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NVISEA partners with the Friends of the Marble River Society to operate the Marble River Hatchery. This facility operates under SEP’s Public Involvement Program (PIP). The Friends of the Marble River Society is Northern Vancouver Islands largest volunteer organization oriented to Salmonid enhancement, stewardship and habitat rehabilitation.
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The group boasts one hundred and five members with affiliations throughout the North Island forestry, fisheries, conservation, and First Nation communities. Marble River Hatchery incubation encompasses fifty-seven heath stacks with chilled water capacity for otolith marking. For juvenile rearing, the Marble Hatchery utilizes five 14' circular tanks, three 3' x 15' raceways, seven traditional 3' x 20' Capilano troughs and one 6' x 20' super Capilano trough.
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The backbone of Marble River Chinook rearing is the hatchery’s gravity fed engineered rearing channel. This channel is split into two separate flows, with each side having three segregated sections. Solar powered automated feeders reduce volunteer labour requirements. The channel mimics natural rearing with its gravity fed Marble River water source, forested setting and cobble substrate.
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The Marble River Hatchery is exceptional in scale compared to other PIP facilities. Marble River Chinook production targets are one million smolts, while Coho targets are 200,000 fry and 50,000 smolts. Coded wire tagging is conducted on 75,000 Chinook smolts, while a further 100,000 are extended sea site reared to 20 g with partner Quatsino Lodge.
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