This year's salmon run has been the best since 1913. (Photo: YouTube/Fishingwithrod)

Fraser River sockeye fishery closed

CANADA
Monday, September 06, 2010, 23:50 (GMT + 9)

The British Columbia (BC) Fraser River fishery is being closed down in stages by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) starting Tuesday to protect threatened coho salmon stocks.

Commercial fishers can cast their nets once more this season during a 24-hour salmon opening beginning on Monday morning.

"That will be the last chance to fish down in that area with that kind of gear," warned area director Barry Rosenberger. "We're hoping that people get out there."

Although 8-10 million wild sockeye will keep swimming upstream, wild coho need protection while they finish their migration to spawning beds in the BC Interior through October. Rosenberger said only about 30,000 of the most at-risk coho stocks may return from the ocean in 2010, The Canadian Press reports.

DFO informed that coho have dropped by over 60 per cent since 1996 and probably due to overfishing and changes in their enviroment.

“There are people saying, ’Why aren’t we continuing to harvest as much as we can of this sockeye?’ and it’s because they’re co-migrating more now with other species like coho and steelhead and some other populations that are not nearly as productive as sockeye were this year,” said conservationist Mark Angelo, Rivers Institute chair at the BC Institute of Technology, reports Vancouver Sun.  “We need to make sure we’re giving them protection.”

Rosenberger thinks fishers will have caught over 12 million out of the 34 million fish -- the strongest sockeye salmon run on the Fraser River since 1913 -- by the time all of this year’s sockeye fisheries close.

"DFO here is simply saying we don't care whether there's a commercial fishery in 2014 or not," complained fisher Phil Eidsvik, spokesman for the BC Fisheries Survival Coalition. "Thousands of British Columbians make their livelihoods from it and they do care."

He and others believe the move will lead to the death of many sockeye because the lakes where they spawn will fill over capacity, harming the 2014 run.

Rosenberger denied this, citing a 2004 study published by the Pacific Fisheries Resource Conservation Council.

"They didn't find that over-spawning had catastrophic affects on returns," he asserted.

Related articles:

- Sockeye run estimates upped to 34 million
- DFO faces criticism after record salmon run

By Natalia Real
[email protected]
www.seafood.media

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