I hope you're right Kay! Thanks so much for the update on Ma and Pa...loved seeing both of them through you

Thank you so much, Kay and Elle, for keeping us informed about Ma and Pa. Your photos are fab as usual, Kay. It is bittersweet to see them as I long to watch Ma and Pa busy doing nestwork - I miss Ma telling Pa
exactly where that particular stick must go......
I hope David can pursuade the farmer to change his mind .......
In the meantime, we thank you both for letting us know the scoop around the new nest.

Good news for Ma and Pa.

Thousands of salmon arrive in Goldstream

By Judith Lavoie, Times Colonist November 3, 2011


Visitors to the Golstream River last month were made aware of tests taking place. (October 2011)Photograph by: Lyle Stafford, timescolonist.comThe nailbiting wait for fish to arrive in the Goldstream River ended this week with the arrival of 9,000 spawning chum salmon.

The number, so far, is short of the targeted escapement of 15,000 and there are concerns that few fish are milling about in Saanich Inlet waiting to enter the river. But, even if no more chum arrive, there are now enough to seed the river, said Steve Baillie, federal fisheries stock assessment biologist.

"If everything was to stop tomorrow it would not be a disaster, but we hope they will carry on for another week or so," Baillie said.

"It's not looking like a huge concentration in the inlet, but we're breathing a lot easier than we were a week ago."

The arrival of the chum, which make up Goldstream's famous spawning run, puts paid to fears that fish would not enter the river because of a gasoline and diesel spill in April. "It is not deterring the chum," Baillie said.

The 42,000 litres of gasoline and 650 litres of diesel spilled after a Columbia Fuels tanker crashed into a rock wall on the Malahat.

There have been extensive clean-up efforts, with Columbia Fuels picking up the tab, and water in the river is now running clear, but worries about the fish grew when few chinook or coho turned up to spawn.

Goldstream Hatchery manager Peter McCully is relieved to see the chum arrive, but disappointed with chinook and coho no-shows.

"The chinook have had such low returns it's almost extirpation," he said.

However, because chinook return to the rivers of their birth as three-to-five-yearolds, there is a chance that fish born in other years will help to keep the run going.

Eighteen chinook made it back this year, but the run has never been strong with an average of about 30 fish.

McCully hopes more coho will make it back as, so far, only 80 have been counted.

"The coho run can last until the end of November and can dribble in until January. I'm not surrendering right now," McCully said.

The reasons behind good or bad salmon returns remain a mystery for fish biologists, McCully said.

"We might as well cast a bunch of chicken bones on the table - that's how good we are at prognostication," said McCully, who wonders whether the North Pacific has a finite carrying capacity affected by giant hatcheries in Japan, Alaska and Russia.

Another mystery under scrutiny is the slow return of chum to the Cowichan River.

"The Cowichan is right next door, but we've not seen this big push of chum in the last day or so that we've seen in Goldstream," Baillie said.

"It is kind of worrisome. We have 53,000 and the target escapement is 160,000.

We should be about halfway through the run," he said.

© Copyright (c) The Victoria Times Colonist

haven't been here in awhile, but thanks Elle for that hopeful outlook, we can all keep for things to get better there, am happy for ma and pa too and thank you Kay for all your beautiful photos, so wonderful to see them so healthy and just gorgeous as ever looking forward to more

I went to Pat Bay this afternoon and did not see Ma or Pa anywhere They were probably at Goldstream chowing down on spawned out salmon. I'll be making a trip there soon.

ETA: Doreen, thanks for your kind words about my photos

Thanks for having a look yesterday, Kay.
I get local reports almost daily and neither Ma nor Pa have been seen for a few days now. Goldstream is having a good salmon run. That is where they must be.

Thanks Kay and Elle for being our eyes and ears in regards to Ma and Pa! I plan on a Sunday visit to Goldstream if nothing happens to change that

Interesting report from the farmers today. They say they see Ma and Pa every day bringing in sticks and continuing to build the nest. The nest is huge now and very deep. When Ma and Pa are in the nest they are not visible from the ground. Unfortunately I cannot provide a snapshot ; only a verbal description. But they are both fine and that's the main thing.