11 Million Salmon Missing….

After spending 5 days in Barkley Sound enjoying some great recreational salmon fishing, this is a very timely post for me.

If you haven’t heard or read the recent Globe and Mail article, only 1.7 million of the expected 10 – 13 million sockeye salmon made a return to the Fraser River this summer. “Where the nine to 11 million missing fish went remains a mystery.” What is one of the worst salmon returns to the Fraser ever, has people worried about the future of salmon stocks on our coast, and curious as to what is causing the disappearance.

“There’s a lot of different beliefs as to why the fish haven’t shown up, but I think it’s pretty clear where there are no fish farms salmon are doing well,” said Brian McKinley, a guide and owner of Silversides Fishing Adventure.

“It’s pretty frustrating to watch what is happening,” he said from his boat, anchored on the river near Mission. “I remember sockeye would just boil through here in August and September. It was insane. . . now the river seems dead.”

Dan Gerak, who runs Pitt River Lodge, said there is an environmental crisis on the river.

“Definitely something’s got to be done – or it’s finished forever,” he said of the Fraser’s famed salmon run.

I recently received an email from my boss with a link to http://www.adopt-a-fry.org/, which has even more alarming information. As my boss said:

“I saw this salmon farming disaster happen in Norway and then Scotland. When I got to BC, I couldn’t believe it was going ahead over here too.

It is so utterly unnecessary and doesn’t even make economic sense.

The sad truth is that if the climate predictions come true, BC waters may be become too warm for salmon in the medium term but that is no reason to allow them to vanish in the short term.”

Lice Infestation on Fraser River sockeye from Twyla Roscovich on Vimeo.

The above video is from http://www.callingfromthecoast.com/, which “accompanies a research crew as they sample the juvenile sockeye fry migrating up the coast, past the lice plumes of dozens of fish farms. This video is especially important as it illustrates how the salmon farms are impacting Canada’s largest run of salmon”

As this crisis unfolds the Minister of Fisheries is in Norway promoting this coast as a good place for more fish farms. If 100,000 people stood up and told DFO to make wild salmon a priority, instead of farm salmon, it would be done. We have 16,000 signatures on our letter asking DFO to simply apply the laws of Canada (The Fisheries Act) to fish farms. Please help us build these numbers otherwise we will loose our fish. ONLY the public has the power to turn this tide. Link to the letter

Aside from signing the petition (its online, only takes a minute) to make the laws of the Fisheries Act apply to farmed fish, you can make yourself aware of what type of salmon you are purchasing. As Jean-Michel Cousteau points out on great blog post regarding the situation:

To produce one pound of farmed salmon requires over 2.5 pounds of wild fish, from smaller species like anchovies and herring! This places additional pressure on these already strained fisheries. What can you do? Don’t eat open-net farmed salmon! If you eat seafood, choose wisely. Please consult this good resource for helping you to make choices that are better for you and the ocean: www.seafoodwatch.com