New Fish Ladder in 2024
A new aluminum Fish Ladder was installed in early August, 2024, and the final phase – a “beaver baffler” – was completed at the end of September.
The fish ladder was engineered to allow salmon and smaller fish to enter the ladder more easily at lower tides. The new design also incorporates a “beaver deceiver” which will allow water to flow into the ladder from a submerged pipe in Colvin lake, thereby enabling fish to pass, even when there is a beaver dam at the top of the ladder. A new level ground viewing platform was also built and installed by dedicated volunteers. We hope you take some time to check out the new fish ladder and viewing platform.
Read our special newsletter about the fish ladder installation. What an incredible process!!
The Wetland page contains information about the original fish ladder.
Salmon Underwater Camera Project
Each fall at Sargeant Bay Provincial Park, pink, coho, and chum salmon return to Colvin Lake and Colvin Creek to spawn. For over 35 years members of the Sargeant Bay Society (SBS) as well as the Sargeant Bay Streamkeepers have worked to maintain the fish ladder that allows the salmon to move from the ocean estuary to Colvin Lake.
In the summer of 2024 the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO), BC Parks, Pacific Salmon Foundation, SBS and other volunteers and groups helped with the installation of a new fish ladder in the park. This was a major accomplishment. However, we soon realized that a better monitoring system of salmon returns was required.
Previously, each fall we relied on volunteers to conduct daily checks of the fish ladder and creek, thereby allowing only very short viewing opportunities. After discussions with our local DFO contact Jim Wilson it was decided that an underwater camera placed in the fish ladder might give us better opportunities to monitor salmon returns. With the amazing help of a grant made possible by the Karuna Fund at the Sunshine Coast Foundation, we were able to secure funding to make this fish ladder underwater camera project a reality.
The installation was completed in early October, 2025 enabling the camera to capture, through motion sensor, some amazing underwater video footage whenever an object moved through the fish ladder. Although initially many video clips of sticks and leaves had to be culled, it became exciting when the camera began capturing video clips of small fish, something that previously would have been missed by the naked eye. The camera really allowed the life of the fish ladder to be more understood.
In October, November and December, 2025 the camera caught images of chum, coho, northern anchovy, pile perch, sculpin, river otter and North American beaver. We also were able for the first time to see coho smolts leaving the lake through the fish ladder to enter the ocean.
Quality of the images depended on the ambient light and the turbidity of the water on a particular day. By the end of October we also added a solar light that successfully allowed the camera to capture images of any passing salmon at night.
Although the camera project was conceived to monitor returning salmon, we quickly discovered its additional benefit of capturing the movements of fish and animals between the ocean and the freshwater Colvin Lake and Colvin Creek. The project was a real success by allowing us to count returning salmon that otherwise would have been omitted. In the fall, 2026, the underwater camera will once again be installed to help us count salmon returns.
Dave Spicer
Director – Sargeant Bay Society
The Camera in Action
This short video clip shows salmon movement in Sargeant Bay Provincial Park from the ocean to the spawning creek. This video also incorporates some of the underwater camera footage of coho, coho smolts and salmon returning at night. We hope to add more videos and photos in the future.
A Note of Thanks
The Sargeant Bay Society would like to thank all of the groups and people that helped to bring this unique project together: The Sunshine Coast Foundation for their generous funding support, BC Parks, Erin and Don from Sunshine Coast Foundation, Bill and Barb of the Karuna Fund, Dee Dee Sjorgren, Jim Wilson (DFO), Ian Hunt (Geek in the Creek Computers) who helped immensely with the technical side of this project, Sargeant Bay Streamkeeper members: Jeff Muckle, Peter Bogardus, Rick Walters, Gavin Goodall, Jim Quirk, Dave Spicer, Richard and Ilene Rowberry.
