Terrace Salmonid Enhancement Society

The Terrace Salmonid Enhancement Society (TSES) operates the Deep Creek Hatchery and conducts the Kitsumkalum Chinook salmon Project under contract with Fisheries and Oceans Canada. The program produces coded wire tag (CWT) marked Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) fry and yearlings which are released into the natural population. The objective is to assess Chinook salmon returning to the Kitsumkalum River annually and provide data that can be used to estimate hatchery and wild components of the return, as well as the age structure of the population. Coded wire tagged fish are sampled in an international Mark Recovery Program, data that is essential to measuring exploitation rates and run reconstruction calculations. The Kitsumkalum River is the exploitation rate indicator stock for the Skeena Chinook salmon complex and spawning escapements have been estimated using this mark-recapture program since it's initiation in 1984.