Working with the K’ómoks Nation towards Q’waq’wala7owkw on their unceded territory.
Working with the K’ómoks Nation towards Q’waq’wala7owkw on their unceded territory.
Join Jay and Virginia from Project watershed for our Seal or Pinniped monitoring citizen science project at Kus-kus-sum. Observations will be made throughout the spring and summer at various locations from Condensory Road Bridge toward Kus-kus-sum along the Courtenay River Estuary.
Project Watershed is very excited to announce the award of $1.4 million dollars of funding from the BC Salmon Restoration and Innovation Fund to support our forage fish research, monitoring and restoration!
Project work at Kus-kus-sum isn’t taking a holiday break. In early January, you may have seen some large machines near the wall – we got some excited phone calls about this! However, they were not there to start removing the wall, they were there to take important soil cores to analyse a patch of soil near the wall.
As you may know, Project Watershed has been researching forage fish and their habitats for many years now. To date our work has focused on beach spawning forage fish, specifically Pacific sand lance and surf smelt.
December 8th was the first annual Pacific Sand Lance Day!
These skinny forage fish are understudied and important to our coastal ecosystem. Sand lance have over 100 known predators, and are particularly important to nesting sea birds. This eclectic fish buries into sandy sea beds, hibernates all winter, and spawns on beaches!
Pacific sandlance eggs ~ Aaron SchmidtBeach survery ~ Tom GrimmerSand sample under microscope ~ Aaron Schmidt Our winter Pacific sand lance season was kicked off with eggs being found on Cortes Island on November 6! Later in the month eggs were found at Shingle Spit...
A huge thank you to all our industrious volunteers and supporters who came out to assist with our fall planting at Kus-kus-sum!
It has been a productive year at Glen Urquhart. There is lots more to do but we are already seeing the fruits of our labour.
The weather is looking like fall and with the brief skiff of snow recently Project Watershed staff are beginning to look to the winter forage fish season.
Project Watershed’s Forage Fish team is coming to Tofino to share our research. Join us for a lecture on the importance of forage fish, their biology, ecology, and our west coast project plans to map this ecologically important habitat.
This fall we will be planting camas bulbs and Garry Oaks into our pilot Garry Oak meadow area, as well as harvesting willow stakes!
We are getting thousands of plants delivered to the site this week and are looking for volunteers to help get them in the ground before winter.