Methods and summary data for limnology and food web structure in Skaha Lake, B.C. (2005-2013) / K.D. Hyatt ... [et al.].: Fs97-13/1259E

In 1994, the Okanagan Nation Alliance approached Fisheries and Oceans Canada with a request for assistance in status and trend assessments to support stock and habitat restoration work focused on Okanagan sockeye salmon that appeared to have fallen to historic lows of abundance. In the following years, several collaborative habitat and stock restoration projects were initiated to facilitate rebuilding of the Okanagan sockeye salmon population to historic abundance levels. One such project involved an experimental reintroduction of sockeye salmon into Skaha Lake after roughly a century of virtually total exclusion of anadromous salmon from the lake by low-head dams built for irrigation and flood control. The Okanagan Nation Alliance (ONA), in partnership with Chelan and Grant County Public Utilities in Washington State, are the lead proponents for the sockeye reintroduction project. Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO), with responsibilities for management of anadromous salmon, and BC Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations (BC-FLNRO), with responsibility for management of resident freshwater fish, provide technical advice and regulatory oversight to the project through the three-party (DFO, BC-FLNRO, ONA) Canadian Okanagan Basin Technical Working Group (COBTWG). Here we provide a detailed site-description and report on field survey and sample processing methods used on Skaha Lake to assess annual to seasonal changes in: (1) limnological conditions (temperature, oxygen, water transparency, nutrient concentrations, plankton abundance and production etc.), (2) abundance and biological traits of juvenile sockeye and kokanee salmon, and (3) abundance and biological traits of other limnetic fish species. Monthly or sub-monthly survey work was especially intensive during the years 2005-2013. The first objective of this nine year program was to compare rates of growth and rates of egg-to-smolt survival from hatchery-reared sockeye, stocked into Skaha Lake, with similar rates from the wild Osoyoos Lake population, which contributed the eggs used in the hatchery program. A second objective was to investigate the possibility that stocked age-0 sockeye might in some way, have negative impacts on resident kokanee in Skaha Lake. The report that follows provides a formal summary of the fisheries and limnology methods and data gathered at Skaha Lake in association with experimental introductions of sockeye salmon fry during years 2005-2013. A companion report (Hyatt et al. 2015) provides a similar summary of observations from Osoyoos Lake.

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