The crash of this summer's sockeye run has become a federal political issue, and two B.C. MPs are calling for an "emergency summit" to rescue wild salmon.
NDP MPs Peter Julian (Burnaby-New Westminster) and Nathan Cullen (Skeena-Bulkley Valley) issued the call in a news release on Friday. It quoted Julian as saying:
"The writing was on the wall, yet the federal government has consistently ignored the evidence and evaded responsibility by turning a blind eye to the ongoing collapse of wild salmon stocks.
“Now that 11 million Sockeye salmon have vanished, a crisis of unprecedented magnitude is unfolding for the west coast ecosystem and countless diverse communities whose livelihood and culture depend on wild salmon runs. The time for rhetorical debate is over. The Harper government must make this issue a top priority- now.”
Cullen criticized both the Conservatives and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans:
"The neglect by the conservative government is killing Canada's wild salmon – science is clear and compelling.
"It seems that DFO has not learned the lesson of the cod collapse disaster. The Harper government must acknowledge the dramatic impact of climate change and open-cage fish farms on the people, cultures and lifestyles of the West coast, and take action to protect the ecosystem and communities and prevent a catastrophic outcome."
For a start, the MPs demanded that the government:
• Convene an emergency BC summit on Salmon a with all key stakeholders groups, governments and representatives of fishing, First Nations and Environmental organizations;
• Inject funding into the Salmonid enhancement program;
• Reform the Ottawa-centred management of DFO so the people making decisions about BC fisheries are in BC and tied into the knowledge base of BC stakeholders;
• Inject emergency funding to accelerate the move to a closed containment farming system and rapidly phase out open caged fish farms.
Julian and Cullen pointed out that wild salmon generate 52,000 jobs and $1.6 billion in revenues to coastal communities. Salmon farms create 4,000 jobs and $400 million in revenues, most of which go to foreign shareholders.
Crawford Kilian is a contributing editor of The Tyee.
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Illahie
2 years ago
How an article on sockeye should be written
http://www.vancouversun.com/technology/Where+have+salmon+gone/1926728/story.html
Illahie
2 years ago
Stephen Hume's article makes some good points
It was refreshing to read Stephen Hume's very well written article (see link above).
There are many examples where stocks have crashed after good spawning success, good incubation success, good lake rearing success.
One factor which may be very important to ocean survival is the health of the spring phytoplankton and zoo plankton crops.
Nutrient levels are normally high in the spring, and with increasing hours of daylight the phytoplankton crop normally spikes, which provides a spike in copepods and other zooplankton production, which in turn feeds the sockeye smolts. It the spring migration starts too early, or if we have a cold, dark dreary spring, there not be sufficient zooplankton production to sustain the smolts during their spring migration.
It may be a bit ironic that the size and health of the sockeye smolts may have contributed to the poor adult returns experienced this year.
It is perhaps worth noting, that the Fraser River Sockeye stocks have been generally showing better returns with time, to the extent that they are sometimes close to historic (pre Hells Gate slide) escapements