Atlantic Salmon Smolt Assessment – Terra Nova River

FABEC will conduct a follow-up of their 2024 smolt assessment of Terra Nova River as part of the Wild Salmon Watersheds and their 5-year commitment to understand salmon productivity in the Terra Nova River. Building on the past year’s success, the project will enhance information leading a stronger understanding of the river’s salmon population demographics, location of critical habitat, and if there are issues with in-river survival and spawning success. This project will address these needs and enhance efforts to understand the cause(s) of declining returns by quantifying smolt production and estimating marine survival. While adult counts on Terra Nova River date back to 1956, these provide little information on population demographics, juvenile health, and other life stages that could provide insight into critical habitats, ecosystem health, and limiting factors. This will build on FABEC’s 2024 effort to estimate how many smolts leave the river and build a baseline of smolt numbers to compare against adult returns.

Until FABEC used the RST in 2024, traditional smolt fences were the only method used in Newfoundland and Labrador to estimate smolt populations. High costs have limited such operations to only a few rivers. In recent years this approach has been undermined by increasing flood events associated with climate change that wash out fence structures and result in incomplete counts.

While refining procedures and addressing deficiencies identified during the past year, this project will repeat the 2024 project, using the RST and mark recapture technique to provide insights on the health of the Terra Nova River smolt population and a realistic estimate of Atlantic salmon survival during the marine stage in their life history. Lessons learned in site selection and operation of the RST in Terra Nova River will be documented in the final report to aid future RST operations in other rivers in the province.

This follow-up study will:

• Validate the utility of RSTs to enumerate downstream movements of Atlantic salmon smolt in Terra Nova River (TNR).
• Attempt to obtain a reliable estimate of smolt production in TNR based on RST catches and mark recapture.
• Estimate post-smolt survival in the marine environment by comparing adult returns to smolt population estimates from the previous year(s).
• Quantify biological characteristics such as smolt size, weight, and age to better understand the population structure and health of the TNR salmon population.
• Improve the knowledge of resident and sea-run brook trout, sea lamprey and American eel movements providing additional insights into ecosystem health
• Summarize the information in a concise report to help improve smolt data that is lacking for Newfoundland and Labrador rivers.
• Coordinate this project with other efforts to track salmon and learn about critical habitat and limiting factors
• Incorporate results of this project along with other efforts into watershed planning.