The other day I was speaking to some tourists from Norway who stopped and asked if it was worthwhile going out to the Roderick Haig-Brown Provincial Park at this time of the year to see if there were any sockeye salmon in the Adams River.
I had to stop for a moment and think about just what I should say to them.
Part of me wanted to launch into a whole tirade about how the sockeye are in serious – very serious trouble – and how the federal government doesn’t seem willing to do much about the situation other than initiate a multi-million dollar commission (Cohen) and then proceed to do absolute nothing about following through with any of its recommendations – and how we don’t really have a clue why the salmon are in such dire straits and how the salmon are in more serious trouble than the government is letting on and how Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) seems to have a hard time knowing – or at least letting the public know just what the numbers of returning fish are at any given time.
I could have gone on about any number of problems the salmon are facing, but in the end, all I said was “No, not really. The salmon run doesn’t happen until late in the fall, around the middle of October.”
I wasn’t sure if they really needed, or wanted, to hear how the salmon have been hard hit by disease, climate change, poachers, commercial overfishing and salmon farms which some are saying have introduced diseases from non-indigenous (Atlantic) farmed stock to the wild stock. Or, how scientists are attributing the decline in salmon numbers (especially in the Adams) to all sorts of different things, the theory of the day being poor survival rates of juvenile salmon while they’re in the ocean. According to a number of studies, not only are young fish suffering high mortality rates as they move from the Fraser River into saltwater conditions, they are also finding less food to eat in the Pacific Ocean during the years they spend maturing into adults.
To someone like me, who has no scientific background or understanding, this theory sounds as good as any other. The problem, as far as I can see, is that there is no real sound scientific evidence to substantiate any of their theories because the government has simply not been willing to put sufficient money into finding out what the problems really are – they’ve pretty much maintained a head-in-the-sand attitude to the whole declining salmon stock numbers issue.
To make matters worse, there is virtually no substantive legislation to protect wild salmon stocks in B.C. The Fish Protection Act is based on voluntary compliance and is focused on urban streams. The Forest Practices Code, recently gutted of environmental regulations, has simply failed to protect wild salmon habitat, while the Federal Fisheries Act fails to prevent logging and mining practices which also contribute to fish habitat damage and loss in general. All the while, the provincial Fisheries ministry, which seems to have little initiative to protect wild salmon habitat, appears to be looking more toward a massive expansion of fish farms along the coast.
I could have gone on and on about all the issues facing the salmon, but I didn’t. Why? Maybe it was because they were tourists. Or, maybe it was because a part of me is ashamed of our government and how they are dealing with the whole sockeye crisis on the Adams River. Maybe I didn’t express to them my concerns because I couldn’t put into words just how worried I am about the future of the sockeye. Maybe the next tourist who stops and asks me about the sockeye run at Roderick Haig-Brown Provincial Park won’t be so lucky.
