January 2001
From the desk of Larry McGratton
FOGR commits over $30,000.00 to Conservation in 2000
As I look back over last year, I feel content and gratified to have been part of the board of FOGR. There are so many aspects of Friends of the Grand River of which we can all be proud.
We share a common vision of the river as an irreplaceable treasure, and have worked hard to take Friends of the Grand River to new levels of recognition as an organization willing to take the lead role when it comes to projects, questions or research regarding the Grand River. I am pleased to say that we are well on our way to attaining our goals.
These accomplishments benefit us all and I congratulate those of you who are members of FOGR. Membership is the backbone of FOGR’s success. It is because of your contributions to the organization that we are able to leverage additional funds to finance projects and research in the amount of more than $30,000.00.
I would encourage you to talk to friends who fish or use the resources of the Grand on a regular basis and are not members of Friends of the Grand River to join this progressive organization. Although Christmas is now over, maybe an early birthday or Christmas gift from you could be a membership for that friend. It is no longer enough to simply pay for your ministry fishing license and hope someone else will look after the streams of tomorrow, for future generations to enjoy. Please take a minute and think if everyone had that attitude the streams of today would be gone.
We are very fortunate to have a world-class brown trout fishery in our backyard as I have heard from so many visitors from across North and South America, Europe and Asia.
The $30,000.00 dollars is actual money spent on conservation in 2000; the true value of projects and research is considerably higher if you take in to account that your volunteer hours are not calculated in to this figure. These are valued at $16.75 an hour per volunteer; and if you consider that volunteers are used for every project, show and numerous parts of the research projects, as well as any other involvement of FOGR’s, the true value of money spent on conservation in 2000 would be closer to three times that total.
To those of you who are already members of this exciting organization, thank you for your support in 2000. Although we are not all able to volunteer as much time as we would like, your financial support is greatly appreciated, and I look forward to receiving your membership renewal in 2001.
Larry
R. McGratton
President
Friends of the Grand River
What do you get out of belonging to Friends of the Grand River?
If you want to do something for Friends of the Grand. Call the numbers above.
We’re always looking for willing workers. Even if they’re not too willing, we’ll encourage them. ●
Give us our dues!
That time of the year again, folks.
Annual membership fees come due April 30, 2001
ATVs in the river
The Grand is a tough enough place for fish to make their homes, now we’ve got people on ATVs using the river like a highway.
The odd track was spotted in the fall of 1999 during the redd count, but last year’s tracks left no doubt that this is a major problem.
The area between Town Line (the closed bridge) and old Hwy. 86 was cross-crossed with tracks, as well as the stretch above Blondie’s lunch bar.
These are some of the more productive reaches of the river, and these imbeciles are driving their four-wheel-drive toys right through the middle of active redds.
What can we do? We let MNR know what’s happening. It occurs during hunting season, so they’ll be ready this fall.
If you know anyone who works this stretch with an ATV, tell them about the damage they’re doing.
Why make a federal offence out of all this? Well, destroying fish habitat is an offence under the Fisheries Act, a federal statute.
If they go to court and are convicted, it means a hefty fine and a criminal record.●
Looks like a boy. Is it really a boy?
Columbia salmon go through sex change
By John Dadds
If you are having problems telling girls from boys, it’s probably a sign of old age. But if you’re a scientist interested in sex and salmon, maybe you shouldn’t believe what your eyes are telling you.
In the fall of 1999, University of Idaho associate professor Dr. Jim Nagler was studying wild chinook salmon in a stretch of the Columbia River in Washington state. He found female salmon returning to spawn had started off life as males.
Sampling 50 female and 50 male wild salmon from the Hanford Reach, about 220 miles (350 kilometres) southeast of Seattle, WA, Nagler and his colleagues found all but a few females tested positive for a Y, or male chromosome.
“This was a real surprise,” said Nagler. “We didn’t find this in our hatchery sample.”
Similar DNA tests were done with fish from two hatcheries in the same area, one of which was located in a tributary of the Columbia. These fish proved to be physically and genetically the same sex, with a small number of exceptions.
Like humans, male salmon have an X and a Y chromosome, while females have two X chromosomes. Any females with that Y chromosome must have gone through a sex-change process.
