salmon Foundation and DFO, as well as some generous donations from local groups and businesses like Trayling's and the Elks.

The work done at the hatchery not only enhances salmon stocks in the watersheds it is responsible for - which right now are Oldfield Creek, Kloiya Bay, and Diana Lake - but it also provides the public with an opportunity to participate in nearly every aspect of the operation, from catching the sample salmon to the eventual release of the reared stock.

"What we do is go out there with big seine nets and we'll collect the females, which we have to kill to strip them of their eggs and ovarian fluid," explained Leask.

"We take three males per one female for sperm samples, and the males get to go back into the water. So quite typically, males get their way and get to keep spraying their genes."

Each of the collected females' eggs are combined with sperm and then incubated in large trays, which are labelled carefully as Female 1, Female 2 and so forth. This is so that when samples of each are eventually sent down to the Pacific Biological Station, scientists can report back to the hatchery to let them know which females have Bacterial Kidney Disease, a prevalent disease among salmon on the North Coast.

"One female coho will have anywhere between 1,800 to 2,000 eggs," said Leask.

"Our success rate last year without having anything that we have now was 84 per cent, and in the wild it's about 3 per cent. Every female has at least 1,000 fish come back with us, so we're putting at least 1,000 fry (juvenile salmon) per female into the rearing tanks."

The fry are kept in the rearing tanks for a year and a half before they are released, and Leask estimates this year will see 20,000 fry being released from the hatchery. The rearing area is one of the last places that requires serious constructional work, but Leask says there is always plenty of work for the public to help with.

Volunteers are always welcome at the hatchery, whether it's elementary or secondary school classes interested in learning more about salmon, or adults who want to help with the ongoing construction during the next few months in order to restore the hatchery back to it's original state.

"We're looking for volunteers that just want to come help out with small stuff, and we're looking for people that want to donate even three hours a month throughout the entire year," said Leask. "Because there's always something to do, even after we get past all this major work that you see right now."

Leask would love to be able to do it all himself, but as someone with another full-time job aside from part-time management of the hatchery, the time he can dedicate is somewhat limited.
"There's always stuff for people to do, like picking eggs, releasing the fry, general maintenance, feeding, yard work. We're always looking for people that have any kind of specialty who are willing to help out, whether it's carpentry, electricians, anything.

"Contractors aren't something we can go out and hire, we have to come do it by hand. The budget we get is only to operate this place, and DFO doesn't have a whole lot of money for community-based projects."

However, Leask is confident that more volunteers and community involvement with the hatchery will equate to more funding from the PSF and DFO.

"If we say we want a new feeding system and it will take the equivalent of $6,000 in donated hours, with stuff like that, the more volunteers we have, the more money they'll give. If you don't have the community behind you, you won't get the funding you need."

To find out how you can volunteer at the Oldfield Creek Hatchery, call Stephen Leask at 624-6733 or drop by the hatchery in person. It is located behind the Lester Centre on Wantage Road.