Caution urged after huge sockeye run

Judith Lavoie
September 17, 2010
Times Colonist

Don't be fooled by the 30 million sockeye salmon streaming into the Fraser River, speakers warned B.C. Justice Bruce Cohen last night.

Despite the largest run in almost 100 years, sockeye are facing threats ranging from climate change to poisons pouring into streams from storm runoff, the Cohen Commission of Inquiry into the Decline of Sockeye Salmon in the Fraser River heard, as more than 120 people turned out for the Victoria forum.

The bumper run could well be an anomaly, said environmentalists and fishermen.

"This year was miraculously positive, but one year does not make a trend," said Alexandra Morton, a biologist from the Broughton Archipelago.

Salmon now making their way up the Fraser are one run in one year and demonstrate the lack of understanding and the fallibility of predictions from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, said several speakers.

"For a population which has exploited the salmon for so many years, we really do not understand the ecological nature of these fish," said Daniel Lousier of the Social Ecology Institute of B.C.

Erik Hobson [sic], president of SOS Marine Conservation Forum [sic], said the run points to the need for precaution and, like several other speakers, pointed a finger at open-net pen salmon farms.

A made-in-Canada closed-containment aquaculture industry is needed, together with a workable farm management plan and independent sea lice monitoring program, he said.

Read the full story in the Times Colonist