Fraser River Sockeye Salmon Run Collapses - Of 6-10 Million Expected In August, Maybe 600K Return

[hatrack]

Ottawa - Millions of sock eye salmon expected to reach the Fraser River on Canada's Pacific Coast this month have vanished, devastating the local fishery, officials said on Thursday. According to the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, between six and 10 million sock eye were projected to return to the river this month.

But the official count is now just 600 000 for the "summer run" - by far the largest of four salmon groupings that return to area lakes and rivers each year from June to late August. Where the other fish went remains a mystery. The daily Globe and Mail cited fishermen who said the situation was "shocking", a "catastrophe" and a "crisis", while public broadcaster CBC said this could end up being the worst year ever for the Pacific salmon fishery.

A record number of smolts were born in the Fraser watershed in 2005 and migrated to the ocean, and were expected this month to return en masse to spawn. "It's a bit of a mystery," Watershed Watch Salmon Society fish biologist Stan Proboszcz told reporters. Officials and ecologists speculated they could have been affected by warmer ocean temperatures, fewer food sources, or more prey.

Others suggested juvenile salmon may have contracted sea lice or other infections from 30 fish farms in the Straight of Georgia as they migrated out to sea. Fisheries officials may have also erred in their complex forecasting calculations, or the fish could just be late arriving, although the latter is very unlikely, said Proboszcz.

EDIT

http://www.int.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=143&art_id=nw20090814001852945C682175

[redqueen]

1. Wow.

What do you want to bet the cause is somehow related to climate change?

[Barrett808]

2. And/or ocean acidification. And/or overexploitation.

Bad news indeed.

[redqueen]

3. Yes, it's likely there's no one cause, but a combination of factors.

The shocking drop reminded me of this picture:

[ensho]

4. this is really bad news

tick goes the clock

[Raster]

5. There are several possibilities. The first is sea lice from salmon farms.

Farming salmon is an incredibly dirty and wasteful enterprise. The oceans are "strip mined" for food for the farmed fish. Roughly 5 pounds of fish and other animals ripped from the sea yields approximately 1 pound of farmed salmon. The farming pens are so dirty that sea lice is rampant, infecting the ocean around the pens. I cannot overemphasize how unsanitary the salmon farming operations are.

The second possibility is the pollock fisheries. Even though pollock is not (yet) considered a fish species in peril, fishing for pollock also entraps a large amount of juvenile salmon, which are simply discarded--dead, not live.