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Sonar counts salmon 24/7 at Vedder Bridge Semá:th celebrating fourth year of five-year conservation, harvest plan on Sumas-Chilliwack River Jennifer Feinberg The Progress
The cutting-edge sonar equipment just down from the Vedder Bridge is counting salmon around the clock. It’s the fourth year of Semá:th First Nation’s five-year Conservation, Guardianship and Harvest plan. They celebrated Tuesday with an opening ceremony, and welcome song on the south side of the Vedder-Chilliwack River at Crossing Park. Semá:th councillor Chris Silver underlined the critical importance of the river, land, and the salmon: “Just before we start the song, I would like to announce that we’re on the shared and traditional and unceded territory of the Soowahlie, Ts’elxwéyeqw, and Semá:th people,” Silver said. “All our villages intertwined right at this one point and a majority of our people utilized every part of the river. I just wanted to give an explanation because this land is so very important to us; this area is so very important to us and our number one food source - the salmon.” The Conservation, Guardianship
and Harvest team will be on-site collecting data until the first week of August on the sockeye and chinook salmon runs that are returning. Semá:th councillor Troy Ganzeveld said ultimately they’re after a better understanding of the number of fish that are coming through the system, as well as catch rates, by species, and size, the usage, and recreational impacts to help the nation “re-establish stewardship of the resource” and help the struggling salmon stocks recover, and rebound. The goal of the stock assessment and abundance survey is preservation and restoration of salmon, while promoting sustainable harvest management. Traditional fishing knowledge from Semá:th fishers and knowledge keepers has been guiding their use of the sonar for the survey. The selective fisheries they’ve been testing out on weekends have been focused on salmon while avoiding stocks of concern, such as Cultus and/or Chilliwack Lake sockeye. By focusing on the Sumas River for harvesting in food, social and ceremonial fisheries, they provide an alternative to Fraser Anglers fish the Vedder River near sonar equipment that will be counting salmon in the river downstream from the Vedder Bridge. (Jennifer River main stem fisheries. Continued on Page A10 Feinberg/ Chilliwack Progress)
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