An Investigation of the Life History and Propagation of the Sockeye Salmon (Oncorhynchus nerka) at Cultus Lake, British Columbia. No. 5. The Life history cycle of the 1926 year class with Artificial Propagation involving the liberation of free-swimming fry.
From 1,949 sockeye salmon females in the run of 1926, 8,770,000 eggs were available. Of these approximately 1,174,000 (13.4%) were lost through 261 females dying before stripping. Since part of this loss was undoubtedly due to conditions imposed by the investigation, a second set of percentages based on egg content of the fish stripped is given. The true values lie between the two. Fry liberated in the spring of 1927 amounted to 5,916,500 (67.5% of total available eggs and 77.9% of eggs available for stripping). From these there migrated to sea 336,173 yearlings and 8,000 two-year-olds, representing 3.9% of total eggs and 4.5% of eggs available for stripping, and but 5.8% of total fry liberated. The yearling seaward migrants, which showed no change in size as the migration proceeded, were appreciably smaller than those in the 1927 migration, thus exhibiting an inverse relationship to the presumed populations in the lake during the first year. Scale-ring counts for the two age groups were made and rates of growth computed from scale measurements. Returning adults consisted of: 32 group (1929)—9 males; 42 group (1930)—2,327 males + 5,300 females; 52 group (1931)—149 females, a total of 7,785 adults—representing 0.09% of total eggs and 2.3% of seaward migrants. From 99,700 migrants marked by the removal of the adipose and both ventral fins, 1,340 adults (1.34%) returned to Cultus lake and 341 (0.34%) were taken in commercial fishing areas. The latter are not considered a complete recovery.