Final preparations are underway for this year’s Adams River Salmon Run, which gets underway this Friday, Sept. 30.

Ken Benoit, the President of the Adams River Salmon Society, says this year’s edition of the Salute to the Sockeye Festival at the Tsútswecw Provincial Park will be Indigenous led.

“Our Indigenous partners have been an important part of all salutes,” Benoit said.

“I think this year, there has been a greater emphasis on the key role that salmon play in Indigenous culture and particularly of the bands that are along the Fraser River and the Columbia River and the Thompson River so this year, we really emphasize that connection.”

Benoit tells NL News that visitors to the festival will experience “a lot of information about the Secwepemc culture.”

“It does start on Friday and starting on day one which is the National Day of Truth and Reconciliation, there are lots of activities planned for that day,” he said. “We’re calling it ‘A Day of Salmon Celebration’ and it’s going to be led by one of our partners, the Little Shuswap Lake Band.”

As for what you can expect during this year’s dominant salmon run on the Adams River.

“Fisheries and Ocean Canada, DFO, they are forecasting a not insignificant run this year of sockeye,” Benoit said. “They’ve increased the forecast actually. I think it is now approaching two million fish that are entering from the Fraser River.”

About a million of those fish are expected to return to the Shuswap Lake system – which includes the Adams, the Shuswap, and the Eagle rivers – this year.

“I think visitors are going to see a lot of sockeye,” Benoit added. “A bunch of red sockeye in the water, they’re going to unmistakable. It will be hard to miss them.”

“They’re going to see Chinook salmon, maybe some Pink, as well as lots of Indigenous cultural information.”

In 2010, of the 28 million returning Fraser River sockeye, about 3.8 million returned to the Adams River area while in 2014, just 707,000 of the roughly 19 million returning Fraser River sockeye returned to the Adams River area.

“[The 2022 projection] is an increase in the return that we saw in 2018 and in fact 2014,” Benoit said. “The trajectory seems to be on an upward trend.”

“I’m not a scientist but when people think of large salmon runs, they think of 2010 which was a one-in-100 year event. Comparing subsequent runs to 2010 might not be a fair comparison because it was such an exceptional year.”

The 2022 Salute to the Sockeye Festival will be open to visitors every day until Oct. 23, from 8:30 a.m. until 4:30 p.m., when gates will be locked. Organizers say all vehicles will have to leave the site by 5:30 p.m.

Organizers also say entry fees will be used to cover operating costs with additional proceeds supporting the Legacy Fund for stewardship activities and to ensure a safe and comfortable environment for the visitors and the spawning salmon.

For more information on the 2022 Salute to the Sockeye Festival, go here.

You’ll find a live underwater camera at the Tsútswecw Provincial Park here.