Marble – Marble River Hatchery

Since we started we have released 10,718,043 Chinook Salmon and 2,120,634 Coho Salmon

This facility operates under the Department of Fisheries and Oceans Salmonid Enhancement Public involvement program (PIP). The Friends Of The Marble River Society is Northern Vancouver Islands largest volunteer organization oriented towards salmon ID enhancement, stewardship and habitat restoration.

Volunteers at The Marble River Hatchery accept an award from Island Fishing Magazine. The hatchery won the bronze prize for the Save Our Salmon contest. The story of the Marble River Hatchery and it’s volunteer history HAS BEEN published in one of the Island Fishing MagazinS. The hatchery won a whopping $ 3,000 for it’s story. WE would also like to recognize The Pacific Salmon Foundation and Badinotti for their continued support to keep the hatchery operational.

NVISEA partners with The Friends Of The Marble River Society to operate the Marble River Hatchery

The group boasts 105 members with affiliations throughout the North Island, in forestry, fisheries, conservation and First Nations.

The Marble River Hatchery incubation has the capacity to raise 1.3 million salmon, For juvenile rearing, it takes five twelve foot circular tanks, three 3×15 raceways and seven Capilano troughs and eight net pens.

The Marble River Hatchery also has a gravity fed rearing channel, This channel is split into two separate flows, with each side having three segregated sections. Solar powered automatized feeders reduce volunteer labour requirements. The channel mimics natural rearing with it’s gravity fed Marble River water source, forested setting and cobbled substrate.

The Marble Rivers scientific studies enables their volunteers to take part in every aspect of production.

Chinook smolts are transported to this facility at Quatsino Lodge. Their staff and guests feed Chinook smolts for one month to increase their survival rate. This net pen facility is supported by many businesses from local boat and barge operators such as D.H. Timber, DFO, MOWI, Aqua Sea Industries and Quatsino Lodge.

The Marble River Hatchery is exceptional in scale compared to other PIP facilities. Marble River Chinook production targets are one million fish, while Coho targets are 200,000 fry and 50,000 smolts.

Some of the Marble River smolts are raised from 5 grams to 25 grams at this sea site in Quatsino Sound. Lodge owners and guests feed 100 thousand smolts which increases their survival rate by 3 %, this doesn’t sound like much but it is significant. By getting these smolts past the estuary and free from predators, science has proven that these fish have more chance of returning to spawn.

Science

Our scientific studies done at the Marble River Hatchery is scale sampling, length and sex classification, otolith marking (ear bone), fry traps, otolith sampling, milt sampling.

This trap enables our volunteers to identify species that are leaving the lakes and rivers and allows us to check their health and progress. They are released back into the river, below the trap, to continue their journey to the pacific ocean.

Our success is from the amazing volunteers that come out to help when asked. Thanks to all past and present volunteers and the Quatse Hatchery staff for their amazing efforts to enhance the wild stocks of the Marble River.

“May the fish be with you”