Nature calls the shots in sockeye season, and diversity rules
Stephen Hume
September 4, 2010
Vancouver Sun
The curtain rises on the annual theatre of the absurd known as sockeye season on the Fraser, which begins with the comical ritual of clowns putting their oversized boots to the hangdog department of fisheries and oceans.
Columnists who apparently wouldn't know the difference between a sockeye and a sculpin cluck and scold in a Toronto newspaper. One enthusiastically advances the argument that we should whack 30 million of the 34 million returning salmon.
DFO is flogged for insufficient openings, for low exploitation rates, for inaccurate forecasts. Would someone remind Toronto's intelligentsia that Fraser River sockeye are jointly managed with the United States through the Pacific Salmon Commission?
But, hey, why let facts ruin a good scapegoating?
DFO was pilloried last year for overestimating. This year it's blamed for underestimating. Nature calls the shots here, not fish managers. If forecasting were certain, we wouldn't call them estimates.
Read the full story in The Vancouver Sun
Read related stories:
- The Province; September 26, 2010; "B.C. Rivers Day celebrations bolstered by record sockeye returns"
- Burnaby Now; September 4, 2010; "Lots of fish - but 'not out of woods yet'"
Posted September 4th, 2010
