All posts by Christina

McIntyre Creek is an important Chinook salmon rearing stream within the City of Whitehorse. This creek flows directly into the Yukon River and is culturally important to the Ta’an Kwäch’än Council (TKC); it is part of TKC’s Traditional Territory and an important fish camp was present at the mouth of the creek in the past. It is a documented Chinook salmon rearing channel, and a considerable number of juvenile Chinook have been captured in the lower reaches of this creek below Mountain View Drive, during recent fish sampling works (EDI 2011). In the 1940’s the U.S. Army initiated the construction of a landfill on the escarpment above the lower reaches of McIntyre Creek. This landfill was operated by the army through the 1940’s, and then transferred to the City of Whitehorse and operated as the municipal landfill until it was closed by the Yukon Water Board in 1975. In 1968, a large volume of dump refuse slid down the escarpment and into McIntyre Creek. Subsequently, with the construction of a berm, the affected portion of McIntyre Creek was re-routed to isolate it from its original stream channel which was extensively filled with debris at bottom of the escarpment. With the exception of the berm construction in 1968, large scale clean-up and remediation of the landfill and associated riparian area of McIntyre Creek did not occur until TKC initiated these work in 2004. In 2005, TKC constructed a new earth berm in the riparian area of lower McIntyre Creek. The construction of this berm was funded by the Yukon River Panel R&E fund (CRE-53-06) and was constructed as the first stage of TKC’s clean-up of the former landfill. The purpose of the berm was to prevent the creek from eroding into the area of the former creek channel that was isolated in 1968.
Recent visits to the site have indicated that several areas of McIntyre Creek near the former dumpsite are actively eroding, and may by-pass the berm structure that was installed in 2005. The stream bank in this area is steep and is eroding too quickly to allow for the establishment of riparian vegetation. Although the
majority of the surface waste material was removed during TKC’s clean-up operations, if the creek erodes into the former dumpsite area, remaining waste material could be exposed and transported downstream into the Yukon River. It is felt that this potential issue could be avoided by installing some stream bank stabilization features to deflect flow away from this area. As such, TKC proposes to install small flow deflection structures along the eroding banks of McIntyre Creek, to slow the rate of erosion in the area of concern.

The goal of this project will be to determine Chinook salmon spawning success from hatchery juveniles out-planted in the mainstem of the Yukon River.  Success will be investigated by surveying the study area for emergent fry (0+) in early spring using electro-fishing instrumentation. Spawning success assessment will be complemented by conducting adult spawning surveys in August.  The deliverable will be a report detailing the work conducted and an opinion on the success/value of outplanting chinook fry into this section of the Yukon River and if the practice should be continued or other options considered.  As this investigation will be conducted in the vicinity of another outplant location (i.e. Wolf Creek) information relevant to the understanding of this location will be obtained although the focus will be on the mainstem.

The Fishing Branch River weir has been used for numerous years to document the annual escapement of Porcupine River chum; however, weir operations were discontinued after 2012, in favor of a sonar station near Old Crow. To compare future run estimates from the Porcupine River sonar program to historical counts from the Fishing Branch River weir, a thorough understanding of the destination of chum salmon passing Old Crow is required. The weir and sonar programs operated concurrently in 2011 and 2012; chum salmon were floy tagged at the sonar site and a portion of the tags were recovered at the weir, providing rough estimates of the proportion of Porcupine River chum salmon passing the Fishing Branch weir location. In 2013, EDI Environmental Dynamics Inc. (EDI) radio tagged 94 chum salmon at the sonar site and tracked them to spawning destinations throughout the upper Porcupine River. The results of this program indicate that approximately 74% of tagged chum salmon spawned upstream of the former weir site in 2013. A second year of radio tagging will provide strong confidence in the relationship between weir and sonar counts, which has been under development since 2011. The proposed project involves conducting a second year of radio telemetry for chum salmon in the Canadian portion of the Porcupine River watershed. Fish will be tagged at the Porcupine River sonar location and tracked to tributaries in the Porcupine River, upstream of the sonar site. The knowledge of current spawning locations gained from the 2013 program will be used to focus the surveys on known chum salmon spawning habitats, while also adding more previously undocumented tributaries that could support spawning chum salmon.

This project follows the focused, effective and efficient model developed and used by DFO Stock Assessment in the Yukon and Transbondary Rivers.  A helicopter will be used to access the river, assess sampling opportunities in respect of concentrations of spawners, safety of landing, and efficiency of sampling.  The area where the most fish may be captured at the least risk will be sampled first, then the second and so on. The North Big Salmon downstream of Northern Creek is well suited to this strategy.  The high water wetted perimeter is wide and at lower water levels has well developed bars.  These allow risk-free landing sites. Tissue acquisition will follow the current DFO Protocols. All locations where sampling occurs will be geo-referenced.  The numbers of fish sampled in each will be reported. Representative digital photographs will be taken, collated and submitted to DFO and offered to the Little Salmon/Carmacks First Nation.

