our Salmon's Journey
Each fall our Coho salmon find their way back from the ocean to the mouth of Shawnigan Creek, where they stage at the base of the waterfalls to begin their upstream migration.
Although we still net the salmon who attempt to jump the waterfalls by hand, for the most part the salmon are naturally guided into our fish trap facility located beside the falls. Inside the trap, there are a series of cages that are in place to protect the salmon from predators (like otters), and from poachers.
When there are enough salmon collected in the trap, they are then netted by hand and passed up to the second floor. This is a very wet and strenuous step of the process, but every year a group of our dedicated volunteers gets it done!
Once on the second floor, the salmon are placed in a holding trough with flowing water where they are staged for the next step of the process.
The salmon are then placed in a specially designed elevator car that runs on a rail system built into the side of the 110 foot high ravine beside the trap. The elevator is powered by utilizing a rope and pulley system attached to a truck at the top of the ravine.
At the top of the ravine, the salmon are then counted and transferred from the elevator car to a live fish transfer tank on a trailer. Once the tank is full the trailer is pulled to a release location above the falls.
Once at the release site, the salmon are placed into another trough attached to the live tank and then they slide down the bank into the creek in our specially designed 'salmon slide'. Watch a reel below of our salmon slide in action!
Once the salmon are in the creek, a group of volunteers ensures that every fish has made a full recovery from the various steps in the transfer process. The fish usually rest for a very brief period, but they quickly realize they can continue migrating upstream to multiple locations in the Shawnigan Lake watershed to spawn in the place where they were born.
Once our Coho head up Shawnigan Creek, we don't have a lot of information on exactly where in the watershed they go to spawn, or all the places where the fry are maturing to smolts. What we do know from the annual return numbers and consistently setting new return records, is that the run is thriving, even through recent adverse climate events like heat domes and atmospheric rivers.
Another important part of our project is supplying brood stock to several area fish hatcheries. We supply Shawnigan Lake School, which is the only school in BC with its own fish hatchery on campus, with brood stock, and staff and students participate in our relocation efforts each year. We also supply additional brood stock to the Goldstream River salmon hatchery. Shawnigan Lake School published a short reel highlighting their students activities from last year, watch them in action below.
When spring arrives, our volunteers are busy again with repairs and maintenance to our equipment, a clean up of our trap facility, as well as a spring clean up of Shawnigan Creek. We check various key locations along the creek and remove trash, as well as any large barriers that could prevent our fall salmon from migrating upstream, or the smolts who have matured in the creek from travelling down towards the ocean.
By the numbers...the graphs above give you an overall sense of how much our salmon return has grown over the years. Coho salmon have a natural 3 or 4 year return cycle, meaning they spend either 2 or 3 years in the ocean before they return to spawn. Our resident Coho return is on a 3 year cycle.
salmon's journey presentation
In 2025, we were asked to put together a presentation highlighting the success of our Coho salmon project and providing more information on what we do and how we do it. You will see pictures and video from our annual salmon relocation efforts, along with some graphs that demonstrate how much our Coho salmon spawning run has grown over the years, reflecting the positive impact on salmon migration.
Click below to access the slide show: