Field Work Friday

It’s #FieldWorkFriday

We kicked off the week with our juvenile salmon survey where we saw three juvenile salmon at Irvines Landing. We also caught over 20 juvenile squid! We usually only see the squid once per season. We were very excited to see them again!

Do you remember the photo of the cabezon that was caught in our juvenile salmon survey in our July 31, 2026 post? It was the biggest one we had seen as we usually catch juveniles, like the one pictured, in our larval light trap. Look at the difference. We are starting to see a few more Dungeness megalopae again in the traps this week.

On Sunday we completed our monthly nearshore bird survey as part of the Bird Studies Canada Coastal Waterbird Survey and our pinniped survey.  We saw quite a few short billed gulls and a pair of noisy Belted kingfishers. Have you heard any kingfishers in your area? Outside of the harbour we identified a raft of surf scoters and Harbour seals with pups.

The remainder of the week was devoted to European green crab monitoring. We had an incredible crew help us do six trapping surveys in Powell River and Texada Island over three days. It is an incredible amount of work and we could not do it without our dedicated volunteers! We are happy to say that we did not identify any EGC in our traps.

Our 2026 BioBlitz wrapped up on Tuesday with an incredible 670 species identified. Congrats to our contest winners!

An enormous thank you to the volunteers and supporters that help us continue these invaluable programs. We are so grateful for all of you.

Want to get involved? Check out our website at loonfoundation.org or email Jenn at jenn@loonfoundation.org for more information.