Cowichan River chinook salmon returns highest in at least 36 years

Cowichan River chinook salmon returns highest in at least 36 years

The Cowichan River had an estimated escapement of 25,914 adult chinook aged three to five years in 2024, “the highest count” in at least 36 years, says a federal fisheries official.

Karalea Filipovic, a stock-assessment biologist with Fisheries and Oceans Canada, told the Cowichan Stewardship Roundtable on Tuesday that chinook escapement estimates additionally included 16,655 smaller, two-year-old jacks.

Filipovic said the high number of jacks in the Cowichan River is not typical of other rivers. “It definitely is unique. When we’re reporting on numbers for other (river) systems, jacks are almost a footnote.”

The vast majority of jacks in the Cowichan River are males. They are found spawning and dying in the river, but it’s unknown whether some return to the ocean and come back as adults.

Filipovic would not guess at the cause of the positive 2024 returns. “No speculation at this point,” she told sixmountains.ca. “We’ve been seeing kind of a building of these positive returns the last few years. So, we’re just happy to see the trend continue.”

The escapement estimates are conducted in collaboration with Cowichan Tribes, BC Conservation Foundation, Pacific Salmon Foundation, and Pacific Salmon Commission.

Numbers may “change slightly as we get more biological data back,” Filipovic said.

There were no significant fish kills in 2024 on the Cowichan River, in contrast to the major die-off in 2023.

Read more: https://www.sixmountains.ca/article/15c9e9ee-2efe-4aab-9075-65462099aaea

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— Larry Pynn, Feb. 19, 2025