Salmon run hits
Sixty salmon turned in across region for research project
April Hudson
Northern News Services
Thursday, October 27, 2016
DEH CHO
The promise of a larger-than-normal chum salmon run through the Deh Cho lived up to its hype this month as local fishermen started hauling in the big fish.
Edward Cholo holds up two of the salmon he caught in Fort Simpson this year. - photo courtesy of Environment and Natural Resources
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Wrigley's Charlie Talley, an avid fisherman who spends his time out on the land and on the river, recently brought in 41 salmon heads to the Department of Environment and Natural Resources.
In total, Talley says he pulled in 49 salmon in one week.
"It was good. It was just luck," he said.
"I've been catching (salmon) for almost 10 years now but it seems like this year there is more."
Usually, Talley reels in two or three salmon each year.
The heads are being shipped to Winnipeg to be used in a salmon research project that looks at the DNA of the fish and determines where they are from.
Karen Dunmall, a PhD student from the University of Manitoba, has spent the last five years in collaboration with Fisheries and Oceans Canada to measure salmon numbers along the coast and down the Mackenzie River.
The territorial Department of Environment and Natural Resources is also a partner on the project and hands out gift card rewards to harvesters who bring in heads or full salmon.
They are also assisted by renewable resources boards and hunters and trappers committees.
Dunmall says she has had roughly 350 samples traded in across the Northwest Territories so far this year, with roughly 60 of those coming from the Deh Cho as of Oct. 21.
That's a large increase on the last big run of chum salmon, which headed up the river in 2011. That year, Dunmall received 225 samples, four of which were from the Deh Cho.
In the Deh Cho, three salmon were traded in 2012 and again in 2013, falling to two in 2014 and rising to four in 2015.
But since the beginning of October, the response to her research has been so overwhelming that the Department of Environment and Natural Resources is now only accepting heads.
"It hasn't slowed down. We're still trying to get salmon to Winnipeg," Dunmall said.
Edward Cholo, a Fort Simpson fisherman, handed in seven salmon samples to the department after fishing near the ferry landing.
"It's not too rare, but this year there seems to be more," Cholo said.
As for Dunmall, her scientific term for the numbers of salmon is "nuts," she said with a laugh.
"It's pretty interesting - the response from people to hand them in has been fantastic. It takes a lot of effort from everybody . but people are still interested in it," she said.
Dunmall says that many of the salmon involved in the large 2011 run were five-year-old fish coming back to spawn.
"The fact there's more salmon this year I think raises more questions than provides answers. I'd like to see if these salmon coming back this year are also five-year-old fish, which would be interesting since it's five years ago when the last big run happened," she said.
"I'd like to take the DNA out of these salmon to figure out if we can tell where they're coming from. I'd like to add them to other years and compare - are these fish coming from the same places as in 2011?"
