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26 September 2011

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Mystery of British Columbian Sockeye Salmon Run

 

After years of catastrophic decline the sockeye

salmon run up the Fraser River in August 2010

has hit record numbers and surprised everyone

 

The headline in the Vancouver Sun (August 25, 2010) says it all: “Fishermen ‘excited’ for Largest Sockeye Salmon Run in nearly a Century.”

 

The Pacific Salmon Commission estimates the 2010 season will see 30 million sockeye salmon returning to spawning grounds; that’s 20 times more than arrived in 2009.

 

Breeding Cycle of Sockeye Salmon

Each year salmon swim up the Fraser River and its tributaries to spawn and die. In all, they make up 44 separate stocks, linked to the fresh water lakes where they return to spawn.

 

In 2005, record numbers of young salmon, called smolts, left the spawning areas and swam back to the Pacific Ocean. Then, they seemed to vanish.

 

They were due to return to spawn in 2009, at the end of their four-year life cycle, but about 85 percent of them never showed up and Mark Hume wrote this in the Globe and Mail (April 2010): British Columbia’s “Fraser River is experiencing one of the biggest salmon disasters in recent history with more than nine million sockeye salmon missing.”

 

Instead of the 10 million salmon expected only 1.5 returned to spawn.

 

Fisheries Closed on West Coast

In 2007, there was a widespread closure of salmon fisheries when only 1.4 million sockeye returned to the Fraser. In 2008, the run was 1.6 million and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature placed some spawning stocks of Pacific sockeye salmon on its “red list” of threatened species.

 

As Tamara Baluja points out in the Vancouver Sun “fishermen had to tie up the boats for four years.”

 

The collapse was so bad that a Commission of Inquiry into the Decline of Sockeye Salmon in the Fraser River was set up; just weeks after the record-breaking salmon run the Commission is set to begin public hearings into what caused the stocks to crash.

 

Surprising Size of 2010 Salmon Run

The size of the 2010 salmon run seems to have caught everyone by surprise. It rather points to the fact that the experts charged with managing the fishery don’t seem to know enough about what’s going on.

 

Fisherman Keith Thomas, of Courteney, B.C., is blunt. He told Canadian Press (August 25, 2010), “It’s great having the fish, but the federal fisheries couldn’t manage a kindergarten class…these guys don’t have a clue what’s going on.”

 

The huge 2010 run may turn out to be a one-off blip because the long term trend is that the salmon harvest has been getting smaller. As David Ebner and Wendy Stueck point out (Globe and Mail, August 28, 2010) “This summer’s surprise abundance of sockeye…does not herald a fishery saved. The mystery hasn’t been solved, it’s deepened.”

 

Prolonged Decline of Salmon Fishery

The Pacific salmon have disappeared from almost half their original range along the northwest coast of North America within the past 100 years.

 

“Both scientific reports,” says the David Suzuki Foundation, “and the hard evidence of commercial, Aboriginal, and recreational fisheries warn us that salmon populations continue to decline at an alarming rate.”

 

Steve Urszenyi

 

Many Causes of Salmon Decline

Experts cite several suspects:

• Global warming causes ocean temperatures to rise and currents to change disrupting migration patterns used by salmon for thousands of years;
• Overfishing;
• Diseases from coastal salmon fish farms infecting wild stocks, there is evidence the smolts are being infested with sea lice as they swim past aquaculture projects;
• Pollution of freshwater streams in which salmon spawn, and;
• Misguided government policies.

 

David Ebner and Wendy Stueck sum up the fundamental problem: “The massive schools of sparkling, silver sockeye bounding through the Georgia Strait and up the Fraser River indicates how little Canada really understands about the fish…”

 

Image credit

Alan Bell

 

Sources

“Fishermen ‘excited’ for Largest Sockeye Salmon Run in nearly a Century.” Tamara Baluja, Vancouver Sun, August 25, 2010.

“Millions of Missing Fish Signal Crisis on the Fraser River.” Mark Hume, Globe and Mail, April 13, 2010.

“B.C. Sockeye Salmon Bounty Estimate Upped to 30 Million.” David Ebner Wendy Stueck, Globe and Mail, August 28, 2010.

B.C. Fishermen Enthusiastic, Cynical over Sockeye Run.” Canadian Press, August 25, 2010.

 

© Canada and the World, September 2011

All rights reserved

 

According to the David Suzuki Foundation “From 1999 to 2009, 70 percent of the pre-season forecasts have overestimated the actual return of sockeye.”

 

 

THE PRICE

IS NOT RIGHT

 

 

Sockeye salmon are what west coast Indians put at the centre of their potlatch feasts to prove their wealth. Commercial fishers called sockeye the “money fish.”

 

In the late 1980s, canners were paying as much as $10 a kilo for fresh-caught wild sockeye; by the late 1990s, the price had dropped to about a quarter of that.

 

The abundance of the 2010 sockeye run drove the price down to about $2.25 a kilo. The reason? The growth of fish farming has driven down the price and ensures a year-round supply of fresh salmon.

 

For the fishers who have sunk everything they have into their boats and fishing gear, this is disastrous. They have two options: go bankrupt or try to catch as many fish as they can to recoup some of their investment.

 

 

According to the Suzuki Foundation, Department of Fisheries and Oceans policies have led to increased corporate control in the Pacific salmon fishery “to the point where half the B.C. salmon catch is controlled by

one man.”

 

Chinook are the largest of the Pacific salmon varieties oft
en exceeding 14 kilos; the biggest Chinook ever caught weighed just over 57 kilos.