It was great to be back in an elementary school helping to deliver the Stream of Dreams Murals Society watershed education and community art program!
There has been some remote program delivery, and while getting the message across, it doesn’t compare emotionally with being in a school.
With careful protocols, some adjustments to delivery, and repeated and thorough sanitization between each class, today’s sessions went smoothly, and several teachers said they loved the program!
And of course team members, teachers, and students are masked at all times.
Team members are cross-trained to do both the watershed/environment education part of the program, and supervising kids through the Dreamfish painting.
The fish will eventually be installed as a beautiful mural on the school’s chain-link fence to remind students, their families, and the entire neighbourhood that All Drains Lead to Fish Habitat!
Pink Salmon spawning in the Cheakamus near Squamish, BC, today.
This cycle of life is amazing to behold.
Look at the tail fin on that female, abraded down to a stub as she dug a redd — a depression in the gravel and cobble in which to lay her eggs — and then covered it up after a male released his milt.
I don’t know how many years we’ve been heading out to observe this miracle of life-death-life, but we never tire of it.
Pink Salmon duking it out for spawning rights on the Cheakamus River near Squamish. Also a Turkey Vulture chowing down on a Pink near the west end of Lillooet Lake.
Byrne Creek Streamkeepers Society volunteers conducted an aquatic invertebrate survey (bug count) on Byrne Creek in SE Burnaby, BC, today.
Bugs give us an indication of water quality because some are more pollution tolerant than others. Our surveys over many years have steadily found mostly pollution tollerant species, and they also tend to be small in size compared to more pristine creeks.
The creek gets a lot of road wash that carries contimanants down street drains, and we also get point-source pollution events when deleterious substances are emptied into street drains, or when construction sites are illegally pumped out.
Please rember that All Drains Lead to Fish Habitat!
The new shelter near the wading pool in Ron McLean Park proved to be a great place to count the bugs and enter the results on data sheets.
Byrne Creek Streamkeepers volunteers set out Gee traps in the creek yesterday and came back this morning to see what we got. Trapping requires a permit. Today’s results included coho salmon, cutthroat trout, and crayfish.
It was a lovely morning to be out on the creek, and we were happy to be able to get the trapping, IDing, measuring, and releasing done before spawners start to retun to the creek.
We usually do this activity earlier in the year, but were advised to postpone it because it was so hot this summer that the fish were already stressed.
It was also great to chat with folks who came by, and explain what we were doing!
We took in the Mini Matsuri (festival) at Nikkei Place in Burnaby, BC, today. It was scaled down due to Covid, but it was still a lot of fun. Great food, displays, and entertainment.
Let’s move on to the food!
Yumi and I split an Okonomi Japadog, split an order of shrimp takoyaki, had one sweet red bean taiyaki each, and split an order of gyoza.
I rambled Fraser Foreshore Park in SE Burnaby, BC, for about two hours this morning. The highlight was hearing the screech of a raptor and looking up to see this beautiful Red-tailed Hawk circling overhead.
