Watch as salmon, and otters, swim through a dam on the way to Okanagan Lake

New technology at the Okanagan Lake dam in Penticton is giving the public an up-close view of salmon and mammals swimming through a recently opened fishway.

Riverwatcher is a monitoring system that tracks migrating fish in the Okanagan River Channel. It features a live camera with footage available online for viewers.

The technology is the newest addition to a crucial fishway opened by the Okanagan Nation Alliance this past summer that allows numerous species of salmon to get around the dam and access spawning grounds in Okanagan Lake for the first time in several decades.

“Due to channelization in the 1950s and hydroelectric dams that went in from the early 1900s, salmon were pushed to the brink of extinction in the Okanagan,” said geomorphologist with the alliance, Zoey Eyjolfson.

“The fishway opens up another 350 square kilometres of habitat into Okanagan Lake and access to 14 tributaries. We’ve made it the best we can for the fish and connected the river and lake on a permanent basis.”

It has taken decades of advocacy and on-the-ground work for the alliance to build the fishway in its ongoing efforts to restore salmon populations to the Okanagan Basin.

There was a trial passage opened on the west side of the dam in 2019 using a fishway built within the 1950s dam that was never in operation. The trial fishway was studied until 2022, and it was determined it was not effective.

“It was an old structure. We looked at how we could modify and improve it or create a new passage,” Eyjolfson said. “We found a lot of salmon were holding out on the east side where the river used to flow, so we looked at creating a fishway on the east side of the dam instead.”

In creating a new fishway, it allowed the alliance to build something custom for the fish and apply a design that takes into account fluctuating lake and river water levels.

“It allowed us to shoot for the stars and create free passage for all salmon species including kokanee, steelhead and chinook, allowing migration for all of them between February and September with preferred depths and velocities,” she said.

Sockeye salmon numbers were low this fall which is typical on odd years, however numerous sockeye were recorded on the new Riverwatcher and their numbers are currently being processed.

The Riverwatcher is a square box located at the north end of the dam that the fish swim through. A scanner in the box can pick up hatchery fish that have been tagged and inform the team on fish species, size and what direction they’re swimming in.

Recently Riverwatcher picked up a playful otter swimming through.

“It was a fun highlight to see the otter to playing around,” Eyjolfson said. “We found that in the west fishway too, otters and muskrats. They use the river system too so they’ll go in and out. Occasionally we’ll see a dead salmon in the fishway but they’ll do that in the river too, it’s just part of the ecosystem, they need to eat too.”

The Riverwatcher will be taken out for the winter months and put back in place in February.

There is an online website that is free for the public to view. It shows video clips of fish going through and a graph for any day showing information on the size of the fish and which direction it was going in.

Eyjolfson said several organizations helped to fund the construction of the fishway project including Chelan PUD Habitat Conservation Plan Rock Island Tributary Committee, Douglas PUD Habitat Conservation Plan Wells Tributary Committee and Grant PUD Habitat Subcommittee of the Priest Rapids Coordinating Committee.