Re-gravelling Embley Creek

This week, a year after we lost Clare, Chris has made a significant donation to MESSS on behalf of the Clare Winsor Foundation.

MESSS is the Mainland Enhancement of Salmonoid Species Society, a long-established charity formed to enable interested members to engage in the active enhancement of salmon on Gilford Island and mainland inlets in the Broughton Archipelago in British Columbia, Canada.

Clare and Chris spent a wonderful holiday staying at Blackfish Lodge and fishing the archipelago in 2018 and fell in love with the area. Chris went back last year to scatter some of Clare's ashes and became aware of MESSS through Hannah and Chris Bennett who are Board Members of MESSS and run Blackfish Lodge.

The money donated will be used to buy, deliver and position 30 bags of gravel in Embley Creek to improve the environment for the salmon.

"For this project we will try to do the area around the beaver dam and down to just above tidewater. All the area where you and I saw the fish. We can order the gravel for the late spring and fly it into place by helicopter," Chris Bennett told us. 

He also told us about how they'd already tried this method of re-gravelling and seen big improvements:

"We talked about putting gravel in Embley as well as exposing as much natural gravel as may be there and we are all in favour of this.  We also met with fisheries and our community salmon enhancement adviser. We took them up the road and showed them a couple places where we had put gravel. It looked beautiful where we put the gravel and they were really impressed. We also looked at some spots that we did not put gravel. Big difference.  The first project demonstrates what can be done and encourages funding for more."

It is anticipated that this project will be done in Spring 2023, we'll keep you updated!