This project will take the form of a work experience program intended to offer a Teslin Tlingit youth the opportunity to explore a variety of fisheries-related work, building skills and experience in this field in the role of Salmon Steward. This position will, in turn, build the long-term capacity of Teslin Tlingit Council (TTC) to carry out projects and programs that promote salmon restoration, conservation, communication, and education.
The TTC Salmon Steward will be supported by experienced TTC staff technicians and managers and work with these staff, consultants, and TTC summer students over the course of one year. The range of work experiences that will be provided to the TTC Salmon Steward will be broad, and includes exposure to and participation in Chinook salmon management planning, meetings, and implementation, technical skills in restoration and monitoring, and educational and communication material development.  The creation of this position supports the success of other TTC projects (Deadman Creek Chinook Restoration and Upper Teslin Watershed Chinook Telemetry projects) by ensuring that the additional field-based capacity that these require is secured for the duration of the projects.

This project has 2 main goals; 1) to document the extent of juvenile Chinook salmon utilization in the Carmacks area on an annual basis to create a meaningful data base, and 2) to involve community (school and youth groups) in the collections in order to maintain a personal link between the year to year fluctuations of the salmon populations and in the process develop local stewardship of the salmon resources. To do this we will conduct a minnow trapping survey in 15 to 20 easily accessed sites within our traditional territory. The sites will be chosen this, the first year, on the basis of ability to be repeated in subsequent years. The accumulated data-base, composed on an annual basis, will allow an opportunity to follow the relative abundance of juvenile Chinook in the area. After several years of collection the data set will show trends and become a valuable tool in assessing health of individual areas.

The Tay River is a tributary of the Pelly River in the upper Yukon River drainage and is also is one of the larger tributaries within the Pelly River watershed with an area of approximately 3,500 km2.

Despite the large size of the watershed and suitable habitat,  Chinook were not found in previous radio telemetry studies. The telemetry studies included detailed aerial surveys of all possible drainages that could contain Yukon River Chinook populations (Mercer 2005, Mercer and Eiler 2004, Osborne et al. 2003). The lack of radio tagged Chinook in the Tay River system led the researchers to conduct a more detailed aerial investigation of the lower reaches of the system. This investigation and subsequent surveys indicated that an impediment to salmon migration (velocity barrier) was located approximately 5 km upstream of the mouth of the Tay River drainage (Mercer and Eiler 2004).

Due to the Tay River system’s relatively large size and probable spawning and rearing habitat, it may offer one of the better opportunities to significantly increase Chinook production within the upper Yukon River system. The increase in Chinook production would be accomplished by providing and/or improving access for Chinook salmon into the system through modification of the current barrier /impediment to salmon migration.

Juvenile outmigration is an important life stage for Yukon River Chinook salmon. Recent research suggests that much of the variability in Chinook salmon production may occur prior to the first summer at sea (Howard et al. 2016, Murphy et al. 2017) and that larger fish with higher energy content at the end of their first marine summer had a greater chance of surviving to adulthood (Howard et al. 2016). Outmigration from the river to the marine environment is physiologically stressful. Larger in-river has been linked to both downstream survival (Zabel & Achord 2004) and adult returns (Zabel & Williams 2002, Woodson et al. 2013) in wild Chinook populations, and suggests that early growth in fresh water may be an important indicator of later growth (Ruggerone at al. 2009). This is consistent with an emerging idea that fish need to prepare themselves for life history transitions such as smolting or offshore migrations. This preparation is associated with increased energy reserves, which are maximized by increased size.

The objectives of this project are to quantify outmigration timing from ice out through the end of the August,  examine size (length and weight), growth, diet, energetic condition, and smolting stage of outmigrating juveniles in relation to environmental variables in the freshwater and nearshore marine environment, and to collect genetic samples to assess outmigrant origin.

The main goal of this project is to develop a juvenile stock-recruit relationship for Yukon River Chinook salmon. Information about limits to production in the freshwater environment can play a key role in augmenting standard stock-recruit analysis.  Our second goal is to contribute to understanding about the extent that juvenile rearing habitat is limiting productivity at a given stock level which can then form the basis for setting restoration priorities. The objective of the proposed work is to extend an existing 6-year database of juvenile Chinook salmon density for small non-natal streams tributary to the Yukon River near Dawson City. Sampling in 2018 and possibly 2019 will take advantage of recent strong returns to the Canadian basin.  With an additional 2 years of data the relation between spawner abundance and subsequent juvenile density should be well established so that it can contribute to the goals identified above.