Is pollution prematurely killing salmon in a Fraser Valley creek?

Could pollution be killing hundreds of spawning salmon in an Abbotsford stream?

All through Stoney Creek in Abbotsford, salmon are spawning. In fact, volunteers say the coho salmon run is about three times what it usually is.

But there is a problem.

“I was kind of taken aback. I didn’t expect this,” said Alexandra Munday, with the Abbotsford Ravine Park Salmon Enhancement Society.

Volunteers first noticed something unusual when they were cutting open the dead salmon to determine if they were male or female as part of their salmon count.

“We noticed all the pre-spawn mortality, so many of the females that die before they spawn,” said Doug Gosling, who volunteers with the same society.

In the past three weeks, volunteers have found 379 dead female salmon in the creek. Of those, almost 60 per cent had not spawned.

Gosling said in his 15 years of counting the salmon, he’s never seen anything like it.

And it’s not the only issue volunteers are worried about.

“We just started seeing really elevated numbers of leeches on the fish,” Munday said. “They were covering the gill plates, and the mouths and some were actually inside the fish. That was really concerning.”

She said they were finding leeches on both alive and the dead fish.

“They were impeding their ability to breathe. They were gasping. They were lethargic,” she said.

Gosling thinks the creek may have become polluted by a chemical compound that he said can come off rubber tires.

“It gets onto the road and then it’s flushed into creeks, and it’s supposed to be very bad for coho. It kills coho. So, we want to do testing to see if that’s in the water,” he said.

Environment and Climate Change Canada said in an email to CTV News that the agency takes pollution incidents very seriously.

“ECCC enforcement officials have been notified of the fish mortality event at Stoney Creek, and they will continue to verify compliance with the pollution prevention provisions of the Fisheries Act,” the email reads.

The email also states that ECCC does not share details about the measures taken to evaluate compliance with regulations in order to protect the integrity of enforcement processes.

Fish in Stoney Creek have been impacted by pollution before.

In July 2024, it’s estimated that thousands of fish died after firefighting foam was accidently released.

Gosling does not believe the previous event has anything to do with what they are seeing now.

He’s calling on federal officials to test the water so they can get answers.