Fish and Sirens - The Cleveland Dam (Part 3)

 Hullo!! We are still at the Cleveland Dam (I know... multi-post adventures!)

We are on our way to the fish hatchery...

There is a great interpretive centre here...

And you can learn all about the different types of salmon... all of which are beary yummy...

Ummm... this is left over from Covid!

We pretty much had the place to ourselves.

This is a nice display... explaining about salmon spawning...

And then had little aquariums (aquaria?) with baby salmon!!

A tad too small for lunch.

These are steelhead salmon... well... steelhead trout... kind of. They are a type of rainbow trout that is born in fresh water, goes to the ocean, returns to the freshwater to spawn but doesn't die! They an do this cycle multiple times while regular salmon can only do it once... spawn and die.

And over here.. we have real salmon!!!!

Big salmon...

I guess... we can't have them for lunch, eh? Sigh.

After the salmon hatchery... we climbed and climbed on the other side of the river (300 feet down... means 300 feet up!)... and saw the dam from a different angle...

You see that big white thing? It's a massive rotating drum. And when it turns, it releases water from Capilano Reservoir. Back on 1 October, 2020, the engineering guys were doing some testing and the drum accidentally opened and released an enormous amount of water down the Capilano River. With no warning. One lady walking on the dam when it happened got a picture...

This is what it normally looks like...

There were a lot of people on the river that day and two of them, a father and his adult son, died. Other people almost died. You can see a video here... The river went up almost 12 feet in spots.

And... this has happened before... In 1975, a 9-year-old girl died after water was released unexpectedly. In 2001, four fishermen were trapped in the river when the water level surged without a warning after the spillway's drum gate inadvertently dropped open. After that one, WorkSafe BC issued a number of recommendations which included "public warning signage and warning alarms". The "warning alarms" bit was ignored... until after the 2020 deaths. Hence... the sirens.

Oh... and from up here... you can see the Doorway to Nowhere...

There it is!! Cool, no?

I wonder how many teens try to climb up there... and squeeze through? It would be dangerous...

Anyhow... that's our visit to the Cleveland Dam. We learned lots and had fun... all part of a great adventure!