Federal minister, MP focus on salmon with visit to South Surrey hatchery<\/p>\n
Published 9:30 am Thursday, March 5, 2026<\/p>\n
It may be a small, volunteer-run hatchery in South Surrey, but it has sure made a big impact.<\/p>\n
Little Campbell River Hatchery, which opened in 1982 at the Semiahmoo Fish and Game Club, had some federal interest recently, when South Surrey-White Rock MP and Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Fisheries Ernie Klassen visited \u2014 with the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans herself, Joanne Thompson.<\/p>\n
\u201c(Klassen) is a big supporter of the Semiahmoo Fish and Game Club and the hatchery and all that we do,\u201d SFGC past president Diana Barkley noted. \u201cSo when (Thompson) was coming out here on another trip, he organized a stop at our hatchery \u2026 we conducted a tour of the hatchery and told her how it all works, with the coho and the salmon coming back up the stream to spawn every four years \u2026we were able to showcase the things we\u2019ve done since we opened the hatchery in 1982.\u201d<\/p>\n
Volunteers count the salmon that come upstream and report to the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans, and also do an egg take from healthy coho and chinook salmon each year, Barkley explained.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis year we did 103,000 eggs \u2026 we estimate that every year for the last 40-plus years, we\u2019ve put over 100,000 salmon back into the river. And if you do the math on that, that\u2019s over four million salmon. Those are rough numbers, but pretty pretty close to the truth,\u201d she said. \u201cSo while we\u2019re a small operation, over the course of four or five decades, we certainly have made an impact.\u201d<\/p>\n
Barkley said she feels hatcheries have an important voice and role in the fishing industry, as well as with salmon conservation.<\/p>\n
The hatchery suffered during the atmospheric river flooding in 2021, she said, noting their goal is to build a newer, larger facility on higher ground that will double the hatchery\u2019s current capacity.<\/p>\n
While they\u2019ve raised about $400,000 over the past three years toward that goal, they need closer to $2 million, but Barkley is optimistic they\u2019ll raise the needed funds for that plan and perhaps, get a little help from the federal government.<\/p>\n
\u201cHopefully we\u2019ve encouraged them to bring back a program they had, which was a B.C. salmon enhancement renovation innovation fund \u2026 a few years back, $200 million went to B.C.hatchery and habitat programs. So, we want them to bring that fund back again \u2014 we\u2019re ready to put shovels in the ground.\u201d<\/p>\n
Receiving $2 million from that fund or from the federal government \u201cwould make us happy. Very happy,\u201d Barkley said, but added she didn\u2019t know when they might hear whether or not that\u2019s going to happen. \u201cWe\u2019re hoping that we can start construction this year.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Federal minister, MP focus on salmon with visit to South Surrey hatchery Published 9:30 am Thursday, March 5,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":516496,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194299],"tags":[49,48,87674],"class_list":{"0":"post-516586","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-surrey","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-surrey"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516586","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=516586"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516586\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/516496"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=516586"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=516586"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=516586"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}