Day one of a really short work trip into the interior of BC.
Today was a flight into Williams Lake and then a drive into Likely (yes, that’s actually the name of a place) to visit a former DFO hatchery that was decommissioned back in the late 1990’s and taken over by the University in Prince George in the early 2000’s.
We were looking to see what could be done to use the site for some adult salmon holding later this year if and when the slide at Big Bar is still impassable by salmon migrating up the Fraser River this summer. It’s looking like the blasting will not adequately reduce the flow velocities during the freshet this spring, no matter what efforts are made, so some backup plans need to be in place.
As it sits, this site isn’t particularly viable, and there is an issue with building infrastructure on a site not owned by the government – why did we ever give this up?! The memories of some people formerly familiar with this site, and the original plans dug out of archives, had made it appear as if there was still some really good infrastructure in place. But walking through the facility left us realizing that the majority of the incubation infrastructure was gone; maybe it’s sitting in a boneyard somewhere, but the current maintenance manager on UNBC staff has only been there about a year and wasn’t familiar with what we were hoping to find. And, since everything is buried under a few feet of snow, it wasn’t like we were going to find much. The concrete channels were also largely covered, but we could see enough to realize that they didn’t have the necessary design to divide them easily, and there would be a challenge in treating adults with the necessary therapeutants to keep them alive for the months of holding they are going to need. The goal is to do better than they would do in nature, we don’t want to catch them and kill them in holding. And then we also need a method for adequately diluting those treatments before the water goes to the river below.
In other words, not an ideal solution.
But I couldn’t help looking at a few flat areas on the site that had been cleared of snow and came up with an idea. I pointed out the flat spots and brought up temporary installation of fibreglass tanks? The four of us did some brainstorming based on those flat areas and have a half baked plan that could work and would allow water management and effluent dilution in the process, without interfering overly much with a couple of research projects that apparently take place in a few of the concrete channels when they aren’t buried by winter.
So…maybe….with a lot of work in a very short time frame.
The weather was spectacular; the sky bright blue, the snow bright white, and the temperature a balmy +3C, or so. The sun was warm and felt good.
One thing I do love about it up here is that the winters are not that persistent grey drizzle that just depresses the life out of me…the way the shorter but wet and colourless winters that the coast can lean towards.
I find the brightness and the crisp air a pretty good failsafe against feeling blue.
I was able to enjoy riding with a pair of entertaining American fisheries engineers, up from Washington and on contract for their expertise on hatchery infrastructure. The one fellow was pretty cheeky and made for a distracting few hours between destinations. Usually the last place I want to be is alone in a vehicle with complete strangers, but they were really great. To be honest, most people involved in fisheries are pretty great.
When we arrived in Prince George in the early evening we were hungry and thirsty so we headed out for a bite to eat and a drink to wash it down. I fired off a quick text and was happy that an old friend could join us for dinner and a beer; it made for a better day than I was anticipating, and it was really nice to see that an old building downtown had had some new life breathed into it as a craft brewery.
It’s hard coming up here; there has been a lot of loss over the past ten years and I succumb to the memories easily, ending up in a pretty black place when I do.
It was a whirlwind day and the majority of my photos were work related images of the inside of buildings, water supply systems, and concrete raceways. But I did point my camera at the winter wonderland for a few minutes at least.
And, owing to the company on and off the road, I was able to restrict myself to reflections on the water instead of the past 🙂
(64/365)
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