Fraser River Sockeye Update from PSC

Category(s):
ABORIGINAL - General Information
COMMERCIAL - Salmon: Gill Net
COMMERCIAL - Salmon: Seine
COMMERCIAL - Salmon: Troll
RECREATIONAL - Salmon
Subject:
FN0709-Salmon - Fraser River Sockeye and Pink Update - Areas 11 to 29 - July 25, 2017



The Fraser River Panel met on Tuesday, July 25 to receive an update on the
migration of the Fraser sockeye and pink runs to date and review the status of
migration conditions in the Fraser River watershed.

Gill net test fishing catches remain very poor in both the marine and in-river
testing areas. Purse seine test fishing began in Area 12 on July 24 while Area
20 began on July 25. Catches during the first day in Area 12 and the last 3
days of Reef Net observations were also very low. Stock identification
information is showing a decline in the proportion of Early Stuart sockeye in
Area 20 with continued presence in Area 12 samples. Early Summer and Summer
run stocks are currently comprising the largest fraction in both approach
areas. No late run stocks have been observed at this time.

Sample sizes from both in-river and marine test fisheries have remained low
which results in a higher level of uncertainty in stock composition estimates.
Hell's Gate observations have been extremely low in recent days. During
today's Panel call, the start-up of the purse seine test fishery in Area 13 was
delayed to Monday July 31, with confirmation to be made during the next Panel
meeting on July 28. Based on the gill net test fishery catches in Areas 12 and
20, the diversion rate through Johnstone Strait has increased to 28% which
remains below the pre-season predicted rate of 51% for the entire season.

The most recent DNA samples taken in the marine test fisheries show sockeye
stock compositions in Area 20 of approximately 0% Early Stuart, 48% Early
Summer and 52% Summer run stocks. In Area 12 the stock composition was 23%
Early Stuart, 32% Early Summer and 45% Summer run stocks.

During the call today, the Fraser Panel made no changes to the Early Stuart run
size of 50,000 with an Area 20 peak run timing of July 3. The estimated
escapement past Mission of Early Stuart sockeye as of July 24 is 43,800 fish.

Early Summer run stocks are also tracking well below the p25 forecast of
166,000 with some of the later timing stocks in this group not being observed
at this time. During the Panel call today the decision was made to reduce the
run size for Early Summers to the p25 run size as an interim step with the
anticipation of further reductions if the later timed stocks also return lower
than forecast. At this run size there is no TAC available and as such no
sockeye directed fisheries are being considered at this time. The estimated
escapement of Early Summer-run and Summer-run sockeye past Mission through July
24 is only 18,800 and 4,500 respectively. Both are well below the expected
levels for this date.

On July 24, the Fraser River water discharge at Hope was 3,344 m3/s, which is
approximately 30% lower than average for this date. The temperature of the
Fraser River at Qualark Creek on July 24 was 17.4°C, which is 0.2°C lower than
average for this date due largely to cooler air temperatures in recent days.
The forecast is for water temperatures to increase to 18.8°C by July 30. Due to
the very low discharge levels, water temperatures are influenced more by the
air temperatures they are exposed to.

For pre-season planning purposes the Fraser Panel has adopted management
adjustments for Early Summer, Summer and Late run sockeye that reflect the
forecast water temperature and discharge conditions based on the May and June
information for Early Summer and Summers, and anticipated river entry dates for
Late run fish. Management adjustments are additional fish that are removed from
identified harvest levels and allowed to migrate upstream in an attempt to
assist in achievement of identified spawner objectives for the different run
timing groups. In-season information in the coming weeks will help to inform
future decisions on management adjustments for the Early Summer and Summer
management groups while the Early Stuart and Late run management groups will be
managed based on the respective Low Abundance Exploitation Rate (LAER) for each
group (10% for Early Stuart and 20% for Lates). There will be no in-season
estimates of management adjustment for Early Stuart in 2017 as the forecast
returns are very low across most of the forecast range and it is anticipated
they will be managed to the LAER, with the expected outcome of a spawning
escapement well below target.

First Nations food, social and ceremonial (FSC) sockeye fisheries have been
restricted by the 4 week window closure protecting Early Stuart and the
earliest timed Early Summer run stocks with limited fishing opportunities to
date directed at chinook salmon. Due to the appearance of lateness and/or
weakness in the returns of Early Summer and Summer run stocks, the start-up of
sockeye directed FSC fisheries will continue to be delayed until the
identification of TAC for Early Summer and/or Summer run sockeye.

