I think shutting down hatcheries is the next logical progression for the groups to focus on after they shut down fish farms. Hatcheries are also generally against the wild salmon policy.
While im personally for pumping out a lot of smolts from hatcheries and have mark selective fisheries it certainly does not seem to be the direction we are heading in.
https://thenarwhal.ca/will-b-c-s-wild-salmon-strategy-be-a-boon-or-bust/
Will B.C.’s wild salmon strategy be a boon or bust?
The expansion of hatchery production
A recurring theme in the strategy paper is the imperative to expand the production of B.C. salmon from hatcheries, including Alaska-styled coastal salmon ranching. (In the latter, salmon are raised in pens and released by private interests, which then recoup their investment by getting the first stab at fishing when the fish return.)
In a written response to the council, Simon Fraser University salmon biologist Jon Moore sought to correct the council’s “serious scientific inaccuracies” in the report. This includes the assertion that “research is inadequate” to address the potential impacts of hatcheries, including the interactions of wild and enhanced fish in the ocean.
“The science is clear,” Moore wrote to the council, “hatcheries have repeatedly [been] shown to seriously harm wild populations both at broad and local scales.”
In an interview with The Narwhal, Moore said expanding hatcheries can overstep the carrying capacity of the ocean.
“The science is increasingly strong showing that the ocean is at capacity when it comes to salmon, and that adding more hatchery fish has really negative effects on wild stocks.”
This said, hatcheries have a future role to play in B.C., Moore said — as a last resort to keep endangered runs from going extinct, and in cases where habitat has been devastated, like on the Capilano River in North Vancouver, where hatcheries now provide fish for First Nations and sport in the wake of dam construction.
“Our point is not to shut down all hatcheries, it’s just that caution is needed when thinking about ramping up [production], if the goal is to conserve wild salmon.”
Machin echoes this point. “It’s a very complex interaction between wild and enhanced [salmon] populations, and that’s something that we’d really caution the province about, to take a little bit more time to reflect on that.”
New viruses discovered in endangered wild Pacific salmon populations
https://science.ubc.ca/news/new-viruses-discovered-endangered-wild-pacific-salmon-populations
“We found the new viruses widely distributed in dead and dying farmed salmon and in wild salmon,” said UBC virologist Curtis Suttle. “It emphasizes the potential role that viral disease may play in the population dynamics of wild fish stocks, and the threat that these viruses may pose to aquaculture.”
One new virus, detected more commonly in salmon hatcheries, infected more than 15 per cent of all hatchery Chinook tested."
https://elifesciences.org/articles/47615#digest
"
The distribution and abundance of the different viruses varied markedly. Arenaviruses were relatively common (
Figure 2—figure supplement 1) and geographically widespread in migratory juvenile Chinook and sockeye salmon in the marine environment (
Figure 2,
Figure 2—figure supplement 2).
Whereas, the nidovirus was spatially localised and predominantly observed at high prevalence over multiple years in Chinook salmon leaving freshwater hatcheries (Figure 2). Finally, the reovirus was detected only in farmed Chinook salmon (
Figure 2 and
Figure 2—figure supplement 1).
With the exception of their relatively recent discovery in snakes (
Stenglein et al., 2012) and frogfish (
Shi et al., 2018), arenaviruses were thought to solely infect mammals. The arenaviruses reported here share less than 15% amino-acid sequence similarity (in the RdRp) to those from mammals and snakes, and define a new monophyletic evolutionary group, the pescarenaviruses (
Figure 1A). The absence of clear sequence homology in the glycoprotein, the difference in genome segmentation (
Shi et al., 2018), as well as phylogenetic analysis of the replicase demonstrate that pescarenaviruses share a common but ancient ancestor with arenaviruses infecting snakes and mammals. We recommend these fish-infecting arenaviruses are assigned to the new genus
Pescarenavirus, with those infecting Chinook and sockeye salmon being assigned to the species
Salmon pescarenavirus (SPAV), strains 1 and 2, respectively."