This year’s Fraser River sockeye salmon run has been estimated to be anywhere from 7.3 million fish to as high as 72.5 million, with a good number of those bright red sockeye trying to make their way to their ancestral spawning beds along the Adams River. While that’s a pretty wide estimate, it is still an impressive number of fish.
I was out at Roderick Haig-Brown Provincial Park last weekend for the official opening of the Salute to the Sockeye, sponsored by the Adams River Salmon Society. There were all sorts of dignitaries, but not a lot of fish – yet.
As I stood there, listening to several politicians make their speeches, I could not help but feel they were a little long on words and short on action. There was very little talk of federal funds for salmon enhancement programs of any sort. It was, however, nice to see so many people out to witness a true wonder of nature.
Having said that, one should remember the fish returning this fall are the progeny of the 2010 run which was unexpectedly high, and that there were significantly low sockeye returns for a fair number of years prior to 2009, when fewer than 1.5 million fish returned. (This was after the DFO had forecast some 11 million sockeye.)
Why were the predicted (DFO) numbers so far off the mark four years ago? What happened to the sockeye in those years when the numbers of returning sockeye were at record lows? Do this year’s numbers truly indicate a turnaround in fish stocks?
It wasn’t long ago that the continued steady decline in numbers of fish returning prompted some to speculate about the possible disappearance of the sockeye runs altogether. In fact, the 2009 returns were so disturbing the federal government created a public inquiry (the Cohen Commission) to determine just exactly what was happening to all the disappearing sockeye salmon.
The commission took three years to complete at a cost of more than $26 million. It included some 892 public submissions and 138 days of hearings with 180 witnesses.
In the end, it came up with 75 recommendations. That was two years ago. I have heard very little about which, if any, of the recommendations put forward by commission have been successfully put in place by the current federal government.
As pointed out in the commission report, one of the major problems in making any sort of accurate predictions when it comes to numbers of returning sockeye is the fact that there is currently no real way to monitor the salmon in the middle of their life cycle. Add to this all the theories about sea lice from fish farms, climate change, over-fishing, poaching, survival rates and everything else and, well, the waters get even murkier.
There is no one cause, and pointing the finger will not solve the problem. What we need to do is look beyond the rhetoric and demand our federal government make a concerted and co-ordinated effort to find out just what is affecting salmon stock numbers – before the whole question becomes academic.
With a potentially record number of sockeye salmon returning to spawn this year, I hope the Ministry of Fisheries and Oceans does not feel it is off the hook.
There is much work that needs to be done. We have the Cohen Commission recommendations, we have public concern and we have the will. We even have a window of opportunity. What we need now is for the government to walk their talk.