FSC fishers in marine approach areas as well as the Fraser River are requested
to check for the opening times and any restrictions in their local area.

Given the low returns to date there are no fisheries directed upon Fraser River
sockeye scheduled at this time, and updates will continue to be provided
following meetings of the Fraser River Panel on Tuesdays and Fridays of each
week.

The next in-season meeting of the Fraser River Panel is scheduled to occur on
Friday, July 28, 2017.


FOR MORE INFORMATION:

Jennifer Nener 604-666-0789



Fisheries & Oceans Operations Center - FN0709
Sent July 25, 2017 at 1519
 
littlechucky said:
And document those buying it, especially commercial entities.
Click to expand...
If people quit buying from the FN then that market dries up!
I believe that's the key to shutting down the illegal fish sales!
My son said maybe we should be posting people's pictures that buy illegal salmon just the "shaming the johns" with prostitution
 
spoiler said:
If people quit buying from the FN then that market dries up!
I believe that's the key to shutting down the illegal fish sales!
My son said maybe we should be posting people's pictures that buy illegal salmon just the "shaming the johns" with prostitution
Click to expand...
.
Problem with this is you will likely end up in jail or get sued. Customers for these fish include DFO, RCMP and others in government.
 
They are only 1 or 2 cycles away from there not being enough returning fish to make any commerial sales viable. (except the 1 dominant year remaining,,.hopefully). I would like to know at what number that true conservation kicks in and all fishing is stopped and enforced
 
Only need to look back east at the cod fishery. When they're all gone. By then of course it will be too late but that's s how DFO rolls.


profisher said:
They are only 1 or 2 cycles away from there not being enough returning fish to make any commerial sales viable. (except the 1 dominant year remaining,,.hopefully). I would like to know at what number that true conservation kicks in and all fishing is stopped and enforced
Click to expand...
 
Manage to Zero ........ those politicians and heads that have been in charge of making the decisions for years and years of doing next to nothing to Save our Wild Fishery, and allowing more and more net pens, more and more nets across the rivers on sensitive runs......... I wish they would all hang their heads in Shame ......... Its pathetic the lack of conservation and commitment to our once Iconic Salmon Runs by those responsible for its management.

Manage to Zero I swear has been a long time goal, it appears they are getting closer . DFO cutbacks, lack of patrol, lack of clout in the courts ........... Wow.

Tell me, is there ANY good stories out there recently about DFO or Governments committing to saving our wild salmon?
 
And while we are at it, cross the 2017 pink salmon run out as well. Where ever they ended up at but they won't show on the spawning beds. Mark my words. The last pacific salmon species that was still in good shape until now.
 
high tide said:
Manage to Zero ........ those politicians and heads that have been in charge of making the decisions for years and years of doing next to nothing to Save our Wild Fishery, and allowing more and more net pens, more and more nets across the rivers on sensitive runs......... I wish they would all hang their heads in Shame ......... Its pathetic the lack of conservation and commitment to our once Iconic Salmon Runs by those responsible for its management.

Manage to Zero I swear has been a long time goal, it appears they are getting closer . DFO cutbacks, lack of patrol, lack of clout in the courts ........... Wow.

Tell me, is there ANY good stories out there recently about DFO or Governments committing to saving our wild salmon?
Click to expand...
^^^Agreed.
It is obvious that there is a lack of care for this resource.
In the end we will always have farmed fish at no cost to the general public other than the loss of our wild fish.
It is far too costly for them to undertake what needs to be done to try to stop this from happening even if they can.

As I said before...what have we done...

Sad and disheartened beyond belief.
 
calmsea said:
And while we are at it, cross the 2017 pink salmon run out as well. Where ever they ended up at but they won't show on the spawning beds. Mark my words. The last pacific salmon species that was still in good shape until now.
Click to expand...
Hahaha the Squamish run maybe due to flooding but the Fraser pinks will show and they will show in huge numbers.
 
Lol....can't wait to see the HUGE run that shows up on the Fraser
We are a few days away from when we used to start seeing the first pinks show up on the upper Fraser bars. My how things have changed in 3 Cycles...
 
