Mark Hume, The Globe and Mail 3 Sep 08;
VANCOUVER -- All along the west coast of North America, salmon stocks are in trouble.
In the Fraser River, a big run now is 10 million fish. But the river once had 10 times as many fish. It's hard to imagine 100 million salmon returning to the river, but it once was that rich - and could be again.
Salmon runs in B.C. fluctuate. Some years are good; since the mid-90s, most have been bad. When the fish don't come back, fisheries managers usually blame natural conditions. The ocean, they say, was experiencing an El Nino event and fish just didn't thrive. Or streams were too warm and fish died in high numbers before spawning.
But those are convenient excuses that allow fisheries managers, and society in general, to avoid facing the real blame.
The simple fact is, stocks are in wide decline because we have been killing far too many salmon for far too long.
In 1913, the year of the last great run in the Fraser, an estimated 38 million sockeye returned. But 32 million of those fish were killed and put in cans. Four years later, when the run crashed to just eight million sockeye, the government allowed a catch of more than 7.3 million fish.
Since then the government has typically allowed 40 to 70 per cent of any given run to be taken in nets.
Industrial, resource, urban and agricultural developments have all destroyed habitat. But the only people directly and deliberately killing salmon have been commercial, sport and native fishermen.
They have been killing too many fish and, astonishingly enough, continue to kill too many fish, as the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans attempts to parcel out an "allowable catch" to each sector.
Even in dismal years, such as this one with just 1.6 million sockeye in the Fraser, DFO has allowed fishing, arguing that a certain percentage can be harvested and stocks can still rebuild.
But almost every year they get it wrong. And stocks decline.
When salmon die after spawning, they return nutrients to freshwater systems.
Researchers have shown that when a big run of salmon returns to a river, such as the Adams, it enriches the aquatic environment, creating ideal rearing conditions for fry.
When runs are poor, there are less nutrients, and the young salmon that hatch the following spring struggle to survive.
Nobody knows what damage has been done to the environment by overfishing, and stripping salmon nutrients out of the system, for 100 years.
But grizzly bears are starving on some rivers, and killer whales are abandoning coastal regions because of a lack of Chinook.
Not only has overfishing hurt the environment, but it has also brought the commercial fleet to its knees and left native villages impoverished. It's time for some drastic steps.
First, we must stop killing wild salmon. With so many runs in decline, and an inability to precisely tune commercial fisheries, B.C. simply must end the slaughter until stocks recover to historic levels.
That means ending the commercial fishery at sea. Shut it down and get government emergency funding to assist fishermen in the way forest workers are being helped through the pine-beetle infestation.
In rivers, only live traps should be used, such as beach seines, weirs and fish wheels, so that wild fish can be released while surplus hatchery stocks are retained.
All sports fishing should be restricted to catch-and-release.
Stop the commercial sale of salmon by native communities.
Hatchery fish can be taken for food and ceremonial purposes, but nobody should be killing wild salmon for profit when the species is endangered.
Provide government funding for the transition of salmon farms to closed-tank technology to end sea-lice infestations. Farms that won't adapt should be closed, but those that are ready to evolve should get support, including land grants and tax breaks.
In the transition period, fallow all open-net salmon farms along the migration routes of young salmon in the spring.
Restructure the DFO so that its primary mandate is to restore salmon runs, not to serve the fishing industry.
With these tough measures, salmon won't only survive, they will thrive again. Imagine 100 million salmon in the Fraser.
