Sunshine Coast Salmonid Enhancement Society

The Sunshine Coast Salmonid Enhancement Society is a non-profit organization dedicated to sustaining and building salmon stocks in local waterways and facilitating public education regarding salmonid habitat and life cycles.

Fall / Winter 2025/2026 Operations Update

As of Nov 2025, the juvenile salmon we have on site are,

• 22,000 Coho fry, these will be released to Chapman Creek in either May or June, 2026, next year.

2025/2026 Hatchery projects –

• The settling pond wire fence has been replaced with a new chain-link fence and some repairs to the rearing area fence will be happening in the next few months.
• Our Education Building has been upgraded, new doors installed, new concrete pavers installed for the outside covered picnic area, new lighting and new paint.
• Our open walled workshop carport is going to be closed in, this will provide a larger enclosed workspace for hatchery maintenance projects.
• Our volunteers and community garden project, we have added 4 unused small fish rearing containers converted over for growing vegetables this past spring.
• Upgrades to one of our rearing containers aeration tower frame will be commencing soon.

The first returning adult salmon was seen in the lower reaches of Chapman Creek on July 28th, and as of November 18th, this was the last day we saw any adults in our fish trap, these were Coho.

Past summer and fall’s 2025 adult returns to the creek and hatchery along with incubation from spawning-

• Pink – a high number of adults returned to spawn this past season, over 11,100. The odd year returns are dominant. For instance, 2 years ago in 2023 a total of over 14,000 adults were counted. This past season the first Pinks showed up in the creek the last week of July, 2025. We only managed to collect Pink eggs from 3 females for the hatchery this past season. The reason for this is due to 2 things, low creek flows, and high water temperatures. This causes a lack of available water for hatchery trapping and adult holding. Only odd year enhancement is allowed for Chapman creek Pink salmon. (2025, 2027, 2029, etc.).
• Coho returns in 2025 fairly average with an estimate total of 375 adults returning to the creek and 241 of these returning to the hatchery’s adult trap. The first Coho was trapped at the hatchery late July. We have collected 39,798 eggs so far with a few more females left to spawn.
• Chum (Chapman Creek) returns are below average, 60 fish were estimated spawning in the creek, the hatchery tally was 8 with only 3 being females. The first Chum were seen in the creek mid Oct. We collected 4,972 eggs as we only managed to spawn 2 of 3 females.
• Chum (Angus Creek) returns are below average, only a few fish were estimated spawning in the creek as of mid November. We did not collect any of these for eggs this year.
• Chinook returns to the creek were slightly below average, a total of 10 fish were seen angled from the creek this season and natural spawning numbers are very low. The first Chinook adult was seen in the creek the last week of Sept. Chinook are not native to Chapman Creek and are introduced annually as smolts. 70,256 eyed Chinook eggs arrived here November 21st from the Chilliwack River Hatchery in the Lower Mainland’s Fraser Valley.

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