Alex_c said:
Since sporties are the only user group who seem to give a ****, it's due time we took more responsibility in documenting everything.
Can't say as I agree with your opinion here. The commercial industry has fought this issue and the fish farm issue for years (and I believe it is a much larger player in the problem). Unfortunately the small boat commercial guys are almost a thing of the past due to fish problems and DFO management tactics. Coastwide we have salmon problems everywhere and the sad part of this is that there is a limited appetite to use science to seek answers as to the whys and I b eleive there are many factors involved.
Click to expand...
 
New post on The Ardent Angler
blavatar.png

Fraser sockeye and other things.
by Jeremy Maynard
The arrival of the end of July can truly be described as mid-summer and as such it’s worth considering where things stand for the south coast recreational fishery and the fish, primarily salmon, that supports it. Unquestionably a major topic is the fate of sockeye returning to the Fraser River, which so far this season have been assessed at well below what was already forecast to be a low abundance year.

Predictably the mainstream media has picked up on this, always ready to highlight the negative when it comes to fish and fishing stories. For starters the topic of Fraser sockeye can’t be treated as a single entity as DFO recognizes approximately 80 individual stocks that make up the aggregate, with each one characterized by watershed and run-timing group. To date the Early Stuart and Early Summer run-timing groups have completed their migration out of the ocean and both were well below the pre-season forecast for them.

Part of the complexity surrounding the understanding and management of sockeye is that they are very cyclical fish, predominantly 4 year-old fish at maturity although there are a number of 5 year-old stocks. The cyclical nature arises out of the freshwater life-history of sockeye, in which the juveniles of most (but not all) stocks have to migrate to a lake in the river system to rear for awhile before smolting and heading out to sea. It is thought that the lakes cannot support large numbers of sockeye juveniles every year, giving rise to what are expressed as dominant, sub-dominant and several low production years, hence the use of the word cycle in sockeye management.

This year fish returning to the Chilko River, a summer run stock, are expected to contribute the largest share of the aggregate Fraser sockeye return. They have only recently started to show up in the marine test fisheries and much depends on how they have survived at sea, with big implications for several fisheries – more about this later. Simply put, the chances of there being commercial and recreational fisheries for Fraser sockeye this year appear to be remote.

With several spectacular exceptions, in recent decades Fraser sockeye have exhibited a generally downward trend in survival, concern for which has lead to three inquiries into what ails them, with the 2016 Fraser sockeye return said to be the lowest on record. Various causes have been identified as contributing factors for this, most recently the “warm blob” in the NE Pacific Ocean that existed for several years before dissipating in 2016. Most people with an interest in salmon understand that warmer water isn’t good for salmon but a couple of things cause me to wonder if the “blob” hypothesis can be the full answer. If so, why did those other open ocean migrants, chum salmon, return to the south coast in such large numbers last fall? And why has the Stamp/Somass sockeye stock done so well in recent years? 2017 is forecast to be an off-cycle return year for this stock, with a pre-season forecast of 172,000 fish yet the latest run-size update is 375,000 sockeye, more than twice as many. For fish that presumably range through the same ocean as Fraser sockeye the difference in survival rates is a puzzle.

As a result of the Fraser sockeye returns to date food fisheries on them by First Nations in both the river itself and in marine areas remain closed, a situation that hopefully will change quickly as the FSC harvest requirement is about one million fish. If those sockeye aren’t there to be caught then First Nations are entitled by law to substitute with other species and chinook salmon are the preferred alternate target fish. Calculating one million “sockeye equivalents” in chinook and the implications for the southern BC recreational fishery makes my head hurt – one consequence of the present situation is that the in-river Fraser recreational fishery for all species of salmon will remain closed until further notice. Not so long ago it opened for chinook on May 1st and in recent years the start date has been August 1st, now who knows? Spare a thought for the recreational fishery in places like Chilliwack and hope that such a scenario doesn’t come to a neighborhood near you.

Chinook salmon are less cyclical than sockeye but the size of the dominant broodyear can be an important indicator for the returns in any given year. One chinook stock that has been doing well in recent years originates in the South Thompson River, with most fish from it being four years old at maturity. The 2013 return was one of the largest in the past two decades and so we should be seeing good numbers of these fish really soon. These can be big contributors to the Johnstone Strait recreational fishery but migrate from the north coast down both sides of Vancouver Island en route to the Fraser estuary. The predominant diversion rate for sockeye is to the outside so far this summer so perhaps chinook will respond to nearshore water conditions in the same way, time will tell.

