Officials at the Big Bar landslide site say over a quarter million fish have made it past the site so far.

Environmental Unit Lead Michael Crowe says it’s a testament to the inter-agency work that’s been done to try and save the salmon in the aftermath of the slide that was discovered in June.

“That’s actually a combination of helicopter flights which have been temporarily discontinued and natural passage. So we’ve finished transporting fish manually by helicopter or truck earlier this month, about September 5th,” he said, on NL Newsday. “So since then, almost all fish passage has been on their own, swimming past the slide area.”

Crowe says the recent rain has led to higher water levels on the Fraser River, which in turn has reduced the number of fish swimming past the site.

“We have had a bit of a dip in this last day with the recent rains bringing water levels back up, but we fully anticipate now that we’re getting to a drier cycle that water levels will go down and fish will continue being able to migrate through.”

He says officials expect things to return back to normal soon.

“We’re actually expecting another actually big pulse to start moving through here quickly because of the few fish that will have been held up because of this most recent rain event,” added Crowe.

When announcing the suspension of helicopter and truck transfer of salmon, officials noted it would resume in the salmon were unsuccessful in swimming past the site naturally in large numbers.