The group tested post-spawn fish that had returned to the stretch of river where they were born. Samples were taken from the fins of dead or dying fish after they had spawned.
The fact that a hatchery population drawn from a nearby tributary were normal suggests the Hanford Reach fish have been exposed to an environmental condition that caused the sex reverse.
“Obviously we have a lot of work to see if this is a reproducible event,” said Nagler. “We’re interested in looking at other populations as well.”
Nagler said it’s been known for years that temperature changes can cause similar sex changes in the laboratory.
Estrogen disrupting compounds commonly found in pesticides, detergents and some paint products could cause this type of anomaly, as can exposure to effluent from sewage treatment plants.
Temperatures in the Columbia River fluctuate due to manipulation of dams for the production of electricity, and the river runs through an intensely farmed part of the Central Washington Plateau.
Nagler said he would like to accumulate five years’ data as chinook usually return to their natal rivers after four years. Last fall further samples were taken that have yet to be analyzed.
Salmon reproduction and returns to rivers in the northwestern United States and British Columbia have been disappointing for years. Sex reversal may offer part of the answer to the question of why this happens.
Females that have the Y chromosome still spawn, but the balance between numbers of male and female offspring gets thrown off.
If genetically altered females spawn with normal males, the male portion of the resulting brood will have not one, but two Y chromosomes. When they eventually return to their birth river four years later, these double-Y males will spawn but they can only produce male offspring.
Having a boys’ club is all very well, but no girls means no future generations of wild salmon.●
(This article was originally written for The Fishing News.)
Access signage
If you haven’t been around Fergus and Elora for a few weeks, you may have missed the new signs that are springing up at various places along the river.
Maybe you saw the new access kiosk at the Trestle last year. The new signs use the same insert with all the information on it. The roof may be a little different on the new ones.
We broke new ground with these signs because we actually paid someone to do some of the grunt work.
Mr. Post Hole Digger made one part of the job a lot easier.
The Board figured that it was easier to pay and get this part of the job done rather than beat volunteers into submission.
Terry Ryckman handled the formalities, and that took time, lots of time.
Getting Bell or the utilities to do a “locate” outside your house is easy compared with getting them to look for underground wires along County Road 18.
Where do you tell them to look?
Anyway, it’s done now. A few more will be put in parks in the two towns come spring.●
Did you know?
Friends of the Grand River is incorporated under provincial law.
When Friends of the Grand first got established, that was one of the first things we did.
With the help of Deryk Smith, a Fergus lawyer, things were done properly.
This makes life a little easier for the board of directors as it limits liability to the assets of the corporation. The directors are not putting their houses on the line.
We also have charitable status, something that is only given to incorporated bodies.
Although any group wants to be careful about its finances, with incorporation and charitable status, it’s doubly true. That’s why our auditors are Ernst & Young.●
Annual General Meeting
Wellington Terrace Home for the Aged
Cuthbert St above Colbourne Street, Elora
(by the water tower)
Sunday, April 22, 2001
2 p.m. to 4:30 p.m.
This meeting is an important one because the two-year terms of most of the members of our board of directors expire at the end of April.
We’re always looking for new faces on the board as well.
Have you got some time to volunteer?
The board meets in Fergus on the last Thursday of each month, except for the summer months when any sane and reasonable person should be fishing
The Beatty Dam
The Beatty Dam is almost inundated by a 300+ m³/sec flow in mid-May.
The Beatty Dam is still standing. That’s the bad news. The good news? Well, there is no good news.
Both the Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR) and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) issued permits this past summer to allow the township to remove hatches from the surface of the dam.
The township intended to draw down the water so citizens could get a feeling for what it would look like if the dam was taken out.
MNR and DFO approved removal of the hatches, but didn’t include approval of putting them back. That would have required another permit application, and both agencies intimated that they wouldn’t approve blocking the flow dam off again.
So another impasse is reached. The township had a perfunctory opinion poll done and the majority of people who responded wanted the dam kept. It wasn’t a random study so any group, pro or con, could have got its supporters to send in a survey form, and they did.
The council seems to want the dam repaired. But then there’s been a municipal election since then, so minds may have changed.
The old dam coped with 300-plus cubic metres per second last summer. So either it’s stronger than we all thought or it’s a little nearer the end of its life.
