a j drainage basin. Incoasta) rainforestareag lush ;!! x ws by ‘Chick Childerhose _ Once a week from May through October the primeval quiet of western Vancouver Island is blasted by the -unexpected: roar’ of aircraft engines as a DC+%B clears the far northern ', ridge then dives to skim the chill rippled waters of Great Central Lake. From behind the silver transport plane sprouts a. trailing plume of spray. _ : The trailing cloud is fertilizer, The serial drop is part of an experiment to ‘enhance’ the lake as a nursery area for sockeye salmon fry. Great Central, 20km west of Port Alberni, is in many ways a typical raincoast lake, It is long, narrow and deep. It hag no beaches. Instead, steep forested hills begin at the water's edge and extend outward to form an undulation horizon of darkes t green. . ‘ Asimilar experimental program is starting on a similar Jake on the Queen Charlotte Islands. Such lakes are deep and clear and have high concentrations of dissolved oxygen. But in the | heavy rainfall portions of British Columbia, the lakes can be nutrient deficient. Nutrients arrive in runoff waters from ‘a lake's ‘ plant growth depletes the soi) and drastically reduces the nutrients that wash into the lakes. ” Although gamefish are often the dominant species found in these oligotrophic lakes, due to the lack of nutrients not many fish of any kind areapttobefound.. sie This is true for the ‘sockeye salmon. A peculiarity of this species is that the young must , Spend one or more years, feeding and growing, in’ a freshwater lake before they migrate to the " ocean. . The young sockeye prey on lankton, microscopic animals, that feed on stilt smaller plant lifeforms known as phytoplankton. . .. These tiny plants float in the sunlit surface waters and form the base of one of the food webs. - They require light and dissolved nutrients to grow and multiply. if the minerals and other _ basic nutrients are in short supply, every living organism in the chain is diminished. - Ten years ago federal fisheries department scientists at the Pacific Blological Station, Nanaimo, decided to.test-the hypothesis that adding chemical fertilizers to a nutrient- deficient lake could increase its production of sockeye, Great Central was known to be lacking: iin. nutrients and had been relatively un- productive of salmon. ; ' The 1969 season was spent gathering baseline information of Great Central Lake. Then, for four successive years beginning in 1970, the lake . received a weekly five-ton dosage of fertilizer. The dissolved fertilizer was released in the wake “of a boat travelling at eight knots. It went on for 20 weeks for a total of 100tons per seagon, | ‘The results exceaded the scientists' most optimistic hopes. Prior to fertilization, annual returns of adult sockeye to Great Central Lake had averaged about 50,000 fish. By 1977 when adults who had benefited from fourth year of . lake fertilization had matured, the returns of pockeye to Great Central Lake fertilization had matured, the rebirns of sockeye to Great Central Lake were estimated to be 400,000 fish, The next yeaf the returns dropped dramatically to 175,000. These sockeye had reared in the lake during 1975 after the fertilizaticn pilot program had stopped. Fisheries biologists are well aware that man's interventions fn nature often appear to succeed at first, only to fail later as unforeseeable complications arise, For this reason the water quality of Great Central Lake was carefully -monitored throughet the four-year period. © It was founil that soluble nutrients added in small amounts and on a frequent basis are en- tirely taku up by the plankton within a few hours of application. In fact, moat of the fer- tilizer is absorbed within a few minutes. Despite the increase in microscopic plant life, po blooms or noxious algae have occurred. Temporary changes in water clarity due to the ' * increase microorganisms have been noted but the changes do not peralst when the fertilization is topped. It appears that artificial enrichment ~ does not cause reversible change., \Experimental program |underway on the QCI With such positive results as encouragement, the decision was taken to continue the Great Central fertilization experiment and to broaden | the program to include other nutrient-defictent . lakes. .Four other Vancouver Island lakes- Henderson, Hobition, mohun and Kennedy ~ as: well as Long Lake, north of Powell River on the mainland, are now subject to enrichment. . Mohun Lake is being done in cooperation with * the B.C, Fish and Wildlife Branch. Unlike the ot- her four lakes it is being fertilized by boat. The - effort here is to increase the numbers of kokanee _ — landlocked sockeye-in Mohun Lake. . The fertilizer ig mixed with water in Campbell River and trucked to Mohun Lake where it is distributed in the wake of a’ moving boat, The larger four lakes are legs aceessible. The logistical problems of trucking bags of fertilizer to these lakes, of providing adequate. storage for it, of mixing it and, finally, the frequent boat trips required to carry out the weekly treatment, © prompted the planners to