Moricetown Tagging program info

Here is the last MOE Update to October 1st for the Moricetown Tagging Program.

Update for Week 12 (ending October 1st) for the Wet’sewet’en Steelhead Tagging Program at Moricetown on the Bulkley River

As of October 1st , the stratified estimate (i.e. roughly correcting for a one week migration delay) for steelhead arriving at Moricetown that are suspected to overwinter throughout the Bulkley/Morice watershed in 2010/2011 is 36,520 steelhead (Table 1) that have arrived immediately downstream of Moricetown canyon.

As requested, I have also used the non-stratified Petersen method to estimate the sub-total of abundance for only steelhead that have moved upstream of Moricetown Canyon up to October 1st which ranged from 22,290 if 40% fallback to 33,429 with only 10% fallback.

Here is a short summary of other points noted following the site visit on October 4th and based on the data update:

• There was a significant flood on September 26th that washed out the dip net shelter, washed away one of the beach seines and raised the water level over a metre.
• The fisheries were closed until September 29th, and the high water conditions resulted in significantly reduced efforts at both the beach seine and dip net locations last week.
• Despite the poor sampling conditions, there appeared to be a surge of steelhead at the Canyon Dip Net in Week 12 based on catch and observations.
• Due to high water, the beach seine was limited to the campground site with a shortened net which reduced the efficiency of the beach seine sampling in week 12 compared to island sets in week 11.
• The surge in the steelhead abundance estimate in week 12 (i.e. increase >5000 steelhead) is related to the peak catch by the Beach seine in week 11 and the average time delay of a week from beach seine to dip net fisheries.
• The sampling efficiency appears to be improving this week as the river level continues to drop, so it will be very interesting to see the catch data for week 13 and 14 as the water level recedes.
• It sounds like sampling is going to make it through to October 15th this year.

(There is also a Table showing more detailed information....but it does not copy/paste in a properly formatted view into Blogger. If you'd like this info....just send me a note and I will forward via regular email. douguide@telus.net )