Sockeye Salmon in the Alouette Watershed
Since 2008, the Alouette River Management Society and the Fraser Regional Correctional Centre have administered the Alouette Sockeye Adult Enumeration Monitoring Program under BC Hydro’s Alouette Water Use Plan (AWUP). The plan included a seven year monitoring component trapping, enumerating, and obtaining tissue samples from returning adult sockeye salmon (Oncorhynchus nerka).
In order to assess the feasibility of anadromous sockeye salmon re-introduction into the Alouette Reservoir, studies are being conducted to determine the return success of sockeye adults to the Allco Fish Fence. 2020 was the fourteenth year of studying Alouette adult sockeye salmon enumeration. Originally, through BC Hydro’s Water Use Plan for the Alouette Watershed, a spring surface release from the Alouette Dam allowed for kokanee/sockeye smolts to migrate to the ocean from 2007 to 2020. The first surface releases occurred in 2005 and in 2007 the first adult sockeye returned to the Alouette Watershed.