Salmon return to the Fraser in record numbers

VANCOUVER—Hope has returned to the Fraser River along with the sockeye salmon.

After the failure of the salmon fishery in 2009, the fish have returned to the river in record numbers, the highest in decades, according to experts.

“Fraser River sockeye returns look set to top 20 million fish, and could even go to 25 million, easily the second or third largest run in 60 years,” said Mike Griswold, a salmon fisherman and member of the Pacific Salmon Commission studying the Fraser River.
“At over 25 million, this year's run is now the largest since 1913,” said Christina Burridge, with the Canadian Pacific Sustainable Fisheries Society.

Last year, salmon did not return to the river, leading to the closure of salmon fishing in the Fraser by Fisheries and Oceans Canada.

“2010 has proved that when environmental conditions are good, Fraser sockeye salmon is enormously resilient. Management remains extremely cautious with harvest rates at less than half the levels of he recent past in order to rebuild weak populations,” said Griswold.

Ironically, the Fraser River salmon fishery met the requirements of Marine Stewardship Council certification in July of this year.

“This (year’s) fish is exceptional; just the right amount of fat and oil content to make it some of the best sockeye salmon I have ever seen,” said Robert Clark, executive chef at Vancouver’s C Restaurant, and champion of local and sustainable seafood.

A fisheries scientist at the University of British Columbia, who studied the low salmon numbers in 2009, said the problem stemmed from poor marine survival of the fish in 2007 when they returned to the Pacific Ocean.

“A very low number of fish made it through the Georgia Strait, and those that did had very poor growth,” said Carl Walters.

“And there were several species that had the same poor growth pattern, so we think it was just a one-off bottleneck in the survival during their life in the ocean.”

Walters suggests that sockeye salmon could be harvested from the Fraser “at much higher rates” than what the Department of Fisheries currently allows, without impacting the long-term survival of the fish.

Griswold said that MSC certification has kept prices of sockeye salmon high, due to overseas demand for sustainable seafood products. And as harvest number rise, the price for consumers will drop.