Salmon debate in BC improving in quality
While watching the ups and downs regarding the stories about wild salmon returns to rivers in British Columbia, it is easy to allocate one headline to one of the anti-salmon farming campaigns or to the parties in support of the industry. Along comes a blog posting out of the blue, suggesting that perhaps there should be some consideration given to other causes of salmon scarcity- or abundance. The following was gleamed from the "Blogfish" site, and it provides some interesting comments;
Blogfish:Salmon are in trouble in British Columbia and elsewhere. Is it salmon farming? Pollock trawling? Or what? I'm not up on all the data, but there are signs of salmon problems from California to Alaska. Not just near salmon farms, and not just where trawlers catch Pollock. The problem has hit sockeye from the Fraser River. But it's also hit salmon from British Columbia all the way to California. Salmon farming has been blamed, but there aren't salmon farms to cause problems all the way to California. The kings (Chinook salmon) are in trouble in the Yukon River, and Pollock trawlers have gotten some heat, but there are disease problems linked to warmer temperatures also causing problems for these fish. Oh...and there are seabird problems in some of the same areas, British Columbia and the US west coast. Not sure what to think about all this, but I'm going to focus my worrying on the larger scale issues like ocean warming, either cyclical or CO2 driven.This story produced the following comments: Anonymous said...You're right Mark, there are many possible issues and they all combine for very serious pressures. One that can't be overlooked is the 25 year cycle where the food sources for salmon move from Alaska waters to oceans further West (there's a fancy name for it which now escapes me). We, apparently, are in the middle of the time when the food source is over Russia - and they have experienced good returns of salmon for the past few years. By the way, the sockeye have not returned to SE Alaska either (aside from Bristol Bay). So you can combine Caly to Alaska in the salmon downturn.Its funny, pink salmon are doing very well in all parts of British Columbia. Remember, just a few years ago the environmentalists were sounding off alarms stating that pink salmon were going to go extinct at the hands of salmon farmers. Well, it looks like that isn't the case - rivers in Campbell River, Port Hardy, Nanaimo and the Broughton Archipelago are all having very high returns. So, now they've switched to sockeye. Basically, whatever species wherever that doesn't do as well as the year previously (by the way, there will ALWAYS be that river somewhere!) is blamed on salmon farming. I'm glad some people are starting to poke holes in their stories....
