Salmon in the Exploits River

The Exploits River is the longest river on the island of Newfoundland. Its headwaters are in the southwest highlands (lower left on the map) and it flows over 150 miles to the Bay of Exploits (upper right on the map). But it had never been an important river for Atlantic salmon. We are at the blue dot, between Bishop’s Falls and Grand Falls on the Exploits River, and the salmon never made it past Grand Falls to spawn, so they only used about 10% of the river system. The number of salmon returning to spawn each year was about 1200. (Unlike Pacific salmon which spawn and die, about 30% of Atlantic salmon return to spawn again, some for several years).

Atlantic salmon are in trouble due to habitat loss and pollution. A group of concerned Newfoundlanders thought they could help. They formed the Environmental Resource Management Association, ERMA. Their goal was to not only restore salmon to the downstream portion of the Exploits River, but to open more of the river as salmon habitat.

Today we visited their Salmonid Interpretation Center, which is only a couple of miles from our campground. Just getting there was an adventure. We crossed two more one lane, wood bed bridges, this one by far the larger.

They faced quite a task, even before the hydroelectric dam salmon had not been able to get upstream of the Grand Falls.

A lot of study, a lot of fundraising and a lot of work enabled them to build a fishway (commonly called a fish ladder) to allow returning salmon to get above the falls and dam. Aerated water is added here to create turbulence that draws the salmon to this route.

Most of the fishway is in a tunnel under grates. Where Bud and Matey are standing the tunnel makes a right angle turn. When first used the fishway only went as far as the turn. From there the salmon were loaded into tanks and transported by truck to the river above the dam and falls. That’s dedication! In addition, the hydro company installed a fish diversion structure to guide the fish headed downstream to the route around their turbines. 98% of the smelt (2 or 3 year old salmon making their first trip to the sea) are successfully diverted.

Today the fishway is complete and includes viewing walls in the basement of the Interpretive Center. These are wild salmon, not in tanks but in the fishway.

ERMA started with 300 salmon taken from the river below the falls. There was a 90% hatch rate of their protected eggs. The fry were then released in suitable habitat far upstream. At last count 45,000 salmon came back to the Exploits to spawn.

The community, businesses and government agencies all worked together to make this happen. Apparently ERMA runs this campground, so it’s nice to think that some of our payment will go to continue to help the salmon.