Review of Escapement Indicator Streams for the North and Central Coast Salmon Monitoring Program

The decline in escapement monitoring effort and the importance of these data for annual assessment of stock status prompted this review of the escapement indicator streams and the discussions regarding survey priorities, methods, and costs with the groups that have been conducting these escapement surveys in recent years. These discussions included representatives from Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO), Charter Patrol (CP) operators and most of the NCC First Nations. Each individual or group was provided with an Excel file that contained all the available escapement estimates and metadata for each NCC stream and identified those streams that were previously classified as “indicator streams” for each species. Individuals were asked to identify any indicator streams that should be removed from the list priority streams to monitor each year and streams that should be added to the list to fill monitoring gaps, improve coverage of a statistical area or CU, or provide more reliable escapement estimates than one or more of the current indicator streams. This report provides a series of tables which summarize of our findings by monitoring method for each Statistical Area, monitoring group, species, and CU. Recommendations are provided regarding how to ensure the annual surveys of indicator streams are conducted in a consistent and sustainable manner.