[8] Fraser Sockeye Run Major Disappointment
After predicting a 2009 return of more than 10 million sockeye, Canadian biologists are stunned at the poor show of the country's premier sockeye run.
The first batch of returning Fraser sockeye, the Early Stuart run, returned at about half the original prediction of 165,000 fish.
The second peak, the Early Summer run, was expected to come in around 740,000, but only about 175,000 are expected now.
The largest component, the Summer run, was pegged at close to 9 million. However, after test fishing and initial inriver counts, only about 600,000 are now expected. Biologists estimate about 50 percent of them have already passed by southwest Vancouver Island.
Mike LaPointe, chief biologist with the Pacific Salmon Commission, said there isn't much of a chance that the Summer run is just late, since later-returning stocks like the Harrison Late-run are now showing up.
He said the only glimmer of good news is that the Harrison Late-run sockeye are likely returning at twice their expected number of 69,000 fish, and the river is cooling off for now to improve adult survival
LaPointe said the Harrison sockeye have a unique lifestyle compared to other Fraser stocks. They don't spend a year growing in freshwater lakes, but migrate down river shortly after they emerge from the gravel, and spend months hanging out in Georgia Strait before they head north to the Gulf of Alaska, via a route that takes them outside of Vancouver Island. Most Fraser juveniles quickly migrate up the inside.
These differences may have helped them survive better, said LaPointe, since Georgia Strait was fairly warm the year they went to sea in 2007.
Georgia Strait can be a hugely nutritious place for young salmon, but it has a tendency to stay warm long after El Nino events have come and gone in the nearby North Pacific and ocean waters have cooled into a more productive state.
The PSC Aug. 14 news release said the reason for the low returns of most Fraser stocks "are presently unknown," though several factors can be rejected. The parent run was a healthy 3.3 million fish, over a million more than average for this part of the Fraser cycle.
Commercial sockeye fishing has been totally shut down this year, with BC tribal fishers catching only 47,000 so far, for personal and ceremonial uses.
Freshwater survival of this year's run was exceptionally strong--77 million smolts left Chilko Lake in 2007, almost twice the previous high of the past 50 years.
The Commission says the low returns may be due to factors in marine areas sometime between ocean entry in the late spring and early summer of 2007 and the adult return in 2009. Farmed fish critics blame sea lice that the sockeye might have picked up from netpens on their migration up the inside of Vancouver Island.
However, the sockeye run in northern BC's Skeena River is extremely poor this year as well, but LaPointe said the wild sockeye from Vancouver Island's Barkely Sound seem to be coming in at expected numbers.
He said this year's cycle of the Fraser run was responsible for a 23-million fish return in 1993. He said it's hard to believe it has gotten this low.
The Fraser pink salmon run is expected to be a healthy 17.7 million fish this year. They swim by the netpens as well.
Further north, salmon runs have been a mixed bag. Bristol Bay showed a strong 31-million sockeye return, but in other parts of the state, sockeye returns have been disappointing.
In Prince William Sound, a 40-million-fish pink salmon projection has not materialized. So far, only 4 million have returned. -B. R.
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