Long-absent salmon attacked by teenagers

BURNABY, B.C. — Salmon that finally returned to Stoney Creek after 50 years have come under attack by teenagers who have been videotaped in the act in this Vancouver suburb.

“I was so, so upset,” said Vladimir Soukhatchev, a volunteer streamkeeper and fisheries biologist. “First of all, I started to cry, and then I started to record.”

Soukhatchev recorded the kids throwing rocks at fish and spearing them, then took the clip to nearby Burnaby Mountain Secondary School where the principal identified the culprits.

Two are now doing voluntary community service and others are under investigation, fisheries officer Neil Jensen said. Small explosives were thrown at the salmon, mostly chum and coho, and trees were hacked down to impede their path, Jensen said.

“Kids being kids, it’s a fun thing to do,” he said.

“Maybe it’s not done out of maliciousness, either. A lot of times it’s just something fun to do,” he said. “A lot of these kids, once you talk to them and explain that the fish are protected by the Fisheries Act, they feel pretty bad about it, so we’re working on a lot of education.”

Jensen said voluntary community service is at the low end of the punishment scale. Under the Fisheries Act, the maximum penalty is a $100,000 (US$84,500) fine and six months in jail.

Development and pollution over the last 50 years prevented spawning salmon from getting to the upper reaches of Stoney Creek, a tributary of the Brunette River.

For 10 years groups such as the Stoney Creek Environmental Committee and the municipal government have worked to revitalize the stream, which is protected by the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans.

The last hurdle was overcome in August when a baffle was installed in a highway culvert, allowing hundreds of chum and coho to splash their way upstream for the first time.

“Every year, at the great salmon send-off for 14 years, we’ve been releasing coho, but we’ve never seen them come back,” said Jennifer Atchison of the environmental committee. “But this great tradition goes on and on in this blind faith.”