Chinook Salmon Rapidly Colonize Rivers
- Thread starter agentaqua
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wildmanyeah
Crew Member
SpringFever552
Well-Known Member
Quote
"Thus their arrival already is a boon for sports anglers, and the species might one day support a commercial fisheries."
Up here its the other way around
"Thus their arrival already is a boon for sports anglers, and the species might one day support a commercial fisheries."
Up here its the other way around
wildmanyeah
Crew Member
Quote
"Thus their arrival already is a boon for sports anglers, and the species might one day support a commercial fisheries."
Up here its the other way around
We need some of thoes chinook fish farms
california
Well-Known Member
Wait, reading most threads on this forum I thought the only way to for Chinook numbers to increase was to build more hatcheries? So it seems if they aren't fished very hard, and have clean adequate water supplies and habitat to spawn and rear in, they DON'T need to be raised fat and stupid in concrete pools eating pellets, and might actually survive unlike the hundreds of millions of smolts the SEP produces?
wildmanyeah
Crew Member
Parallel epigenetic modifications induced by hatchery rearing in a Pacific salmon
https://www.researchgate.net/public...duced_by_hatchery_rearing_in_a_Pacific_salmon
california
Well-Known Member
Just more evidence we have no idea what we are doing to the salmon by cutting out the natural spawning process and the freshwater rearing phases of salmon lives. Not surprising that as well as the genetic degradation there would be non-genetic behavioral based , and/or activation and inactivation of certain genes based on environmental factors. Just one obvious omission in hatcheries is jacks. its some of the fittest young male salmon that mature early, and return earlier to the streams having achieved enough size to deploy a satellite mating strategy, and reducing their exposure to ocean predators. Jacks are not used as brood stock, but are successful in fertilizing eggs in a natural system. Salmon didn't evolve that strategy for nothing. Just one example of how hatcheries disrupt an evolutionary process that began as much as 25 million years ago.
The historical native run of Chinook Salmon in the Sooke River system went extinct many decades ago. With the help of the local community and the sport sector, the run was reestablished with a similar genetic strain of Chinook from a nearby river system. In effect a run of Chinook was reestablished in the river and has been doing rather well for many years including some very large returning Chinook. That run is also augmented by a volunteer run hatchery on the same system for both Coho and Chinook. It is my impression that DFO did not oppose the project because the still reasonably healthy river system once held Chinook. In effect both reestablishment and salmon enhancement can be done successfully. Getting DFO to approve the establishment of Chinook runs in otherwise healthy river systems without them and especially in river systems that did not have an historical run of Chinook or with few native Chinook remaining, now that is another issue entirely.
Now if you wanted to increase the health of the salmon rivers in BC and wait for natural reestablishment or first time establishment, I suspect it would be possible and all it would take is the depopulation of millions of humans on the BC coast and the subsequent ending of the related human activity. - in short, don’t hold your breath.
I am concerned about the long term well being of the now re-established Sooke Chinook run because the inlet, harbour and basin is now heavily populated with rapidly increasing numbers of seals and sea lions which has a negative effect on salmon leaving the river system. Further the entrance to the harbour acts as a natural bottleneck which allows the huge and greatly increasing population of seals and now sea lions to ambush them on the way in to spawn. When I say huge numbers, I do not mean a return to historical numbers, but rather historical high numbers, never previously recorded. This in my view is related to the lack of historical levels of predation of Pinnipeds. There are simply not the numbers of Transient Orca there once was, nor do they seem interested in coming into a large working commercial harbour with all its human activity. Further the non Euro humans no longer utilize pinnipeds as clothing/materials and food.
Ironically we have laws that protect the heavily overpopulated pinniped species to the determent of the species of concern – Chinook and by extension salmon eating resident Orca. You want to protect Chinook and provide more food for resident Orca. Control the local Pinniped populations to restore some balance.
There is a certain irony that Sooke Inlet is closed to Chinook sport fishing from Aug 1st on to protect these Chinook and the fact that we are required to release Chinook throughout much of our fishing season if they are over slot size and not clipped and are not permitted to clip these same Chinook. In my view if the sport sector were to loose interest in protecting the river from development,in stream keeping and protecting and enhancing the Sooke River Chinook, it would not take long at all for the Sooke River Chinook to once again go extinct. I would argue that if you want these Resident Chinook to help feed Resident Orca, you may want to give just a little consideration to the interests of the sport sector, without which these Chinook would not exist.
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