A-Tlegay Fisheries Society received funding to study wild and hatchery salmon stock abundances within the Quinsam River.
Of that funding, roughly $11,000 went toward PIT tags and PIT application guns, with the remaining $19,000 supporting work at the Quinsam hatchery fence to carry out the fieldwork.
Juvenile salmon enumeration ran at the Quinsam hatchery fence from March 11 to June 5, 2026, including a Bismark brown marking event to estimate trap efficiency. Between April 24 and May 29, A-Tlegay staff applied PIT tags to out-migrating wild and hatchery Coho smolts as well as Steelhead, tagging 545 hatchery Coho, 1,900 wild Coho, and 224 Steelhead.
As these fish return as adults, PIT arrays in the Quinsam River will allow the smolt-to-adult return rate to be calculated, while the out-migrating fry and smolt counts will help inform hatchery production planning and predictions for future adult salmon returns.
This project extends A-Tlegay’s ongoing monitoring of wild and hatchery salmon in the Quinsam River and contributes to the “Bottlenecks to Survival” initiative, which is building a longer-term dataset on the factors limiting juvenile salmonid survival in the watershed.
The Quinsam is shaped by both BC Hydro dam operations and DFO’s hatchery program, and continued monitoring is increasingly important as the river faces higher water temperatures and lower flows — conditions that put added pressure on juvenile salmon. A-Tlegay Fisheries Society plans to continue this work and will keep seeking external funding to support it.