Aquatics in good state

Throwing in a line and lifting out a trophy-sized bull trout is not, despite what expert television angler Bob Izumi says, easy, nor is it simply the result of mother nature’s desire. A healthy aquatic environment is more important than a fish finder when it comes to looking for the best fishing hole.

Aquatics generalist with Parks Canada Ward Hughson took the Fitzhugh out for a half-day to explore Jasper National Park’s aquatic environment. “If you look at the entire Athabasca drainage,” said Hughson, “we are definitely the healthiest spot. We are the upstream caretakers of this huge watershed, he emphasized.” Although there are some “minor problems,” overall Jasper’s pretty good, said Hughson.

The aquatics department at parks does habitat restoration, species restoration and tries to bring public awareness and education to what lies beneath - and sometimes above - the water’s edge.

“One of the biggest habitat issues we have in the park is what we call aquatic connectivity,” said Hughson, “that is the degree to which the system is naturally connected.” Hughson stated that 87 per cent of Jasper’s waterways are naturally connected and “unimpacted” by train line, trail and road crossings.

Although not the most visible of issues, culverts are the bête noire of many of Jasper’s fish.

“Generally, the fish are not well adapted to swimming through culverts,” said Hughson, adding that one of the issues with culverts is the increased velocity of the water that runs through them, which may be too strong for some fish to swim against.

Right now, fish are seeking refuge in waterways outside the Athabasca because it is “silt-laden,” said Hughson, so for fish in the Athabasca river, “it’s like rubbing sandpaper on their gills,” he added.

One of the places that fish are seeking refuge is Cabin Creek, said Hughson, where they’ve also done a culvert restoration project, so fish can once against gain access to an important habitat.

“We have inventoried every culvert, every stream crossing in the park,” said Hughson. “We’ve measured the attributes of each culvert and stream, up and down stream... we have all that laid out... What this allows us to do is prioritize restoration projects,” he said.

The two central issues fish have with culverts are design-related. Hanging culverts prevent fish - especially slower fish like suckers - from moving upstream because they have to jump to get inside, said Hughson. The other issue is the velocity of water traveling through the culvert. To illustrate his point, Hughson explained the difference between blowing air through a straw and just blowing air out your mouth.

So where parks has repaired the culverts, such as at Cabin Creek and Highway 16, the culvert no longer hangs, in fact it sits directly in the water year-round, which also reduces the water’s velocity and once again allows not only the rainbow trout to take a trip upstream, but suckers and other bottom-dwelling species as well, explained Hughson.
From 1917 until the mid-1980s, Parks Canada stocked “hundreds of thousands” of fish into the waterways of JNP, said Hughson. “It was one of the methods that parks used to try to attract visitors,” he said.

Most of the lakes in Jasper were “naturally fishless,” said Hughson, but now 90-plus per cent of the lakes in the park have fish, he added. Parks Canada knows what was stocked, explained Hughson, adding that more than six million fish in total were stocked in all the mountain national parks.

In many cases, Parks Canada stocked non-native fish, said Hughson. “When you stock brook trout, they compete with our native bull trout. They take up habitat that bull trout could be using. It did wonders for the anglers, but it didn’t really do any good for the native fish population that we’re in charge of,” said Hughson. “it would be like having llamas in the park,” he joked.

An angler visiting the park area in the early 1900s would have hooked bull trout, mountain white fish, lake white fish, northern pike and some rainbow trout, said Hughson. Rainbow trout are believed to be native in the upper Athabasca system, explained Hughson, but rainbow trout found in lakes are non-native species, he said.

Pyramid Lake has always had native lake trout, but was still stocked 52 times with non-native lake trout, said Hughson. What this means, said Hughson, is that the stocked trout were not in “evolutionary terms, adapted to these systems.”

Introducing fish into lakes can have a “cascading effect,” said Hughson. When you stock fish in a lake that was previously fish free, “it wipes out amphibian populations [and] drastically changes invertebrate populations in lakes,” he said.

Connectivity is a “huge issue,” said Hughson and that’s also an area where parks is making “huge gains,” he said. The new sewage treatment plant has also been good for the river, said Hughson, adding that “things aren’t perfect, but they’ve drastically improved.”

“We would like to see fish populations resembling the natural condition of the population. That means, it’s like a forest, you have little trees and you have big trees and you have a certain mix of those,” said Hughson, adding that “when a lake is angled, generally the first fish to come out of the lake will be the largest fish.” This means that anglers can help keep the fish population large and healthy by releasing them, instead of keeping them, said Hughson.

Another issue that has recently arisen has been didymo (Didymosphenia geminata), or rock snot as it’s otherwise known. Didymo is a freshwater algae that can be mistaken for wet toilet paper and comes in a brown, beige or white colour. Rock snot is non-toxic, but when it begins to take over, it can completely cover stream bottoms thereby reducing available habitat for fish, plants and invertebrates.

According to Hughson, “it’s believed to be native, but we may also have non-native strains... That’s an area of concern.” Asked whether didymo is a symptom of an unhealthy aquatic system, similar in way that the pine and douglas fir beetles are a symptom of an unhealthy forest, Hughson emphatically stated, “no it is not. Didymo actually thrives in clear, nutrient-poor systems, which is our natural pristine ecological state,” he explained. The investigation into the didymo issue is ongoing, said Hughson.

Parks Canada just does not have the in-house expertise to cover everything, said Hughson, so “we try to encourage research in the park which contributes directly to help us manage [the park]... or inform people,” he added.

Currently, Allison Squires, a PhD candidate and Lisa Ramilo, a masters student - both from the University of Saskatchewan - are holed up in a NASA-like laboratory on the edge of the Athabasca conducting toxicology experiments. “I’m looking at the whole Athabasca River, from headwaters to mouth... This research is supposed to feed into developing thresholds for water quality,” said Squires, because “right now there isn’t really any specific river water quality thresholds in Canada.”

Their laboratory has 108 fish tanks where they are testing the level of toxicity that is required to affect fish reproduction in the Athabasca River. Given Jasper’s pristine aquatic state, Squires and Ramilo are using upper Athabasca water as the control for their experiments. They also have brown water from Fort McMurray, which they are also using as part of the experiment.

Part of Hughson’s job also involves maintaining and studying the habitat of Jasper’s waterfowl. To view some restoration work, we headed to the outlet bay on Pyramid Lake to examine an artificial island for loons.

Over a 10-year period, two loons called outlet bay their home, but no chicks were ever hatched, said Hughson, which was likely the result of human disturbance, he added. So, “we constructed an artificial island and we put vegetation on that island and we anchored the island... and cordoned off the outlet bay,” he said.

“What is more Canadian than a call of the loon,” said Hughson, adding that “if that doesn’t ripple through your soul, I don’t know what does. We had ten years of none [no chicks], we did this restoration project, the smallest thing and every year, I think this would be the eighth year, now we’ve had one or two chicks fly off this lake every year since,” said Hughson. The loon restoration project was a “small thing, but a giant success,” he said.

“If you look at it from a park visitors’ perspective, then it’s huge because most people when they come to the park like to spend time by the water... whether it’s a lake, stream or river, they offer a spiritual connection to the landscape,” said Hughson.

“I’ve had an interest in aquatic environments ever since I was a kid in rubber boots at my cottage north of Ottawa and I feel at home there. I care passionately about aquatic environments. I’m a canoeist, I’m a fisherman. I have one of the best jobs on earth here,” said Hughson enthusiastically.