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Recovery Strategy for
inner Bay of Fundy Rivers

Basics on Recovery Strategies
  • Final responsibility for iBoF salmon rests with DFO
  • iBoF Recovery Group formed, with DFO as lead agency
  • Partners include Fundy National Park, Atlantic Salmon Federation, Fort Folly First Nation, Bay of Fundy Ecosystem Partnership and others

    While freshwater issues have traditionally had the greatest impact on inner Bay of Fundy salmon runs, now there is a major issue of mortality at sea.
ACTIONS BEING UNDERTAKEN
In the Mactaquac Biodiversity Facility run by DFO, a worker inspects adult salmon from the Big Salmon River that are being maintained for gene banking purposes.
photo Tom Moffatt/ASF

The ingredients for making a healthy iBoF salmon population are fairly straightforward. But they're not so easy to find! Here's what we need:

First, we need to protect those few fish that remain in our Bay of Fundy rivers. This means keeping the rivers clean, healthy, free of barriers that block the salmon's passage, and clean. Where the rivers aren't suitable for salmon, restoration work needs to be done. Community-based projects like the Fort Folly First Nation Habitat Recovery, the Cobequid Conservation Project, and the Fundy Biosphere Initiative are working towards protection and restoration of rivers and waterways. Replanting bushes, trees, wild grasses and other vegetation along the edges of streams helps to reduce erosion and shades the water, keeping it cool enough for salmon and other creatures.

In addition to supporting the survival of remaining fish, initiatives like these can help to get rivers ready for salmon recovery in the future, once the loss at sea problem is solved. If there is no existing project on your river, why not start one? You can get information and help from the organizations listed on the back page of this information bulletin.

Figuring out what is happening to salmon at sea is perhaps our greatest challenge.

The ocean is deep, big, and it moves. It is very different from looking at what's happening on land, or in rivers. Researchers put tags in some iBoF salmon and tracked them during 2001-2002 in the hopes of understanding where they go when they leave the rivers, and where they die. Researchers also use a special trawl net to capture young salmon alive (most trawls kill) and check them for parasites and diseases.

The fish and other marine life that come up in the trawl alongside the salmon give researchers an insight into the salmon's life at sea and might provide clues to their disappearance. Measurements of temperature and salinity are also taken in the hopes of understanding whether such physical conditions could be part of the mystery. DFO scientists are currently analyzing the data they've collected, and they should have some answers for us by the end of 2004.

In the meantime, let's try to conserve the few wild salmon that are left. These salmon carry the genes that are essential for survival of the species.

Swimming upstream

Trying to recover the iBoF Salmon

With current numbers fewer than 200, the inner Bay of Fundy salmon won't come back without a lot of help. Representatives of government and local organizations are working together in a National Recovery Team to help out.
Their goal is to re-establish self-sustaining wild populations of Atlantic salmon in the iBoF rivers. To do this, there are several strategies underway: