There's twice as many salmon in the Pacific as there were 50 years ago. The problem is massive hatchery stocking of pinks by Alaska and its private hatcheries has skewed that increase to pinks. There's no food left for steelhead, coho and chinook and the ones that survive are returning after fewer years at sea and small for their age: that's where your June hogs went. Read these articles
How is it a conspiracy theory? Do you really believe there is no effect on the ecosystem of Alaska pumping out an additional 850 million pinks, and Russia hundreds of millions more in addition to the natural spawning? 5 billion hatchery fish are released every year into the north pacific, and there are questions why smolt survival is low? The classifying of any scientific observations one doesn't like as "fake news" or conspiracy theories has of course become popular from climate change deniers in the US, and fanned by the idiot oracle POTUS and his minions.
Pre-season estimates for Pinks were 8.6 Million, and 4.7 showed up so 4 million didn't show, still a significant number. There is no science to it but it seems reasonable that if the Fraser pinks have to compete with an additional 1.3 Billion pink smolts in the north atlantic from Alaska and Russian hatcheries once they get there there could be negative effects some years depending on food supplies.
Its hard to make any sort of conclusions from this data with out also referencing the actual returns. That said its clear that Steelhead have been in a decline for a very long time or the government had smaller quotas for the commercial fleet. Also the increase in sockeye catch is also hard to analyse because SONAR started to see wide adopting in 1970's.
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