The Sunshine Coast Salmonid Enhancement Society is a charitable organization dedicated to sustaining and building salmon stocks in local waterways and facilitating public education regarding salmonid habitat and life cycles.
Winter 2025/2026 Operations Update
As of March 2026, 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.
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 now closed in, this provides a larger enclosed workspace for hatchery maintenance projects.
- Our volunteers and community garden project, this past season we have added 4 unused small fish rearing containers converted over for growing vegetables.
- One of our rearing containers aeration towers was recently upgraded.
Below is a breakdown on last summer and fall’s adult returns to the creek and hatchery, along with close to current incubation numbers from last falls 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, producing 3,800 eggs in incubation. 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 was fairly average with an estimated 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 43,100 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 4,600 eggs as we only managed to spawn 2 of 3 females.
- Chum (Angus Creek) returns are below average, 18 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 known to be 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. 64,800 eyed Chinook eggs arrived here November 21st from the Chilliwack River Hatchery, located in the Lower Mainland’s Fraser Valley. The adults that produced these eggs were spawned on Oct 18/25.
