iN VIDEO: Adams River sockeye salmon return being live-streamed

A sockeye festival is celebrating the return of the fish to their breeding grounds in the Adams River in the Shuswap this month.

The Salute to the Sockeye Festival, which takes place in a dominant year of the sockeye salmon cycle, every four years, is running daily until Oct. 23, according to the Adams River Salmon Society. Artisans, food vendors and interpretive tents are on site at Tsútswecw Provincial Park this weekend. 

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During a dominant year, more than 1 million fish return to their place of birth to continue the cycle, according to the society. The Adams River run is known as one of the world’s largest sockeye salmon runs.

The society is also live-streaming the sockeye’s return through an underwater camera.

In the Okanagan, the Okanagan Nation Alliance reported a record year for sockeye returns.

READ MORE: The best spots to see spawning salmon in the Interior

Roughly 4.1 million fish were released in 2019 and are now returning to spawn. More than 660,000 fish were counted at the mouth of the Columbia River this year, with 80% of those being Okanagan salmon. This is the largest number of returning sockeye salmon since record keeping began in 1938, according to the ONA.

Each spring, the Okanagan Nation Alliance releases sockeye fry into Okanagan streams and rivers as part of its ongoing program to restore populations to the Okanagan and Columbia River Basin. The restoration project has been ongoing since the 1990s, said ONA senior fisheries biologist Rich Bussanich, in a previous interview with iNFOnews.

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