'Unheard of': Tens of thousands of salmon found dead in B.C. creek as drought conditions persist

B.C.'s sunny, dry weather is leading to major drought conditions in parts of the province, causing devastating impacts for some wildlife.

Video posted to social media recently shows tens of thousands of dead salmon lying at the bottom of a dry creek in Bella Bella.

William Housty, conservation manager with the Heiltsuk Nation, told CTV News Vancouver the sight's "unheard of."

"Nobody … that's living here in the community has ever seen anything like this before," Housty said.

The video was captured last week by German researcher Sarah Mund, who was working in the community, but locals didn't see it until Monday. They said they're devastated as they rely on the watershed for food.

"We all knew that it's been a really dry end to the summer and beginning to the fall, but we really didn't anticipate that things were at the magnitude and the scale they're at right now," Housty said.

Salmon experts say it's a growing problem that won't go away easily.

"Unfortunately something I think we're going to see more often as global warming continues at the pace that it's at," Lina Azeez with Watershed Watch Salmon Society told CTV News.

Azeez, who lives in Port Coquitlam, said she's also seen the shocking impacts of the drought in her own backyard.

"I saw a little juvenile salmon at the bottom end of Hyde Creek. As I biked along it, it just suddenly dried out, it was bone dry," she said.

"When salmon go, the building blocks of our coastal ecosystems start to fall apart. We depend on salmon, bears depend on salmon, forests depend on salmon."

Parts of the province have seen record breaking high temperatures in recent days. While no records were broken Tuesday, 16 were on Monday, including many that were decades old. 

The continued dry weather is also impacting wildfire conditions in the province, including at a Metro Vancouver park. Crews expect to be at Minnekhada Regional Park for several days, battling a 12-hectare blaze.

The various wildfires have led to air-quality advisories in the province. 

"We've been stuck in this (weather) pattern for quite some time and it's expected to continue at least for another several days," Bobby Sekhon with Environment Canada told CTV News Vancouver.

"It's possible that into early next week we might see a bit of a shift in the pattern." 

This is Neekas, Heiltsuk Territory. All of these salmon went into the creek, the creek dried up b/c of no rain so far this fall, and just died, and this is just one reach! Global warming is killing everything. This is such a sad scene. Video credit, Sarah Mund pic.twitter.com/vYhEKwD5mN

— William Housty (@WilliamHousty) October 4, 2022