First 2024 Egg Count from Basil Creek

Roy L Hales/Cortes Currents -The final count for Cortes Island’s 2024 Chum run is not yet in, but according to local streamkeeper Christine Robinson, “We have never seen a return like this during the 34 years we've lived on Cortes, but the phenomenon is up the coast as far as Alaska. It's not specific to Cortes and the Discovery Islands.”  

“It’s down into Washington state as well,” added her husband and fellow streamkeeper, Cec Robinson. 

On Monday, November 18th, five Cortes stream keepers and a semi-retired DFO employee from Campbell River gathered in the Klahoose Hatchery to count this year's first egg take from Basil Creek.  

Christine Robinson: “Males and females were taken from the creek.  The milk and the eggs were taken out and they were  fertilized by hand. It happened twice this year because there were enough that came in.”

Cec Robinson: “So ten pairs and then another fifteen pairs.”

Cortes Currents: All of the eggs counted Monday were from those first 10 pairs. There were 24,949 eggs. 829 were dead, which leaves more than 24,000 live eggs. Assuming that there is a similar harvest from the remaining 15 females, the streamkeepers could have about 60,000 Chum eggs. 

Cec Robinson: “Today was  shocking the eggs that we have in the Klahoose hatchery. Shocking, picking out the dead ones and counting  what we've got. The shocking is a simple process of physically shocking the egg to break a little membrane inside any of the non viable eggs. This little membrane will fracture and when the water gets in, it turns the egg white. So you know which ones are not viable and you pick them out. So it’s a case of counting or weighing the number of live and the number of dead.  We want to know the percentage of the survival, how many eggs we've taken and  the level of fecundity of the females. That's of all super interest to DFO.”

“In this case it was terrific. The usual expectation is around 2,000 eggs per female.  We took 2,500. These fish were extra big and extra healthy. The eggs actually are extra large. It all bodes well for the survival of these little guys. Now we know how successful we've been so far and what our potential is for stocking the creeks.”

Cortes Currents: Do you usually have a number of eggs that die?  

Cec Robinson: “There’s always some, I think 5% mortality is excellent and at this point we're under four (3.32%). There will be a few more over the next few days and we'll just keep picking out the ones that have turned white.  It'll still be under 5%.”

Cortes Currents: Do you have any idea how many salmon came up this year?  

Cec Robinson: “Our best guess would be easily 2,500 and there could be close to 3,000 - in Basil Creek alone.” 

Christine Robinson: "Not collectively on the island, I'm still totalling up." 

Cortes Currents: Given that this year’s run seems to be shaping up to be two to three times larger than anything seen in recent memory, why bother taking eggs? 

Cec Robinson: “That’s a darn good question. I'm sure nature does the job way better than we can, but it's happened twice in recent years that Basil Creek has had a massive flooding that essentially blasted most of the eggs out of the creek or buried them. If the fish are unfortunate enough to have that happen again, this year we've got a bit of a reserve. The other thing we can do is use some of these eggs in the less productive streams. So, in Whaletown Creek, James Creek or Carrington Creek. Some of them will go there, and those streams are the ones that could definitely do with a larger run.”