Young trout and salmon in T’am Gandlaay will have a better chance of surviving drought thanks to work done at the creek last weekend.
T’am Gandlaay is the creek people see when they walk up the Spirit Lake hiking trail. It runs down from Spirit Lake and enters the ocean just south of the Skidegate Small Hall.
During the last three or four summers, water levels in the lower section of the creek have dropped dangerously low for fish, says Missy McDonald, a Skidedgate band councillor.
“We’re losing our coho,” she said.
Last summer, McDonald noticed salmon fry trapped in a creek pool above Front Street that had dropped to only 10 inches. Some volunteers helped her catch the fry and move them to safer waters.
By next morning, she said, the pool had dried completely.
For fish, a critical part of the creek is the concrete raceway that guides the creek under Front Street and down to the beach. The raceway has a higher lip at one end that can block fry when water levels are low.
McDonald said workers can’t dig a deeper channel in the concrete raceway because public works infrastructure is buried directly underneath.
But last weekend, a visiting team of biologists and engineers with Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) helped install a different fix. They put up weirs to hold back gravel in places, channeling the creek at low water so there is a stronger current to carry fish over the lip.
The team also hand-dug some deeper pools in the lower section of the creek and raised some temporary shade cover to help keep it cool until fall.
McDonald and Erin Harris, the DFO community advisor for Haida Gwaii, worked together with local streamkeepers to fund the work. Natalie Newman, a Smithers-based DFO community advisor for Northwest B.C. also helped with the project.
McDonald said oxygen levels in the creek are okay so far this summer, and the Skidegate Band Council has oxygenators they can use to aerate the lower pools if the creek flow ever stops at the Front Street raceway.
Along with the work on the creek itself, the team surveyed the knotweed growing along it for a future plan to eradicate the invasive species from the area.
“Knotweed has roots that drink a lot of water,” McDonald said.
Looking ahead, McDonald said Skidegate will need to do a lot more work to make sure local creeks continue to provide good fish habitat.
“Climate change is impacting us and we need to come up with a long-term plan.”