No answers in B.C.’s salmon collapse
Experts say cuts to research grants will make it difficult to determine why more than nine million sockeye won’t return to the Fraser River this year
Unfortunately I was unable to connect with this reporter while I was out in the Broughton Archipelago, but what I would have said is this:
We are looking at a bulls-eye pattern of sockeye collapse with our Fraser River salmon dead in the center and runs all around them thriving. In fact, even within the Fraser River the Harrison sockeye, which are known to migrate to sea via the fish farm-free route through Strait of Juan de Fuca, did twice as well as DFO forecast.
The only sockeye to catastrophically collapse are the Fraser sockeye that migrate to the north through the clusters of fish farms off Campbell River.
More on this very soon.
Comments
One response to “In the Globe and Mail Today – September 7, 2009”
This is almost like a high risk control experiment by DFO that went out of control.
Let us assume that the DFO sampling protocols for stock assessment, escapement, hatch rates, ocean entrance numbers are consistent. Then what we have is one control group of Fraser River sockeye that enters the ocean and migrates northwards through the cluster of fish farms.
We have other sockeye groups from the Fraser and elsewhere that migrate through the Juan de Fuca Strait or migrate along the west side of Vancouver Island. It is an arguable but reasonable thesis that the sockeye are subject to the same ocean conditions, predation conditions and ocean currents. Yet the fish migrating northwards in the Strait of Georgia are nearly obliterated and the other sockeye stocks return, as far as can be determined, in a predictable fashion.
So, either the fish assessment methods are totally wrong (unlikely given the scientific status of the DFO scientists) or something drastic happens in the Strait of Georgia. About the only controllable and discretionary feature are salmon farms and a reasonable person, viewing the facts as presented, and making reasonable conclusions, might argue that the fish farms are a proximate cause for the abrupt sockeye decline.
If there are other reasonable conclusions based on the available evidence and not merely rhetoric, then let us hear the evidence from the fish farm supporters.