The region’s aquaculture association last week completed a $620,000 extension of two chum spawning channels located near the Porcupine Road in the upper valley.
The project was funded by a state Department of Commerce grant awarded in 2013 and secured by former state Rep. Bill Thomas of Haines, said Scott Wagner, operations manager for Northern Southeast Regional Aquaculture Association.
The work extends a channel at Herman Creek built in 1988 by about 600 feet, and another channel dug in 2008 by 500 feet, increasing the length of each by about one third, Wagner said.
For spawning success, chum salmon need streams with a certain type of gravel, free of sediments, and fresh-water upwellings that provide oxygen that keeps their eggs alive, Wagner said. “The fish naturally seek those out in the natural environment and focus their spawning in them.”
A day after project completion, two fish already were seen spawning in a new section, and by midweek, about 100 fish were in each channel, said Fish and Game commercial fisheries biologist Randy Bachman. “They just started showing up. I guess if you build it, they will come.”
Todd Buxton, who previously worked for NSRAA in Haines, was contracted to help design the channels. In an email this week, Buxton said the width of the new channels ranges between 14 and 20 feet, and they required an average depth of excavation of between 10 and12 feet.
“The channel extension nearly tripled flow in the Herman spawning channel at the location where NSRAA crews installed a fish weir… Encouragingly, the pump tests accurately predicted we would find a mother lode of water,” Buxton wrote.
Buxton said construction of the channels attracted onlookers. For visitors to the site, access points have been built with boulders left over from armoring the upstream end of the channel.
The project included work on existing channels, particularly addressing an erosion problem caused by a side channel of the Klehini River. “The backwater caused bank erosion that substantially widened the channel. This, in turn, caused flow depths and velocities to be lower in the channel than chum target for spawning. We largely remedied this condition by narrowing the wetted channel width throughout most of its length in the originally constructed section,” Buxton wrote.
Former legislator Thomas said he expects the improvements at Herman Creek will provide some late-summer chum, but he said he was disappointed the funds didn’t go toward chum channels further downstream in the area of Klukwan, the spawning areas for fall chum salmon.
“I wanted the money for the fall chum run, which is important to eagles and to our fishing fleet. It used to put a lot of money into Haines,” Thomas said.
Thomas said his intent was to try to rebuild the late Chilkat chum run. Fish spawned at Herman Creek return in August when gillnetters are still targeting sockeye salmon, Thomas said. Chilkat chums at that time of year are “more of an incidental harvest than anything,” Thomas said.
Thomas said pressure needs to be maintained on NSRAA to clean and maintain chum channels.
Fish and Game biologist Bachman said the Herman Creek channel has been the most successful of several in the valley. Bachman said another spawning channel downstream near Klukwan hasn’t proved to be as productive.