twinwinds
Active Member
Neil Cameron of the Campbell River Courier
Our knowledge of the Pacific salmonids seems to be based on two numbers - what goes out and what comes back. That is understandable, given that both numbers are somewhat easy to calculate. And they are fairly consistent; of what goes out, anywhere from two to five per cent return; some more, some less, but basically that is the equation.
This then leaves 95 per cent of the run unaccounted for. When you consider that a run of fish can run into the millions and that fully 95 per cent of them die, there appears to be somewhat of a large gap in our knowledge, calculations and understanding of Pacific salmon. Where does that 95 per cent go? Why do so many of them die?
I will focus this on the Strait of Georgia. Over millennia this ‘inland sea’ has been the recipient of salmon from countless rivers and streams. Virtually billions upon billions of young salmon entered the waters each spring. They left their natal waters and some went far afield to rich feeding grounds to the north. Yet a lot of them also stayed within the confines of the Georgia Basin. And, as stated, fully 95 per cent of them failed to return to their stream to spawn. They died some how, some way.
Given the sheer mass of their numbers it would, I think, be safe to say that this immense biomass put them in the top three of aquatic species in the Strait – or at least in the top five. And since 95 per cent of them died (albeit some within their natal stream itself) we could conclude that this biomass became an intrinsic part of the food web within the Strait.
They fed birds, seals and other fish, ling cod, rock cod, halibut etc. And they fed other salmon. Their deaths also undoubtedly contributed protein to crustaceans and lower organisms, the foundations of the food chain. They contributed these incredible energy resources to a biomass from the top of the food chain to the bottom. This massive infusion of protein into the food web must have been easily responsible for one third of its richness. And it would be like a slow spreading fertilizer, strong and rich at the outset, then dissipating - but contributing to the food chain throughout the year.
Resident Chinook, coho, cutthroat trout and steelhead have virtually disappeared from the west side of Georgia Strait. However, those numbers seem to be better on the coastal eastern side, where streams there haven’t been as adversely impacted by logging and development as have the East Coast of Vancouver Island streams. The runs of Pacific salmon on the east coast side of the Strait, while not near historic levels, are still in much better shape than their counterparts across the way. And their runs therefore contribute more to the local food chain. And that local food chain is vital to residential salmonid life.
That is why if you want to catch a cutthroat trout or dolly varden of any meaningful size, you take a boat over there. The cutthroat trout is like the proverbial canary. Find a stream that produces a good run of salmonids and you will find the cutthroat.
That is why places like the Quinsam River and the mouth of Campbell River buck the trend, because the hatcheries there help replace the historic natural runs of salmonids.
There are other avenues of thought along these lines. But I would like to be as succinct as possible. At first it is an obvious conclusion, but how we get to that conclusion is different than what I think current Pacific salmon managers are thinking.
The conclusion? Pacific salmon numbers are down in the Strait of George because, well, Pacific salmon numbers are down. Fewer fish back on the spawning bed means fewer fish going out and coming back. But we must take it to the next level and understand that the number of fish returning may not be as important as the number of fish going out.
Mother Nature is pure science. It doesn’t study things, it doesn’t calculate, it peer reviews itself in the most ultimate form. So why would 95 per cent of a salmon run be destined to die before coming back to spawn? Billions of them. Well there’s a reason. They are destined to die because in doing so they fulfill the purest form of science. Those salmon die for a reason. And reason would dictate that they die to provide for a food chain that they themselves rely upon. And the other fishes, and the other crustaceans and the mammals – the circle, as it were.
But this important part of the food chain in the Georgia Basin has been decimated. In Bright Waters, Bright Fish Roderick Haig-Brown estimated that by 1975 runs of Pacific salmon were about half of their historic levels. It hasn’t gotten better since. Which means this integral part of the food chain has been diminished to a percentile of its original input.
No wonder the blue backs are gone. No wonder the resident Chinook are gone. No wonder herring numbers have plummeted. No wonder the euphasid shrimp blooms are so few and far between. No wonder, no wonder, no wonder.
We have taken out and caused to be taken out a vast and integral amount of the food chain of the Strait and we continue to do so. It’s a downward spiral that will end as a pathetic remnant of what once was. Unless we change our thinking.
Fisheries managers today take over fisheries and manage to the levels of last year’s or the last cycle’s returns. If they achieve that, they are happy. Yet they don’t realize that they failed, abysmally. Their scientists will warn them about genetic integrity, that supplemental programs will degenerate the stocks and cause irrevocable harm and extinction. Yet the reality is, if we follow these scientists and biologists, the stocks will, eventually and, as has happened already and continues to happen, they will be gone anyway.