try aerial application. Conair, of Abbotsford, was chosen for the job. Since the company’s business is crop spraying and forest fire bombing, it was-an obvious . ice, 2 : . - ammonium phosphate and = nitrate plus essential trace elements — is mixed with water and held in outdoor storage tanks. Fromm here it is pumped directly into the cargo tanks: of the aircraft parked nearby. Ht The deliveries of the fertilizer to the four coastal lakes are made from Abbotsford Airport. Ralph Boulton, captain of the delivery ship, does not regard his job as dangerous, He adihits that bad weather can be a problem but says: “With a lake as big as Great Central, as long as the clouds are off the hills. there's usually room to maneuver underneath.” The lakes chosen for experimental fertilization vary in physical characteristics and biological. activity. Henderson Lake, for instance, has a bottom layer of salt water that is lacking in oxygen. Some of the lakes have diverse food chains while others support few plant and animal communities, While it is true that enrichment of lakes is still in the experimental stage, fisheries managers hope to use the technique as another tool of the Salmonid Enhancement Program(S&P). The SEP is a 15-year, multi-million dollar effort of the federal fisheries department to restora the salmon stocks of British Columbia to their pre-190) levels of abundance. The program involves the construction of. hatcheries, spawning channels and fishways; incubation units and stream-flow control works. Compared to these, lake enrichment is simple. Fertilizer is cheap, it causes no permanent change in the environment, requires no staff and results in hundreds ‘of thousands more sockeye for the commercial] fishery. . For instance, while costs of the fertilization of Great Central Lake totalled about $100,000 in 1978, the commercial fishery in Barkley Sound ‘harvested some $5 million worth of sockeye, moat of which originated in Great Central. = Though it’s true only. some sockeye fursery lakes can benefit from fertilizing, the technique is the bargain of the decade. . Editor's note; Although this article seems essentially factual, as far as it goes, we would like to add some information. Increasing the atocks of sockeye salmon returning through the Alberni Inlet and the river system to Great Central Lake has affected another fishery. The increased numbers of sockeye have meant an increased net fishery and the destruction of the already reduced summer steelhead trout run. While summer-run steelhead are a fish for sports fishermen, and only the best of those . cateh steelhead, the destruction of these fish was me tweuenee of the enhancement of the other J Language law case is. | judicial and parliamentary Ip . th posain ‘of Jaws .by the ‘fegislatures without the consent of the federal ; government. 2 rough ot ' questioning from .the nine Reporter - photographer _ Cénie engineers fitted Gargo-traniapart DC. ‘6B With infertial tanks et ee etter The Herald, Tuesday, June 12, 1078, Page 13 ? which Is the backbone of the Parti Quebecois aim of making Quehec a politically- behind’ the of the nese Prenchpesk- ry state. . British ee Femeres whick The Jaw aa it affects the made Canada a nation. courts and the Quebec A. Kerr Twaddle was assembly was challenged by advancing Manitoba arguments before the Supreme Court of Canada in favor of Quebec laws to — make French the OTTAWA (CP) — A lawyer for the “Manitoba government was invited on. Monday to look at the history beyond the powers of the Gucber assembly and struck language when he received them down. ‘the invitation from Chief remain in Justice Bora Laskin. : Twaddle argued that the BNA Act Ja not a guarantee for the Engh ah in Quebec nor quebec case, also said the the French in Manitoba BNA Act clearly set out the Laskin then asked the division of powers and r “to take a peek” at allowed .the provinces a background datetes ang Jurisdiction over local Ierature of Confederation, alters, including magegs: Twaddle said a section of incial the BNA Act giving minority - language rights in. the two. provinces wae “only a q ? He the sectlon was part of the constitution of the vinces, not Canada, - ond could be amended by - SPORTS. hee court justices, Twaddle federal: power to- disallow provincial laws, Although the disallowance power isa dead issue now, he said {t could have been used. in the early years of Con- federation. - Twaddle said any Province such as Ontario or ritish Columbia, lias the power to change the language of its courts and legislatures. He noted that New Brunswick recent] ; and there-is no doubt that it possessed powers to do so. The reverse also was true _ REQUIRED © by the Daily Herald ' This is an opportunity for a young man or woman who kno the local sports scene 'to become a reporter-photographer. A knowledge of local sports Is essential and the ambition cover local sports and learn the desk- work involved in editing and ‘laying out pages. . A driver's Hoence and transportation is required. Salary to he Getermined by pravious experience. 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