"Committed to the recovery of wild Pacific salmon in mid Vancouver
Island watersheds through habitat restoration and community engagement"
"Committed to the restoration of wild Pacific salmon in mid Vancouver
Island watersheds through habitat restoration and community engagement"

General - News

Lord of the Flies

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Lord of the Flies - MVIHES term for an expert in identifying aquatic bugs 

Can Benthic Invertebrates (bugs that live at the bottom of rivers and lakes) provide us with a measure of the health of our watershed? Well, yes they can.

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Bruce Murray, who is a MVIHES member and our own Lord of the Flies, is guiding us on a program of monitoring Benthic Invertebrates for the purpose of measuring the health of the Englishman River watershed.  Since June, we have partnered with members of the Island Waters Flyfishing Club in Nanaimo to sample five sites on the Englishman River.  A member of the Mid-Island Castaways Fly Fishing Club in Qualicum Beach is also participaing. It makes perfect sense that fly-fishermen would also be proficient at identifying aquatic bugs.

  

We are using a method of sampling that has been around for a while, and anyone who has taken the “Steamkeepers"  course will remember it. We scrape rocks from the bottom of the river into fine meshed nets to capture the bugs, and then set up tables on the river’s edge, where we sort the bugs into ice cube trays (now you know where the fly in your drink came from).

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Bruce then straps a microscope to his face to get a very close look at the features of the bugs to aid in their identification. Ok, so it's not a microscope on his face but it's a pretty impressive set of magnifiers. Data on the types of bugs and their numbers are recorded.

 

 

 

 

To give you an idea of how useful this monitoring can be, benthic invertebrates are classified into the following three groups based on their ability or inability to tolerate polluted  water.

  • Pollution Intolerant: Caddis Flies, Stone Flies, May Flies, Dobson Flies, Riffle Beetles
  • Somewhat Pollution Intolerant: Dragon Flies, Damsel Flies, Crane Flies, Aquatic Sowbugs, Alder Flies, Scud, Crayfish, Clams
  • PollutionTolerant: Midges, Blackflies, Backswimmers, Boatmen, Leeches, Aquatic Worms, 

However, just because you have Leeches and Boatmen living in your pond doesn't necessarily mean the pond is polluted, because these guys can live under all kinds of conditions. That's what makes them Pollution Tolerant. It's when you have very few or none of the Pollution Intolerant bugs in your pond that you may have a problem with water quality.

This is how the data we collect on Benthic Invertebrates in the river will be used to assess its health. We have two more sites to sample which we plan to do this fall. If you would like to participate in this project, contact us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Just look at scenery you'll be working in!

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Many thanks to Bruce, the Island Waters Fly Fishing Club, the Castaways and our volunteers.

Life's a Beach

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The month of May was all about beaches for our volunteers. Check out our "Sharing Shorelines" brochure about conserving shorelines, not only for sustaining marine life (and beaches), but protecting real estate as well. Many thanks to Islands Trust who produced the original brochure and allowed us to modify it for Parksville. And MVIHES vounteer Ross Peterson who did the modifying and got it published. 

ForageFish6On May 29, Haley Tomlin from Vancouver Island University gave an excellent training session on surveying the spawning habitat of forage fish (Sand Lance and Surf Smelt) to the Qualicum Beach Streamkeepers. Of course, MVIHES just had to crash the party. You may remember, we were trained in forage fish surveys last year by Ramona de Graf using the State of Washington methodology. Haley, who is conducting these surveys on behalf of the Mount Arrowsmith Biosphere Region Research Institute, has created a "Citizen Science" program that simplifies the State of Washington method. The data collected from this program will be stored  on the Pacific Salmon Foundation website which should make it possible to identify beaches that are important for forage fish spawning when an area is being considered for development.

 

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Haley is also lending us a fancy piece of equipment called a vortex (shown in photo) that is powered by a 12 volt car battery. The vortex separates fish eggs and embryos from our sand samples and replaces the manual "panning for eggs" method we have been using. Very cool. MVIHES will continue surveying local beaches for forage fish spawning habitat. If you haven't already been involved in our surveying and you would like to participate, just drop us a line at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

 

 

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On May 30, Dave Clough, our consulting Biologist for many years, lead us on another beach seining session at the Englishman River estuary. We were accompanied by Emily Vance, a reporter for PQB news. Emily wrote a great article that explains all about why we beach seine.

 

Photo by Emily Vance as seen in news article 

 

See you on the beach!

Welcome to the Shelly Creek Delicatessen

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You may remember Braden Judson, a biology student from Vancouver Island University (VIU), who did his undergraduate research project last year on the eating habits of the resident Cutthroat Trout population in Shelly Creek.  This project was the brainchild of Ross Peterson and Pete Law of MVIHES who approached VIU for a student to conduct the research. The MidIsland Castaways Fly Fishing Club provided a donation to fund Braden's travel expenses between Parksville and Nanaimo. The results of the study are in and are really interesting, if not surprising.

 

 

 

 

 

poleseiningWith the help of volunteers, a total of 83 Cutthroat Trout were captured with a net called a pole seine on three sampling occasions in August, September and October.  Each fish was weighed, measured and its adipose fin (tiny fin made of fat at base of tail) was clipped so we can distinguish these Cutthroat Trout from those that enter Shelly Creek via the Englishman River when we operate our smolt counting fence downstream each spring.

 

 

troutstomachpumpFollowing these procedures, Braden perfomed a gastric lavage on each fish. I know, it sounds like a menu item for French cuisine. It's actually a scientific term for stomach pumping. It takes quite a bit of skill to extract the stomach contents of a tiny fish without harming it. The stomach contents of each fish were collected, preserved and identified in a lab at VIU. Nice work, Braden! And yes, the fish were released back into the creek, perhaps a little perturbed at having lost their lunch.

 

 

mayflylarvaeBraden found that half of the items the trout had eaten were the ususal inhabitants of creeks: mayfly nymphs, stonefly nymphs, caddisfly larvae, fly larvae and water striders.

 

 

 

antintroutThe other half were critters that live on land: pill bugs (or wood bugs) ants, wasps, springtails, beetles and spiders. Wow, half the diet of these trout comes from land! This emphasizes the importance of vegetation along streambanks and tree canopy that hangs over creeks. These insects (and spiders) most likely fell off some foliage overhanging the water.  Good to know that the ferns and shrubs volunteers planted alongside Shelly Creek in March should help keep the trout fed.

 

Braden's research paper is available in our digital library and can also be accessed here. We wish Braden well with his studies and thank him for his diligence. Many thanks to VIU, the MidIsland Castaways, and our MVIHES volunteers for their support. And thanks to the City of Parksville Parks Dept for letting us conduct this work in Shelly Park.

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