It seems like we need to send out an SOS call:
Save
Our
Salmon
I have been fishing my whole life, but I only started ocean fishing this past April (2018) and while I have yet to catch a summer run salmon, I'd like too and I'd like my son too as well.
If it's true that 83% of salmon mortality is attributed to spawning ground issues, then we need to focus our efforts on keeping the spawning grounds healthy. Given the many stresses and politics at play here, fixes will not happen overnight. In the interim, we need some type of solution that will keep the salmon alive. In this context, there is a wide body of research that show egg survival rate in hatcheries are better than egg survival rates in the wild. Typically < 1% of eggs in the wild survive to smolt stage, whereas (depending on species) anywhere from 10% to sometimes >80% of eggs survive to smolt size in hatcheries. And this makes sense because hatcheries can maintain peak survival conditions.
The downside to hatcheries however is loss of genetic diversity. I don't know what current hatchery practices are, but one answer to this is to use Wild fish as brood stock. I did an aquaculture degree some 20 odd years ago. Part of the program involved a visit to a local stream each fall to net and milk Wild brooding Chinook Salmon (These were Lake Ontario salmon). We'd do the fertilization by hand, then bring the eggs back to the schools hatchery where we'd raise them to smolts. Then in the spring, release the smolts back to the stream from which the eggs were taken. We had an 85% survival rate.
Success can me measured in many ways. If we look at our winter fishery, the majority of winter springs are hatchery fish. Thus, worst case scenario is we maintain some level of a fishery; best case scenario we are able to reintroduce wild salmon back to their natural restored spawning habitat.
Something needs to be done in the short term, hatcheries seem the logical answer.
