Summer is almost here and Project Watershed is gearing up for another round of surf smelt sampling on beaches around the Comox Valley.

While many citizen science groups have begun conducting spring/summer forage fish spawning surveys, we still need a few more volunteers to cover some of the beaches in our area. Specifically we need volunteers for Quadra Island and Campbell River.

Over the past few months, Project Watershed and citizen scientist volunteers have been working hard to identify forage fish spawning beaches in the Northern Salish Sea. Forage fish are a group of small schooling fish that are ecologically important to a variety of marine species such as Chinook and coho salmon, marine shore birds like the Rhinocerous Auklet and larger marine mammals such as orcas and humpback whales. In BC there are seven common species of forage fish: eulachon, Pacific sand lance, surf smelt, Pacific herring, Pacific sardine, capelin, and Northern anchovy.