Milt to last: Backup salmon sperm transferred to Yukon

It's a different kind of sperm donation.

A B.C.-based salmon fishery has handed over about 11 years' worth of collected milt — salmon sperm — to the Carcross/Tagish Energy Corporation in Yukon.

It's enough to fertilize about a million chinook salmon eggs, "or more," says Maureen Ritter, general manager of Canada Cryogenetics, the facility where the milt is now stored. 

Ritter says B.C.'s Creative Salmon Company had planned to use the cryopreserved sperm, which had originally been collected from the Yukon River, for salmon farming — but never did.

"They were looking for someone to take over the milt for a future gene bank, because they didn't want to see it be discarded," Ritter said.

She did some matchmaking, and put Creative Salmon in touch with the Carcross/Tagish Energy Corporation, a company she'd worked with on other fisheries programs.

The Yukon company was happy to take the milt. CEO Nelson Lepine describes it as a sort of insurance policy against any sort of devastating collapse of the Yukon River chinook population.

"We're not saying that will happen, but nobody really knows," Lepine said. 

"If some worst case scenario occurs, at least this way would we be able to potentially bring back the salmon in a bigger way."

Frozen 20 years and still viable

According to Ritter, the preserved milt can be stored indefinitely, and still be viable. She points to recent efforts in B.C., where biologists are using cryogenically frozen milt to try to replenish a dwindling chinook stock near Prince George.

"It had been frozen for 20 years, and we used it to sow and fertilize some of the eggs that were taken from some of the returning fish on the Endako River," she said.

"I think given the results that we saw on the Upper Fraser endangered stocks, of that milt that we used up there being viable, that this is awesome," she said, referring to the Yukon agreement.

The milt will stay in her facility for now, Ritter said. Lepine says it will remain untouched for the forseeable future.

"If we go beyond securing the milt, and plan on doing something beyond that, obviously we're going to be including everybody on the Yukon River," he said.