Scott Galligos is not a trained scientist, but for the past 14 years he has been collecting data on the stream that flows past the place where he grew up and the citizen scientist is using it to better understand how things are changing.
Galligos works at the Sliammon Fish Hatchery. His data concentrates on Sliammon Creek: the height of water in the stream, how warm or cold it is and how much water flows through it at a given point. It is safe to say Galligos has a deeper understanding of what is going on there than most anyone.
Fourteen years is not a long time when it comes to how the earth is changing, but just as scientists track the steady retreat of glaciers in the Rocky Mountains or the extent of ice cover on the Arctic Ocean, Galligos’s data helps him understand how things are changing close to home in the stream he played in as a child.
He does not use a computer to organize the information he collects, instead relying on a binder with pages and his handwritten notes.
Galligos talked about how passionate gardeners, though they might not take down the level of data he does, are doing something similar when they recognize that season changes are either speeding up or being delayed and what effect that has on when to plant seeds.
“We’re definitely headed into an El Niño year,” he said.
In addition to this, about four years ago he started collecting his notes on when plants, like the salmonberries that grow on the bank of the stream, started to bud, and when swallows and turkey vultures would return. He has noticed fewer bald eagles in the area over the past 10 years.
“I check for anomalies from year to year,” he said, adding, “things are changing.”
The difficulty, he said, is sorting out what is caused by human intervention and what is natural change.
The hatchery worker is interested in climate change’s affect on the area and he figured a way to understand nature is to start making notes of the things he notices.
He took courses in habitat assessment through Vancouver Island University in the 1990s. He refers to himself as a “data geek,” but it is easy to see that this is a man who cares deeply about the place he grew up in and lives.
There is a lot of bad news, he said, but one positive thing is the number of salmon that have returned to Malaspina Strait.
A number of factors have come together to produce the effect, like warmer water temperatures and the amount of feed available with the herring returning to the area, he said.
“It’s probably a real recipe of things and not just one factor on its own,” he said. To understand what’s happening, he said people would probably have to look back between two to five years which is roughly the lifespan of the salmon.
“Something good happened a while back though,” he said. “I think it is maybe best we don’t know because we’d just find a way to mess it up. It’s nice to see Mother Nature find her way.”