Where does that leave us? It doesn’t have to leave us. It should lead us to a realization that because we invested money in a run of a million fish and only two per cent came back, all was not lost. We have to learn and re-learn the value of that portion of the run that the ultimate scientist dictated had to die. We have to have confidence in knowing that 95 per cent of the salmon run didn’t go to waste – that they do have value, perhaps more so than the fish that return.
In Alaska they are recording record numbers of salmon returns. They have a program that’s called ocean ranching. It sends out billions of salmon into the rich waters there and their returns have defied what any other jurisdiction is experiencing. They have improved their salmonid returns from 390 million in the late 1970s to an estimated return of 130 million this year. Detractors from the program say that turning that many hatchery-raised fish into the wild deprives the wild stock of salmon of food, that the program starves wild stocks, that they adversely affect the food chain.
The opposite, I think, is true. The Alaskans are mimicking the ultimate scientist. They have a program that, by sheer percentages, contributes more to the food chain that it takes away. And that is where British Columbia has to go.
In Campbell River we have the centre for Aquatic Health Sciences studying plankton blooms to better time the release of hatchery fish, specifically coho. It is hoped that timing it well will increase the survival rate of the coho. Something to snack on before heading out to the wild seas. Did the ultimate scientist also do that or did the ultimate scientist design it so that whenever the salmon left their natal streams a rich and vibrant ecosystem awaited them, whenever they went out to live – or die?
A large portion of fish reared in Georgia Strait migrate to the same waters in which the Alaskan fish are enjoying such bounty. But there’s a long way to go for Georgia Strait fish, through a marine environment devoid of even a small percentage of its historic richness. When and if they reach those rich environs, they are undoubtedly fewer in number and only fewer of the original run will have sufficient energy stores to garner the sufficient consumption needed to get back home. And through that perilous journey, many of them face sea lice problems associated with ocean ranching’s biggest competitor – Atlantic salmon farms.
So what if somehow we could replace those local nutrients and thereby allow more salmon to stay local and supply the necessary energy boost to get them to the fishing grounds to the north?
We will never do that if we continue to solely calculate a salmon run’s success by how many go out and how many come back. We have to realize we have been missing the importance of 95 per of our investment. We must feed the sea so the sea can feed itself. We must replenish that part of the food chain which has been lost from our equations. We must be willing to spend money on that which we seem to assume is wasted in death.
We must remember that, in nature, with the ultimate scientist, nothing is wasted and all is crucial. You cannot replace that nutrient mix with guarded estimates that take into account only the top and the bottom of a circle.
Our knowledge of the Pacific salmonids seems to be based on two numbers - what goes out and what comes back. That is understandable, given that both numbers are somewhat easy to calculate. And they are fairly consistent; of what goes out, anywhere from two to five per cent return; some more, some less, but basically that is the equation.
This then leaves 95 per cent of the run unaccounted for. When you consider that a run of fish can run into the millions and that fully 95 per cent of them die, there appears to be somewhat of a large gap in our knowledge, calculations and understanding of Pacific salmon. Where does that 95 per cent go? Why do so many of them die?
I will focus this on the Strait of Georgia. Over millennia this ‘inland sea’ has been the recipient of salmon from countless rivers and streams. Virtually billions upon billions of young salmon entered the waters each spring. They left their natal waters and some went far afield to rich feeding grounds to the north. Yet a lot of them also stayed within the confines of the Georgia Basin. And, as stated, fully 95 per cent of them failed to return to their stream to spawn. They died some how, some way.
Given the sheer mass of their numbers it would, I think, be safe to say that this immense biomass put them in the top three of aquatic species in the Strait – or at least in the top five. And since 95 per cent of them died (albeit some within their natal stream itself) we could conclude that this biomass became an intrinsic part of the food web within the Strait.
They fed birds, seals and other fish, ling cod, rock cod, halibut etc. And they fed other salmon. Their deaths also undoubtedly contributed protein to crustaceans and lower organisms, the foundations of the food chain. They contributed these incredible energy resources to a biomass from the top of the food chain to the bottom. This massive infusion of protein into the food web must have been easily responsible for one third of its richness. And it would be like a slow spreading fertilizer, strong and rich at the outset, then dissipating - but contributing to the food chain throughout the year.
Resident Chinook, coho, cutthroat trout and steelhead have virtually disappeared from the west side of Georgia Strait. However, those numbers seem to be better on the coastal eastern side, where streams there haven’t been as adversely impacted by logging and development as have the East Coast of Vancouver Island streams. The runs of Pacific salmon on the east coast side of the Strait, while not near historic levels, are still in much better shape than their counterparts across the way. And their runs therefore contribute more to the local food chain. And that local food chain is vital to residential salmonid life.
That is why if you want to catch a cutthroat trout or dolly varden of any meaningful size, you take a boat over there. The cutthroat trout is like the proverbial canary. Find a stream that produces a good run of salmonids and you will find the cutthroat.
