Recovering endangered inner Bay of Fundy (IBoF) Atlantic salmon in the Petitcodiac Watershed & Big Salmon River

The goals of the “Recovering endangered iBoF Atlantic salmon in the Petitcodiac Watershed and Big Salmon River” project are the following:
•Conduct Live Gene Bank (LGB) Program unfed fry releases into nursery habitat of the Petitcodiac watershed.
• Release Fundy Salmon Recovery (FSR) adult salmon into the Petitcodiac watershed.
• Install, monitor and implement a mark-recapture protocol using fyke-nets and a rotary screw trap, targeting out-migrating smolts in the Pollett River.
• Collect and transport smolt to the FSR conservation site.
• Acoustic tag a portion of smolts from the Petitcodiac watershed.
• Maintain adult salmon detection via Passive Integrated Transponder antenna arrays on the Pollett and Little Rivers.
• Conduct exploratory salmon density assessments in cold water refugia in the Pollett River to track FSR program success.
• Conduct adult salmon enumeration snorkel surveys.
• Collect fall parr for overwintering at MBF.
• Release non-target (surplus) LGB adult salmon to the Big Salmon River.

These activities contribute to the continuing strategy of realizing a higher presence, at all life stages, of endangered iBoF Atlantic salmon in the Petitcodiac River watershed, working toward the objective of returning the population back to historic levels.
New project components include exploratory salmon density assessments in cold water refugia, acoustic tagging of smolts and adult releases in the Big Salmon River. In collaboration with Dr. Kurt Samways, the Pollett River will be thermally mapped. From these maps, we will ground truth cold water refugia and conduct exploratory salmon density assessments. We suspect that parr are seeking cold water refugia, and conducting electrofishing surveys in our fixed “historical” electrofishing sites may not be accurately reflecting juvenile density in the river. River conditions are changing with the threat of climate change, and we need to assess juvenile prevalence in these cold-water plumes.