We’ll keep you posted. ●
Grand Opportunities
Saturday, June 2, 2001
The first Saturday in June. How long does it take for something to become a tradition? Two years? Three years?
Grand Opportunities has been making a tradition of top-class fly-fishing seminars, the best retailers and manufacturers.
And friends, lots of friends.
Book it now. That’s the date for this year’s Grand Opportunities Fly Fishing Forum.
Steve May and Derek Strub intend that this one will be better than ever.
It will be a one-day event again, with the usual hoop-la and the usual excellent, well-known fly-fishing faces to show you how to do it.
Remember that any other forum will be just lectures. Here you see the instructor in the river.
There’s lots of space, cheap ‘burgers, and if all goes well, the weather will co-operate.●
Finished reading?
Think about passing this newsletter on to a friend. Cut and paste it off the Web site, or send a friend a link.
We’re trying to let people know about Friends of the Grand River and what we all do out there.
You can help by letting friends know that you are part of the group.
Being a members of Friends of the Grand counts for something.
With good– co-operation from all levels of government, Friends are being seen as people who put their work where their mouth is.
People in Centre Wellington see the garbage cans, guys out picking up trash or doing a river clean-up.
Maybe dropping this newsletter off with a friend or leaving it with the magazines in a doctor’s office will increase our exposure. Maybe even get a new members or two. ●
The Latest on Catch and Release
by John Dadds
Anglers always seem to be on the receiving end of research, but every now and again it’s the angler who asks the question that leads to a better understanding of what’s happening under the surface of the water they’re fishing.
In the U.K., fishermen asked why roach were bisexual. That question prompted research around the world on substances that disrupt the body’s hormone balance. Closer to home, an angler and graduate student at the University of Western Ontario, Brian Hooke, noticed something that didn’t make sense. He wondered why fish he released would find a spot in the current to get over the experience rather than resting up in a quiet hole.
If you finish a solid bout of gardening, you head for the sofa, that’s the human way. And our mind is conditioned to think that every organism will respond to tiredness in the same way.
Supervised by his biology professor, Dr. Louise Milligan, who specializes in research on the physiology of fish, Hooke started a search to find an answer to his question.
The team worked out an experiment with quarter- to half-pound rainbow trout (100 to 200 grams). The fish were stressed through exercise to the point of exhaustion, and then allowed to recover.
Through analysis of blood samples and muscle tissue, it was found that the trout could recover better in slow flowing water than if they were put in still water.
“The implication being,” said Milligan, “that the fish allowed to recover in current will recover their ability to sprint sooner than if they’d recovered in still water.”
By measuring plasma cortisol, a stress hormone, lactate (lactic acid) and glycogen, Milligan and Hooke were able to measure the rate at which the fish renewed their internal resources.
Lactic acid levels build up in muscles during exercise, whether you’re a rainbow trout or a human couch potato working in the garden. It’s part of the fuelling process for muscle tissue, and it’s the cause of muscular aches and pains we’ve all experienced..
In the fish, lactate levels increased dramatically with stress, as expected. But in two hours, if they were in a current moving at about one body length per second, the fish were back to normal.
Similar stress followed by a recovery period in still water required six hours for a return to normal lactate levels. Like results were found in the analysis for cortisol and glycogen levels.
This process of recovery is analogous to the cool-down period of gentle exercise after an aerobics class or weightlifting session.
Milligan expects to do more work in a larger facility that will test how well fish can resume sprinting activity after stress, some thing they weren’t able to look at due to equipment limitations. The sprint indicates how soon after stressful exercise the fish could respond to the presence of predators or race for food.
Milligan’s work calls into question catch-and-release studies involving angling-caught fish that were expected to recover in a tank or cage. “My work is strictly in the lab,” she cautions. “And there may be species differences.”●
What about when we’re gone
A few times over the last couple of years, Friends of the Grand River has benefited from donations received from friends and loved ones after a member or someone who enjoyed the river passed away.
Usually these donations were received through the funeral home that looked after final arrangements.
If you’re writing or rewriting your will at some time in the future, spelling out which organization might benefit from donations in lieu of flowers or wreaths takes one more decision off your loved ones’ plates. If FOGR is the beneficiary, you’ll know the money will be put to good use.●
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