Sockeye salmon inquiry has its plate full
This year’s returns to the Fraser River are the best in 100 years By Paul Rudan, Campbell River Mirror, August 26, 2010
As millions of sockeye salmon continue to pass through the inside passage, about 80 people came out to the Cohen Commission meeting Wednesday night to present their views on what caused the collapse of the 2009 Fraser River run.
“It seems ironic that we’re here to talk about declining stocks when there’s a record run (of sockeye) – the most in over 100 years,” said Darren Blaney, the former chief of the Homalco First Nation.
While a few other aboriginal leaders from the Campbell River and Cape Mudge bands weren’t available to speak because they were out commercial fishing, the meeting was filled with the usual suspects who attend fisheries-related events.
There was a contingent from the three major salmon farming companies, schooled together on one side of the room at the Coast Discovery Inn, as anti-salmon farm activists stood behind them like hungry eagles ready to snatch at prey.
The former say they are doing a good job of managing sea lice and controlling disease outbreaks on penned-up Atlantic salmon. The latter contend that sea lice proliferate on farms and spread to vulnerable salmon smolts, and the only solution is closed containment systems.
“Our (wild) salmon are at risk,” said Blaney, a noted opponent, whose band spent nearly $500,000 in legal fees to fight fish farms in their traditional territory of Bute Inlet.
But Brad Boyce, a senior fish health technician with Marine Harvest Canada, said sea lice management works and is designed to keep farmed salmon relatively lice-free when wild salmon smolts migrate to the ocean from rivers and streams.
“It’s consistent and it works,” he said. “We know there’s always room for improvement.”
Campbell River was just one of the stops for the Cohen Commission of Inquiry into the decline of sockeye salmon on the Fraser River. B.C. Supreme Court Justice Bruce Cohen is chair of the inquiry which has begun by holding public meetings in various communities prior to evidentiary hearings this fall. The inquiry’s final report and recommendations are due sometime next year.
The 2009 fishing season was expected to be a banner year with more than 10.5 million sockeye expected to return to the Fraser River – one of the world’s best sockeye river systems.
Instead, an estimated 1.5 million sockeye returned, which continued the downward trend over the past decade. This led to fisheries closures and subsequent finger-pointing of whom to blame.
The so-called collapse and public outcry prompted the federal government to appoint the inquiry to investigate the issues of salmon on the Fraser and what can be done to improve habitat and conditions, and to secure a future for sockeye.
Of course, at the time, no one knew this summer would see a historic return of Fraser River sockeye, estimated at 25 million fish. However, according to Kevin Onclin, sockeye returns are always unpredictable.
In the early 1980s, he worked in northern Canada and Alaska doing research on salmon and found vast fluctuations in sockeye returns in areas that had little or no residential development, mining, forestry, fish farms or things that could have killed off fish.
“What I saw were dramatic changes in sockeye populations, even in remote areas,” said Onclin, who later began working on fish farms, raising a variety of species.
Onclin doesn’t believe fish farms are the sole reason for the declining sockeye returns on the Fraser and said what is really needed is more consistent fish monitoring on all major river systems.
“It’s time to stop blaming salmon farms for every issue,” he said. “Fisheries science is very difficult and when you don’t have enough numbers, you run into problems.
“Fraser River salmon are returning in record numbers this year (but) what will happen in the next few years? I don’t know – maybe it’s the unpredictability that is bothering people the most.”
Onclin suggested one of the problems may be salmon ranching in Alaska.
That’s a process of keeping smolts in the rivers longer, in order to increase their size, before allowing them to return to sea.
The theory is the larger fish are better able to survive and consume more food, which puts the wild salmon at risk.
He added the real test of the Cohen inquiry will be to see if the recommendations have any affect on salmon policies in the U.S., Russia and Japan.
Chief Russell Kwakseestahla of Campbell River was more to the point. He’s attended many fishing-related meetings over the years and isn’t hopeful the Cohen inquiry will have any affect on salmon policies in Canada or abroad.
“If Ottawa is not held accountable, we’re going nowhere,” he said. “I have seen roving commissions and committees, and their reports end up in mothballs.”
Others, too, blamed Fisheries and Oceans Canada for neglect, poor fisheries management and catering too much to fish farms. Leona Adams of the Campbell River Estuary Protection Group and Brian Gunn, president of the Wilderness Tourism Association, called for independent testing and monitoring of salmon farms, and said more data should be publicly available in a timely fashion.
“Why is all this secrecy going on? I keep hearing from salmon farmers that they’re ‘the best regulated industry in the country.’ It’s baloney,” he said. “I’m willing to withhold judgment until we see the facts.”
The last speaker of the evening was Fred Speck, a First Nations man who lives in the Broughton Archipelago which is home to 28 fish farms.
He wore an anti-salmon farm T-shirt supporting the “Get Out Migration” campaign, and said what is needed most is a wild salmon protection act.
“This is my hope because, at my age, I want to see a future for wild salmon.”
