The Kanaka Education and Environmental Partnership Society is welcoming their old friends back, down at Kanaka Creek at 240th Street, on Sundays for the next few weeks.
KEEPS is holding its Return of the Salmon event, starting next Sunday, Oct. 22, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.
The society will be there explaining to anyone the wonders of the Pacific salmon. This time of the year, it’s chum salmon finding their way back. Later, in November, coho salmon should make an appearance.
Ross Davies with KEEPS, says the event is just to celebrate the salmon coming back and will take place a few Sundays afterwards as well. There won’t be any egg taking or tagging. He’s not sure what kind of chum salmon run it will be this year. Ocean conditions in 2015 weren’t good for chum, he said.
The first fish started appearing early in the month “and the last week, it’s been building,” Davies said.
Kanaka Creek usually sees between 3,000 and 10,000 chum salmon. Pinks aren’t usually found in Kanaka Creek after the run was destroyed by over fishing and gravel mining in the 1950s.
But the number of pinks is low even in the Fraser River this year, he added.
KEEPS also had an open house last Sunday at its new Kanaka Creek Watershed Stewardship Centre on 256th Street.
