Since 2012, ONA has been tagging a portion of Okanagan sockeye smolts with Passive Integrated Transponder (PIT) tags. Starting in 2016, ONA, Grant and Chelan Public Utility Districts, and the Columbia River Inter Tribal Fisheries Commission have been piloting the use of purse seining to capture smolts to PIT tag.

Construction of permanent flood control dams in the Canadian portion of the Okanagan Basin in the 1950’s has blocked anadromous salmon from a significant portion of their historical range, which includes q̓awst’ik’^wt (Skaha Lake) and kłusxənitk^w(Okanagan Lake). In 1999, the ONA and Colville Confederated Tribes (CCT) initiated a research program, funded by Bonneville Power Administration, to evaluate the feasibility of reintroducing sockeye salmon into their historical range. A 3-year risk assessment of sockeye reintroduction was carried out by the Canadian Okanagan Basin Technical Working Group (COBTWG), whose participants include the Okanagan Nation Alliance, Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO), and the BC Ministry of Forests, Lands, and Natural Resource Operations (FLNRO). The risk assessment, completed in April 2003, concluded that the reintroduction of sockeye into Skaha Lake posed little risk to existing Okanagan sockeye and resident Skaha Lake kokanee populations.

The decision was made to introduce hatchery-reared sockeye fry into Skaha Lake as it posed little risk and would allow for in-lake monitoring of food web response. The COBTWG worked to develop and approve a 12-year framework for the experimental reintroduction of sockeye salmon into Skaha Lake, which outlines the project rationale, method of reintroduction, and a series of performance measures to address production, growth and survival of sockeye and kokanee. The 12-year adaptive management experiment was designed to be reversible if monitoring demonstrates significant negative impacts to either the existing Osoyoos sockeye or Skaha Lake kokanee populations.

Typically, hatchery-raised, thermal marked fry produced are released into Penticton Channel upstream of Skaha Lake. Sockeye fry spend one year in Skaha and Osoyoos lakes before migrating to the ocean. The migration typically begins in early Spring.  Understanding migration patterns and biological traits of sockeye smolts from both lakes is necessary for monitoring and evaluating the Skaha Lake Sockeye Reintroduction Program.  An important objective is to determine the migration timing, size, and age structure of wild and hatchery-origin sockeye smolts as they migrate out of Skaha and Osoyoos lakes into the Okanagan and Columbia rivers.

Since 2012, ONA has been implanting sockeye smolts with uniquely coded PIT tags. PIT tags can be detected and logged as they pass through antennae arrays located throughout the Columbia River.  PIT tags do not have batteries and will transmit codes whenever they are close to a PIT antenna. Therefore, tags are not constrained by battery life and can provide codes for the entire life-span of the salmon. From these detections, we are able to estimate smolt travel time and overall survival as sockeye migrate to the Pacific Ocean.  Ideally, a large number of PIT-tagged sockeye from this year will return as adults and be detected in the arrays as they migrate back to the Okanagan to spawn.  One goal for this project is to capture approximately 10,000 smolts to PIT tag.

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Okanagan Nation Alliance and Okanagan Indian Band have installed sediment baskets in the Middle Shuswap River to monitor fine sediment deposits in salmon spawning gravels. Monitoring began in 2016 when BC Hydro conducted dredging at Wilsey Dam. During dredging, fine sediment was released into the spillway of the dam and Middle Shuswap River below. Our monitoring program is designed to measure fine sediment deposition above and below the dam during the dredge year and during two subsequent years during which no dredging will take place. A comparison of fine sediment deposition between years aims to detect any additional sediment deposited as a result of the dredge.

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McIntyre Dam was built in 1954 to divert irrigation water and to control water flows in the Okanagan River between Vaseux and Osoyoos lakes.  McIntyre Dam had been the upstream migration barrier for Okanagan River salmon until it was refitted in 2009:

• The undershot gates were changed for fish friendly overshot gates.
• A backwater riffle was built creating a resting pool for fish.

This provided an additional 11.5 km of spawning and rearing habitat in the Okanagan River and Vaseux Lake, which are historic habitats that were inaccessible for salmon in the last six decades.

The Okanagan Nation Alliance (ONA) in collaboration with the manager of the McIntyre Dam (Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resources Operations-MoFLNRO) has being monitoring Sockeye salmon success to pass over new fish passage gates. The new gates allow passage for Sockeye of all sizes, but the jumping success can be improved through alteration spillway gate levels. ONA and MoFLNRO are working on ways to make it easier for the salmon to pass over the new gates.

Preliminary results have indicated more salmon jump attempts at the dam’s westernmost gate. This western gate has relatively lower Sockeye jump efficiency (number of successful jumps versus the total number of jumps) when compared to the eastern sections of the dam. In 2014, ONA experimental flow changes and gate closures at the McIntyre Dam have resulted in some diversion of the returning Sockeye to the eastern gates. Altering the spillway gates flow may allow for better management of Sockeye gate choice at the McIntyre Dam, which could ultimately increase Sockeye spawning success upstream of the dam.

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Prior to the Duncan Dam Water Use Plan project (DDM WUP), Duncan Reservoir operations were optimized for water storage to meet Columbia River Treaty (CRT) commitments, and to support downstream operations constrained by the CRT and fisheries requirements. In typical WUP processes, data collection during the project would help support assumptions around impacts of reservoir operations on key areas of interest. However, the project was limited in resources and time and was unable to collect much of the data required to support fisheries and aquatic objectives of defining operations that would improve ecological conditions in the reservoir. High level approximations of stranding risk and tributary access were considered but then eliminated from the process when they proved to be insufficient aids to decision making (see BC Hydro 2005).

At the conclusion of the DDM WUP project, the Consultative Committee (CC) recommended as part of the WUP monitoring program that the critical data gaps relating to fish use in the reservoir be addressed. This will ensure that future planning processes can integrate this knowledge to better accommodate fish requirements during future planning processes.

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In 2008, BC Hydro implemented a 10-year project designed to monitor the effectiveness of the Bull Trout transfer program at Duncan Dam (DDM) on the lower Duncan River. Fish transfer procedures – delaying the timing between the opening and closing of upstream (maintenance) and downstream (operating) gates respectively – are operated between the end of May and the end of September to allow the passage of adult Bull Trout (Salvelinus confluentus) from lower Duncan River into the Duncan Reservoir.  The operations have been in effect (in varying degrees of extent and timing) since 1968, a year after impoundment.  Bull Trout passing through the dam are known to spawn in at least three reservoir tributaries:  Upper Duncan River main stem, Westfall River and Houston Creek (both are tributaries to Upper Duncan River) (O’Brien 1999).  However, it is unknown if recruitment from those spawners contributes to the Bull Trout population below DDM, or if these recruits stay in the Duncan River watershed above the dam. The initial 2 years of the program were implemented in 2008 and 2009 (BC Hydro 2008).

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