Last week, with the weir built and fishing we hosted a field trip of 15 excited 4th graders from the Bella Bella Community School. A core part of Qqs’ mandate and mission is youth engagement in Heiltsuk culture and environmental stewardship and since the inception of the weir project, finding opportunities for youth engagement and education has been a central focus. Working with our friend and colleague Johanna Gordon-Walker, we have thus far hosted two groups from the school and we will be working with interns from the Supporting Emerging Aboriginal Stewards (SEAS) program at the weir this summer. By all accounts the field trip was a fantastic success. We shuttled students upriver to the trail head at Koeye on the high tide. The visit was made all the more special by what we found in the trapbox upon our arrival; a beautiful unspawned female steelhead, full of eggs and destined to spawn in the waters of the lower Koeye River in the coming days. None of the students had ever seen a steelhead and they were giddy with excitement at the sight  see the large, beautiful fish.

I am headed back down to the weir on Monday and wont return to Bella Bella until the end of my season here July 5th. Stay tuned to the Qqs blog for more updates as the summer continues.

-Will

Here are some pictures from the weir build:

Tripods half way across the lower Koeye

Pete Taylor of the Hakai Institute stokes the cookfire

Tripods spanning the Koeye

The Koeye River weir, finished.

Our working platform and trap box, looking back towards the platform and our camp

Heading back out to Koeye tomorrow, looking forward to having two groups of students out for field trips from the Bella Bella Community School. By the time we are back in town on June 7th for Oceans Day, we hope to have the weir in the water catching sockeye. Lots more photos to come.

Anne’s class and our crew at the weir site.

-Will

Qqs Projects is pleased, proud and honoured to be named one of Tides Canada’s Top 10 Initiatives for this year. We are in awe-inspiring company with projects, organizations and collaborations across the country that are making change happen in phenomenal ways.

I send all my love from Toronto, where I’ve just spent a lovely evening with the community of Tides supporters who gathered to celebrate social and environmental innovation in this country.

The strength of our work at Qqs comes entirely from our community. Tonight’s honour belongs to YOU! Thank you for being a driver of success, an agent for change, and a champion for the wellness of our community. It’s a privilege to work beside each and every Heiltsuk person who is striving for a positive future, and all our allies who stand with us!

Congratulations to all the Top 10 initiatives, and thank you for the amazing work you do across the country!

-Jess

…want to hear some good news?

Check back on Thursday to hear something that’ll put a smile on your face!

Much love to our co-sponsor, the Heiltsuk College, to all our amazing teams, and to the community who’s cheering them on.

Win or lose, you’re all warriors on the court in our eyes!

Thank you to everyone who donated warm clothing and blankets or contributed to our hot meal – and thank you to everyone who came down to enjoy a little winter warmth!

Community members left with over TWO HUNDRED warm articles of clothing this year, and we had a great time yesterday visiting with everyone over free coffee, delicious goodies, and a hot meal geared to chase the winter chill away.

Stay warm this holiday season!

Love,
Team Qqs

What can I say about the last week out at Kvai? Well first of all, we were supposed to go up the river to check out the bear snares… but the river was too shallow and we couldn’t make it, which was heartbreaking kinda. We did see a juvenile bear not too long after though, so it was all good. We watched it for 15 to 20 minutes walking on the beach… eating grass, doing bear stuff. Was pretty awesome!

Tuesday, we went to Namu which was okay. We only tagged 22, but the second day out there was pretty crazy, 63 FISH!!!… In one set, not even joking! It was pretty epic, it took us all morning to finish. Then we watched Gene jump off the dock into the water… twice in a row, haha now THAT was epic!

Another crazy-awesome summer with SEAS.

William

One day we were supposed to go up river and talk about bear snares but the tide was too low and we couldn’t make it up river so we ended up just spotting a grizzly and just bear watching for about 20 minutes or so. Then all of the sudden this helicopter came out of nowhere and scared the bear, it ran into the woods. About five minutes later it came back out to the same spot and it slowly walked the beach going up river. That was pretty sweet. Closest I’ve been to a bear in a long time.

Another day we went to Namu to do some seining. Only had to do one set and we had the biggest set we ever got! We tagged sixty-three sockeye and coho. And we must have caught about 75 or 80 easy. One point I was in the water watching the net and I saw a lot of fish getting out because the lead line was being dragged over rocks and they’d slip under. After that we kind of just had a fun afternoon. We went swimming around and snorkeling, we were jumping off the floats at Namu and we have a couple funny videos of the crew jumping in.

The crew after seining

Richard

On Friday we went out with Davie, Richard, and Carey from HIRMD to set up a new hydrophone station. When we got out there we met up with Max and Rob from Pacific Wild and Matt (a diver). We started off getting sacks of gravel to put over the hose in the intertidal rocks to weigh it down. We also started lowering the hydrophone cable inside the hose wrapped in lead line into the water from the boat. Matt was in the water and told us where to lower the lead line so it would lie along the ocean floor properly. Afterwards we lifted the anchor with the hydrophone on it onto a board in the speedboat and tipped it into the water. It was tied to two buoys so it didn’t fall in the water too fast. Then we got to look at the setup of the box where the solar panel charges the battery. It was a pretty good trip to help set up. I’d like to use this hydrophone to hear the pod of killer whales we saw in the area last year by the Gosling Rocks. That would be pretty cool.

Gene
On Thursday we started at 9am going up the river. We had to paddle up for a bit, but the tide was going down so we had to drag the canoes for a bit because the water was too low to paddle. We all met where the trail begins, and we started walking the trail. After awhile we had to walk on the river bank because the river was full of rapids. When we got near the stream we were going to set g-traps in, we got to snorkel in the river. It was the highlight of the day. I saw lots of fish that were between 9 and 11 inches long and a whole bunch of fry and parr. I was wearing jeans and it felt like a weight belt. We stayed back up there for 2 hours while the traps soaked. When we headed down, we snorkeled and floated down the rapids. We got a little beaten up on the rocks, but it was worth it. It was a day worth remembering.

Blake
This was the last week of Kvai camp for the kids this summer. It was a busy week, I’m sad that the kids won’t be around for another two weeks. Friday was feast day; 82 people came out here from the villge. It was amazing. The kids were practicing all week to show the community members what they learn while they’re out here and the kids have learned a lot.
After the first part of the ceremonies was performed, some people stood up and made speeches; one of the elders from Bella Bella got up and spoke in Heiltsuk to William Housty. Her whole speech was in Heiltsuk. It was pretty amazing to hear because I haven’t heard anyone speak of lot of Heiltsuk like that in a long time. Hearing her talk inspired me to learn my Heiltsuk language. I want to be able to fluently speak it. In the next couple years I want to take the time to learn.

During this week we went to Namu twice to do seining. We caught 82 fish in total during the two days. We caught fish in every set this week, something that has never happened before. Blake tagged her first fish and so did Gene. This week the water was the coldest it has ever been since it was raining the first day. The tide came up much higher than usual and everyone got soaked that first day, even the people in waders. While we were waiting for the fish to jump so we could close the net, Blake found an old spear head below the old restaurant. It’s hard to believe she could find something like that on the beach.

Spearhead

As our second day progressed we were sitting there, waiting for the seine net to soak searching for hermit crabs and more arrow heads. As we did that, we saw several jumping fish in the bay so we tried to close the net. We started to get pulled out in the high tide so Louis took off his waders and jumped in, screaming in pain from the cold water. The weather on the second day was super nice, so after we were done with our tagging we hung out in the bay with our snorkels for a little while hanging out and laughing with friends.