I put a pair of 5.11 Tactical Pants to rest today.
Sigh. . . I have two pairs, and one pair was so worn with multiple patches that it finally bit the dust.
The seat was so worn that you could almost see through it, and though I like to think I have a cute butt. . .
These are amazing pants. They have, like, a bazillion pockets, and when I had them fully loaded, they probably weighed over 5kg .
I rotated between the two pairs, wearing them nearly daily for years and years.
Hiking, camping, streamkeeping. . . Wedding and event photography because they looked nice enough to wear with a blazer, yet could carry extra batteries and flash units in all those pockets.
We were happy to finally see a pair of Chum salmon spawning in Byrne Creek in SE Burnaby, BC, today. For decades, Chum would start arriving like clockwork around Oct. 18, depending on rain, but the last few seasons we haven’t seen them until the end of the month.
You can see the pair of Chum just upstream of the redd, or depression in the gravel, that the female has been digging with her tail.
We also found a dead Coho. Unfortunately it was another female that had died without spawning. We see this a lot on Byrne Creek as the water quality is very poor in this urban area. Fingers crossed we’ll eventually find some that have spawned. . .
We went out to the Cariboo Dam, Stoney Creek, and the Brunette River to look for spawning salmon. We saw lots of Chum Salmon, and also a Belted Kingfisher and a couple of Great Blue Herons.
Belted Kingfisher
Shaking the rain off : – )
Female Chum flipping sideways to dig a redd in the gravel/cobble for her eggs
I hadn’t been down to Elgin Heritage Park in Surrey, BC, for awhile, so seeing the sunny break in the weather today, I headed down to see what I could photograph.
Steller’s Jay
Common Merganser with Starry Flounder (thanks for fish ID, Rob Alexander!)
I was happy to see a Coho salmon on a Byrne Creek walk in Burnaby, BC, today.
And I was unhappy that it had died before even colouring up, and that it was a female full of eggs.
We have had problems with Coho pre-spawn mortality on Byrne Creek for many years, and also with released Coho smolts in the spring.
Research in Washington State by Dr. Jenifer McIntyre has linked such Coho deaths to a chemical found in tires that washes off roads and into creeks.
NOTE: Streamkeepers have training and permission to assess salmon after they have spawned and died for species, sex, size, and spawning status. Is is illegal to interfere with spawning salmon.
We had a good spawner-monitoring orientation tour this morning on Byrne Creek in SE Burnaby, BC. We didn’t see any fish aside from a few coho/cutthroat in the smolt-size range.
I hope that with the rains coming this week, the salmon will respond to rising water in the creek and start moving upstream to spawn. Fingers crossed for exciting days ahead.
I saw another dump of sediment into Byrne Creek in SE Burnaby, BC, on a pre-dinner walk today. Reported it to the City of Burnaby and they asked for photos.
The creek was running clear around 3:30pm, but Griffiths Pond near Edmonds Skytrain Station was murky, there was fresh sediment visible all along the bottom of creek from the bottom of the ravine stairs to the footbridge near Southridge Dr., and both ponds in the artificial spawning habitat were cloudy.
Likely a construction site pumpout in the upper watershed somewhere.
Sigh. . . This was happening repeatedly earlier in the year and the City finally tracked it down and shut it down, and here we go again. . . .
Construction sites are not allowed to pump out into storm drains! All dirty water from construction sites is to be remediated on site.
