B.C. fishers expecting bumper salmon run
Kathryn Blaze Carlson, National Post · Tuesday, Jul. 6, 2010
Commercial fishers on British Columbia’s Fraser River have stayed tied to the dock for the past three summers, waiting for a viable sockeye run that could fill their nets as they have in distant decades.
But this year, if rumours and federal projections prove true, anglers, commercial boats and First Nations bands alike might finally catch some respite.
The pre-season forecast from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans — released late last month — anticipates that 11.4 million sockeye will return this summer and, if the turnout south of the border is for once an indication, the Fraser River could soon be aflutter with fish. If that is the case, most fishing could begin as early as the end of this month.
Sockeye have already been eyed on the west side of Vancouver Island, and Washington State is seeing a record run of the fish in the Columbia River.
“Everyone out here has their fingers crossed, and they’re hoping that the forecasts are somewhere in the ballpark this summer,” said Ernie Crey, fisheries advisor to the Sto:lo Tribal Council in the Fraser Valley region, and former advisor to the DFO.
“They hope it will point to Fraser River sockeye probably surviving into the future.”
Mr. Crey said that although federal projections for the Fraser River run have been historically inaccurate — last year the DFO predicted 10.3 million fish would show up, and only 1.3 million arrived — the latest estimation may ring true.
This year marks the return of the fabled and populous Adams River run, which comes in the final year of the sockeye’s four-year life-cycle and will comprise most of the late-summer sockeye run, Mr. Crey said.
“That’s where commercial fishermen on either side of the border are pegging their hopes — on a big late-summer run,” he said.
The fate of Fraser River sockeye has been hot-button since the early 1990s, with record-low returns prompting the DFO to sporadically close the waters to commercial fishing over the past three years. In 2009, the collapse was catapulted into the headlines when Prime Minister Stephen Harper struck a judicial inquiry that will report on the decline of Fraser sockeye by May 2011.
And just yesterday, the London-based Marine Stewardship certified three B.C. sockeye salmon fisheries —Skeena, Nass and Barkley Sound — for sustainable fishing practices, but left Fraser River off the list as it has yet to meet their standards.
To be sure, the management of the river’s sockeye draws emotional debate, whether from First Nations bands who think recreational fishers should be banned when sockeye numbers are low, or biologists who believe salmon farms are spreading disease into the wild population, or climate-change activists who tote warm waters as a chief culprit for the weak returns.
Phil Eidsvik, spokesman for the B.C. Fisheries Survival Coalition, said he does not buy the latter assessment.
“We’ve gone through high water temperatures, low flows, and all sorts of environmental conditions that weren’t favourable, and despite all that, we’ve managed to rebuild our run in the past,” he said.
Regardless, water temperatures may not even make waves this summer: The federal Pacific Salmon Commission reported that the Fraser River is nearly on par with the average temperature for this time of year, and in a June 29 news release said “migration conditions for sockeye entering the Fraser River are presently satisfactory.”
Dr. Alexandra Morton, a biologist who won a B.C. Supreme Court challenge against provincial control of the fish-farming industry, said “it’s too early to tell” whether this year’s prospects point to a revival of Fraser River sockeye.
“What the scientists are saying now is that this lineage of Fraser sockeye appears to have been less impacted by whatever is going on, and so they’re cautiously hopeful,” she said. “But as long as we don’t know the problem, we’re running blind.”
Mr. Eidsvik said he is “always optimistic that the fish are going to come back,” but said fishers in British Columbia are stuck in “wait-and-see mode.”
National Post
