Maybe this isn’t the place for this but I’ll post here anyways. Read this article this morning and it’s contrary to everything I’ve heard.
Contributed - Jan 23 10:05 am
Fishing guides in B.C.'s Sea to Sky region agree on one thing - 2019 was a bad year for Pacific salmon.
Jon Moon of Art of Angling Fishing Guides said he was motivated to sound the alarm after a particularly dire season.
"As a fishing guide here, I've seen a massive decline in the last 20 years," he said. "And it's not just me saying this, it's fishermen that I run into on the rivers, other guides in town, and I would really like to have this brought to the forefront. I feel like it should have been the largest election issue for voters in the Sea to Sky corridor. It's the backbone of the health of the Pacific coastline."
Logan Wilkins of Trout Country Fishing Guides concurred, noting "we've seen declines across the board in most species locally." He singled out last year's chum return specifically as "incredibly dismal."
Pemberton Fish Finders' Brad Knowles, whose guiding area spans from Vancouver to Bute Inlet, and as far inland as the Fraser, said that while the Coho and Chinook numbers were "looking OK," this year's sockeye run to the Birkenhead River was concerning. "I think there were only maybe 8,000 fish, which is a very, very low return," he said.
This summer, federal fisheries experts painted a troubling picture of the challenges facing Pacific salmon, and pointed to climate change as the main contributor.
A report put out by Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) this summer said air and water temperatures in B.C. and Yukon continue to rise, while changing precipitation patterns are altering freshwater habitats. These effects have only been compounded by landscape-altering human activity as well, the report stated. "There is no question that climate change is having a significant impact on our salmon," said fisheries minister Jonathan Wilkinson at an August news conference in Vancouver. "Not only do these declines have direct impacts on our ecosystems and the health of our environment, but they have serious impacts on the health of our economy."
Sockeye numbers in particular were not promising, with the DFO adjusting the species' expected return to the Fraser River to more than 600,000, down from an earlier projection of nearly 5 million.
Twelve out of 13 Fraser River Chinook populations were also recommended for protection under the Species at Risk Act, and a rockslide along the same river blocked the migration route of millions of salmon and prompted criticism of the provincial government's response.