by Brian Tate
Ha-Shilth-Sa Northern Region Reporter
May 8, 2003
Kyuquot/Checklesaht - It's 6 am, and we're traveling by boat to a sockeye creek that flows from Jansen Lake to Kashutl Inlet.
Jansen Lake is of great concern to the Kyuquot/Checklesaht Fisheries department due to a drastic decline in Sockeye returns in the past few years.
It is unknown what the exact cause is for this decline, if it was the past logging in and around the lake or over-fishing, lack of spawning beds, or simply poor ocean survival or a combination of all that was mentioned.
But in any case this lack of Sockeye returns means that there is not enough for Food/Social or Ceremonial use from this once abundant lake.
"Very few sockeye smolts are being produced from Jansen Lake," said Leonard John, "this worries me, for future sockeye stock abundance. We have had a smolt counting fence at Jansen Creek since April 1st, everything was fine up until the tenth of April when the rains hit hard and blew out our fence with the heavy outpour from the lake. The fence just could not take the pressure." Leonard continues to say, "We rebuilt the fence after the creek subsided and have been able to accurately count any salmon fry or smolts migrating down to the ocean. But during the time the fence was blown out we lost a lot of valuable data, without the data for those few days who knows how many sockeye smolts passed through to the ocean. All we can do now is continue with our work, and hope the sockeye numbers increase in the near future. We have asked the people not to fish this creek for ten years and the people have consented and our Fisheries department is grateful for their cooperation."
On this day Leonard John and Danny Short capture only one Sockeye smolt in their counting fence on its way downstream and three Coho fry and one Cutthroat trout in their counting fence.
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