Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Moricetown Canyon mark-recapture study






An update on the Moricetown mark-recapture tagging program on Bulkley river steelhead.
The first steelhead was captured in this fishery on 24th of July. Up to Aug. 7th, approximately 83 steelhead have been captured.

The first image shows a sonic tag attached to a steelhead. The second image shows the beach seine crew at the canyon exit pool. Fish are tagged and released here. The third image shows the dipnet fishery upstream at the falls. Fish are caught by dipnet at the left of the image and transported to a tagging station where the two women are standing on the fish ladder. Here they are tagged, any previous tagging information is recorded, and the fish released.

A pilot steelhead sonic tagging project will commence this month and continue throughout the summer/fall. 66 tags will be placed on steelhead captured in the Moricetown Canyon dipnet and beach seine fisheries – the objective is to assess drop-back in order to calibrate the Moricetown Canyon mark-recapture derived steelhead abundance estimate. If you do recover a steelhead with a sonic transmitter attached to the base of the dorsal fin (see attached photo: Sonic Tag), please do not handle the transmitter but report the capture location, fish and tag condition via e-mail or telephone (250.847.7297). Approximately eighty three steelhead have been captured to date in the Moricetown Canyon mark-recapture fishery (58 dipnet, 25 beach seine. Four sonic tags have been applied: 3 in the dipnet fishery and 1 in the beach seine.Info courtesy of Min. of Environment, Smithers

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