Letting Rivers Run Wild: Monitoring of iBoF Atlantic Salmon in Irish River

Description: ACAP Saint John seeks to expand monitoring efforts in Irish River, an iBoF river, to confirm salmon presence and abundance. The presence of salmon was confirmed in this once thought to extirpated river through eDNA sampling in 2020. In 2021 a major dam at the mouth of Irish river was removed, fully restoring fish passage to the river. ACAP Saint John will continue to monitor for salmon presence by expanding effort to include targeted electrofishing surveys aiming to confirm the presence of salmon, determine abundance, and begin to understand if there is movement of fish between managed and unmanaged iBoF rivers. To accomplish this, salmon captured will be aged, measured, PIT tagged, and a genetic sample taken before release. This is a continuation of work conducted in 2023 on Black River where salmon were tagged, and genetic samples taken. Key areas were where salmon are residing were identified based on the data collected. Expanding this work further into the iBoF will provide much need valuable data on this endangered population in these undermanaged rivers.