Anglers or not, many residents have commented on the number of boats sportfishing off the bottom end of Quadra Island in recent weeks. Not quite like the “killing fields” on the Wilby Shoal shallows that took place in the 1980’s but quite a number, often 50 – 100 boats, concentrated in one fairly small area. There’s two main reasons for this – firstly, the annual finfish closure around Cape Mudge is in effect, concentrating effort. Secondly, and most importantly, the deeps outside of Wilby Shoal are where the chinook salmon are consistently to be found, and they are there because there are large schools of large herring holding there.

Productive as this fishery has been it is a challenging one to fish. To begin with for most of the day the chinooks are down near the bottom, meaning fishing your lures with less than 300 feet of cable out on ones downriggers is largely a waste of time. This takes a certain level of awareness and practice to become good at, for without some real thought to the process tangles and worse become commonplace.

An additional challenge is that early in July hordes of small dogfish arrived, from where I can only guess, but they quickly became an absolute plague. My own solution to this is to fish 6” Tomic plugs and troll fast, much faster than I’ve ever fished inside waters before. This isn’t a complete remedy to avoiding dogfish but it certainly slows down the encounter rate and the big plugs at speed seem attractive to the chinook salmon.

As an example of just how prevalent the dogfish are I had a client hook a decent salmon, however after a couple of minutes everything seemed to go slow and heavy. Urging my angler to crank the line in, as it came close we were all mildly horrified to see that our fish, about 14 pounds, was swarmed with dogfish who had already eaten away the entire stomach cavity of the chinook salmon even as it was being played on the end of a line. Ghastly ….
 
And then there is this.......

Bristol Bay salmon run almost too big to handle
By Samuel Hill August 3, 2017


Bristol Bay fishermen and processors are celebrating one of the largest sockeye runs on record. This year’s run was predicted to be 41.5 million fish with a harvest of 27.5 million, but the fleet hauled in more than 37 million fish, and the total run topped 56 million, according to harvest data from the Alaska Department of Fish and Game on Aug. 1.

If a huge uptick in volume wasn’t enough, fishermen are also getting better prices for sockeye this year. Buyers are paying a base price of $1 per pound this year, up from 76 cents last season. A lot of fishermen are also going to see a 15-cent pay bump for chilling their catch and a 5- to 10-cent bonus for floated and bled fish — all of which is happening more frequently throughout the fleet now, according to Bristol Bay Regional Seafood Development Association staff.

The Nushagak District set records with the total run coming in at just over 19 million fish, blowing past the previous district record set in 2006, when 14.7 million fish were counted. Total harvest was up to 11.5 million fish, well above the 10.8 million hauled in 2006.

The region also saw two days during which fishermen caught more than a million fish, something that had never happened in the district. On July 3 when 1.5 million fish were caught, four boats sank or were grounded in the area as they struggled to get through poor weather weighed down with heavy hauls.


https://www.nationalfisherman.com/alaska/bristol-bay-salmon-season-hit-hard-this-year/
 
No fish farms in Alaska... All the runs on the Fraser were increasing through the 80's. Not just the Adams.There were other systems that were returning over 20 million sockeye. And then the fish farms came in,and now virtually all the smolts of the Fraser stocks have to run the gauntlet of Johnstone Straights on their out migration,with over a 100 fish farms spewing their effluent and disease into the inlets and channels emptying into the Straits.As the runs declined,catches were reduced in an attempt to maintain the escapements. Fish were put on the spawning grounds, fry were produced, smolts out migrated the Fraser, and adults didn't return. You figure it out....
 
High Time said:
No fish farms in Alaska... All the runs on the Fraser were increasing through the 80's. Not just the Adams.There were other systems that were returning over 20 million sockeye. And then the fish farms came in,and now virtually all the smolts of the Fraser stocks have to run the gauntlet of Johnstone Straights on their out migration,with over a 100 fish farms spewing their effluent and disease into the inlets and channels emptying into the Straits.As the runs declined,catches were reduced in an attempt to maintain the escapements. Fish were put on the spawning grounds, fry were produced, smolts out migrated the Fraser, and adults didn't return. You figure it out....
Click to expand...
It's pretty obvious nothing has been done because they really don't care if all the wild stocks disappear. I believe the future plan is to have fish farms on and off shore. But wild fish have been a thorn in their side for quite a while.
 
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