Seymour Salmonid Society

Following is an example of a mooring technique submitted by Marc Guimond and his team at the Salmon River Hatchery, Seymour Salmonid Society.

Here is our anchor idea that we came up with for deployment of VR2s in a river mouth that experiences high flows. It has worked well for four consecutive years.

Materials per anchor:

• 3 - 4' X 1/2" rebar
• 1 - 10 or 20L bucket
• 1 - Bag of ready mix concrete

Drill four 1/2" holes on the bottom of the bucket at 90 degree angles to one another and feed two of the rebars crosswise through holes and have them sticking out evenly all around. These act as stabilizing legs so the anchor doesn't fall over.

Bend the third rebar in half and place both ends in the bucket creating a nice loop protruding out of the bucket. Mix the concrete, fill the bucket and let the concrete cure.

We attach the VR2s upright with cable ties (zap straps) fastened to the rebar loop.

To deploy it by boat, we usually lower it with a rope fed through the loop and once it sits on the bottom pull the rope back up to the boat We then take a position on GPS for future recovery. To recover them, we scuba dive.

In all cases, we knew the composition of the substrate at the sites by conducting dives. Ideally the bottom should be flat and sandy. However, when the substrate was rocky we had to be more careful with its placement. When the water was clear and we could see bottom, we could lower the anchor and VR2 with rope from the boat and were able to see that it sat upright. Otherwise, diving to ensure proper placement is advisable.