Your contribution is greatly appreciated, thank you for participating!

Pacific herring (Clupea pallasii) are small fish that play a huge role in the Pacific marine food web. They are a key food source for Chinook and Coho salmon, as well as several marine birds and mammals. For thousands of years, Pacific herring have been integral to the culture and society of many coastal Indigenous peoples. 

 To gain a better understanding of herring spawning in the Comox Valley, we are launching a herring spawn monitoring program based on the successful “Search for Slhawt’” program developed by the Átl’ka7tsem/Howe Sound Marine Stewardship Initiative. The data you collect at our three sites: Little River Road, Kye Bay, and Point Holmes will help us establish a timeline for the beginning and peak of Pacific herring spawn in the Comox Valley and help us track changes to that timeline from year to year. 

Please attend a training session in February prior to signing up to survey in February or March. If you are unable to attend a training session but are interested in surveying, please reach out to Virginia.

Supplies 

• Notebook and pen/pencil or smartphone with data to access the digital form.
• Camera or smartphone for photos.
• Study, water-resistant shoes (or waterproof shoes if collecting water temperature).
• Appropriate clothing for the weather.
• Your buddy! Please coordinate to survey with a friend, family member, or volunteer.
• Optional: Thermometer (provided by Project Watershed).

Safety

• Check the wind forecast before you set out. Strong winds (40-60km/h) = use discretion, gale winds (above 60km/h) = reschedule your survey for a calmer day.
• Be mindful of your footing while walking on the beach and avoid slippery rocks and logs to minimize the risk of slips, trips, and falls.
• Bring water, snacks, hats/sunscreen, sturdy footwear, extra layers, and rain gear (as needed) to keep yourself comfortable during your surveys.
• Please always survey with a partner. If your ‘buddy’ has not attended one of our training sessions, please ensure they sign the Volunteer Waiver on our website before participating in the surveys, and please help them log their volunteer hours as well as your own.
• If you feel unsafe in any way during your survey, please leave the survey site. 

Surveys are completed by walking the shoreline at mid to low tide with your ‘buddy’ (a volunteer, friend, or family) and visually searching for the presence of herring spawn. You can survey anytime the tide level is equal to or lower than 3.5 m (Comox tides: https://tides.gc.ca/en/stations/7965), as detailed in the Potential Survey Windows calendar. You may see the spawn onshore, as eggs, or in the blue-green milky water, as milt (herring sperm). Herring like to spawn on grasses, rock, rockweed, or other aquatic vegetation. In the Comox Valley, most of the eggs we see on the shore have washed up. 

Please complete a survey form during each survey, whether spawn is found or not. Data can be collected using one of the following methods:

1. Online form

Where: https://arcg.is/1WL4u00 

How: Ideally forms will be filled out on-site when you have completed your survey walk, especially if you have found spawn and are recording spawn details. NOTE – you require Wi-Fi or cellular data to access this form.  

Select your site (Kye Bay/Little River Road/Point Holmes). 

Enter the name(s) of all surveyors present during the survey. 

Ensure the date, survey start time, and survey end time are correct. 

No herring eggs observed? Select ‘No’ spawn observed, add water temperature (optional), a photo of yourself surveying or wildlife observations (optional), any comments, and click ‘Submit.’  

Herring eggs observed? Select ‘Yes’ spawn observed and more questions will appear. 

Enter the spawn location: 

• Allow the form to use your location or manually find your location on the map. 
• Click the ‘Line’ tool (note that on mobile devices, this might be hidden in one of the corners of the map!)

• Click the starting location where you found spawn. 
• Click along the length of shoreline where you found spawn.
• Made a mistake? Click the undo button and start over. 

• When you are done mapping the spawn line, you must click the check mark to save your line. Once saved, the white dots will disappear.

NOTE – the form only allows for one continuous line to be drawn per form entry. If you find (for example) 5 m of spawn on the shoreline, then there is a break in the spawn, and then it continues in another part of the shoreline you will need to complete another form entry.  

Enter the density of the average spawn found (examples below):

Density example provided by Átl’ka7tsem/Howe Sound Marine Stewardship Initiative

Select the spawn substrate (surfaces that you found eggs on). You can select multiple.  

Add additional details about the spawn.  

Fill in the water temperature (optional). 

Upload a photo of the spawn. The form only allows for 1 photo, but we highly encourage more photos to be shared at Herring Spawn Volunteer Photos. 

Add any survey comments.  

Click ‘Submit.’  

*If you find spawn in multiple locations, please submit multiple survey forms (so that you can enter the second location on a second map).

2. Physical Datasheet

Where: Available for download on the Project Watershed Herring Spawn Monitoring webpage. 

How: Ideally forms will be filled out on-site when you have completed your survey walk, especially if you have found spawn and are recording spawn details. Once you are back at home, please digitize your physical datasheet using the online form https://arcg.is/1WL4u00.  

If you have any questions or concerns regarding the data entry process, please reach out to Virginia. 

If you happen to witness herring spawn outside of your survey or at other beaches, please consider snapping a photo and adding it to iNaturalist.ca. 

• iNaturalist is a free website and app where you can upload your observations of anything living, creating an open-source database. It can help fill gaps in our knowledge of herring spawn locations and times. 

• While uploading your Pacific herring egg observations, annotate them with “Life Stage –> egg” and they will be automatically captured under our Pacific Herring Spawn and Nurseries iNaturalist project. 

• How-to guides for uploading observations and using iNaturalist are available.