That is why places like the Quinsam River and the mouth of Campbell River buck the trend, because the hatcheries there help replace the historic natural runs of salmonids.
There are other avenues of thought along these lines. But I would like to be as succinct as possible. At first it is an obvious conclusion, but how we get to that conclusion is different than what I think current Pacific salmon managers are thinking.
The conclusion? Pacific salmon numbers are down in the Strait of George because, well, Pacific salmon numbers are down. Fewer fish back on the spawning bed means fewer fish going out and coming back. But we must take it to the next level and understand that the number of fish returning may not be as important as the number of fish going out.
Mother Nature is pure science. It doesn’t study things, it doesn’t calculate, it peer reviews itself in the most ultimate form. So why would 95 per cent of a salmon run be destined to die before coming back to spawn? Billions of them. Well there’s a reason. They are destined to die because in doing so they fulfill the purest form of science. Those salmon die for a reason. And reason would dictate that they die to provide for a food chain that they themselves rely upon. And the other fishes, and the other crustaceans and the mammals – the circle, as it were.
But this important part of the food chain in the Georgia Basin has been decimated. In Bright Waters, Bright Fish Roderick Haig-Brown estimated that by 1975 runs of Pacific salmon were about half of their historic levels. It hasn’t gotten better since. Which means this integral part of the food chain has been diminished to a percentile of its original input.
No wonder the blue backs are gone. No wonder the resident Chinook are gone. No wonder herring numbers have plummeted. No wonder the euphasid shrimp blooms are so few and far between. No wonder, no wonder, no wonder.
We have taken out and caused to be taken out a vast and integral amount of the food chain of the Strait and we continue to do so. It’s a downward spiral that will end as a pathetic remnant of what once was. Unless we change our thinking.
Fisheries managers today take over fisheries and manage to the levels of last year’s or the last cycle’s returns. If they achieve that, they are happy. Yet they don’t realize that they failed, abysmally. Their scientists will warn them about genetic integrity, that supplemental programs will degenerate the stocks and cause irrevocable harm and extinction. Yet the reality is, if we follow these scientists and biologists, the stocks will, eventually and, as has happened already and continues to happen, they will be gone anyway.
Where does that leave us? It doesn’t have to leave us. It should lead us to a realization that because we invested money in a run of a million fish and only two per cent came back, all was not lost. We have to learn and re-learn the value of that portion of the run that the ultimate scientist dictated had to die. We have to have confidence in knowing that 95 per cent of the salmon run didn’t go to waste – that they do have value, perhaps more so than the fish that return.
In Alaska they are recording record numbers of salmon returns. They have a program that’s called ocean ranching. It sends out billions of salmon into the rich waters there and their returns have defied what any other jurisdiction is experiencing. They have improved their salmonid returns from 390 million in the late 1970s to an estimated return of 130 million this year. Detractors from the program say that turning that many hatchery-raised fish into the wild deprives the wild stock of salmon of food, that the program starves wild stocks, that they adversely affect the food chain.
The opposite, I think, is true. The Alaskans are mimicking the ultimate scientist. They have a program that, by sheer percentages, contributes more to the food chain that it takes away. And that is where British Columbia has to go.
In Campbell River we have the centre for Aquatic Health Sciences studying plankton blooms to better time the release of hatchery fish, specifically coho. It is hoped that timing it well will increase the survival rate of the coho. Something to snack on before heading out to the wild seas. Did the ultimate scientist also do that or did the ultimate scientist design it so that whenever the salmon left their natal streams a rich and vibrant ecosystem awaited them, whenever they went out to live – or die?
A large portion of fish reared in Georgia Strait migrate to the same waters in which the Alaskan fish are enjoying such bounty. But there’s a long way to go for Georgia Strait fish, through a marine environment devoid of even a small percentage of its historic richness. When and if they reach those rich environs, they are undoubtedly fewer in number and only fewer of the original run will have sufficient energy stores to garner the sufficient consumption needed to get back home. And through that perilous journey, many of them face sea lice problems associated with ocean ranching’s biggest competitor – Atlantic salmon farms.
So what if somehow we could replace those local nutrients and thereby allow more salmon to stay local and supply the necessary energy boost to get them to the fishing grounds to the north?
We will never do that if we continue to solely calculate a salmon run’s success by how many go out and how many come back. We have to realize we have been missing the importance of 95 per of our investment. We must feed the sea so the sea can feed itself. We must replenish that part of the food chain which has been lost from our equations. We must be willing to spend money on that which we seem to assume is wasted in death.
We must remember that, in nature, with the ultimate scientist, nothing is wasted and all is crucial. You cannot replace that nutrient mix with guarded estimates that take into account only the top and the bottom of a circle.
