Greg Taylor, Watershed Watch Fisheries Advisor
Certain events bring the effects of our changing climate into stark relief. Last week, the M/V Franciscan, a well-known local 63’ seine boat, was loaded onto a carrier bound for Russia, where it had been sold.
The Franciscan was built in British Columbia in 1978 by Manly Shipyards under the Second Narrows Bridge for a long-standing and respected fishing family, the Brajcich’s. The Franciscan fished through the heyday of B.C.’s salmon and herring fisheries. Through the 1980s and 1990s, the Franciscan, loaded with salmon or herring, regularly sailed up Vancouver Harbour to deliver to the now gone J.S. MacMillan’s fish plant.
As salmon and herring runs began to decline, Paul Brajcich embraced change. He worked with leaders in industry, academics, and others to investigate methods where seines could fish more selectively, enabling them to harvest the more abundant salmon species while safely releasing the less abundant. But the decline in BC’s salmon and herring populations left him little choice but to leave the industry he, and his father before him, loved.
Why Russia?
While most of the North Pacific warms and becomes less hospitable to salmon, salmon populations are increasing in warming Siberian waters, once too cold for salmon. The same changes the Brajcichs confronted are also being faced by fishermen in Japan. Salmon abundance is declining across the Pacific Ocean, other than in far north Siberian and Alaskan waters.
2019 was one of the worst years ever recorded for B.C. salmon, and DFO scientists say they expect 2020 to be similar or worse. In the last five years, we have experienced significant drought conditions, lower than normal snowpacks, and earlier than normal freshets. This, DFO biologists warn us, combined with loss of forest canopy due to fire, pine beetle and logging has pushed a number of streams over the tipping point.
Although DFO biologists and researchers are warning us to expect low returns, DFO managers are actively planning 2020 fisheries with a business-as-usual approach.
There are ways to fish that respect salmon being the centerpiece of B.C.’s coastal and interior ecosystems. We need to shift to highly selective fishing methods and locations that harvest abundant salmon runs while having little or no impact on the endangered ones.
Climate change is affecting wild salmon, and we, as a society, must face the question, do we continue to fish as we have always done until they are all gone, or do we begin now to take measures to help them survive these changes?
Great conversation Greg! You have framed the challenges ahead well. While we need to change the way we fish, it will also redirect our attentions to the health of local watersheds and fish stocks. Once again people will begin to think about salmon as more than just a commodity to be stripped from our world as if they are limitless. Industry and markets will need to adapt. I hope when they do they will truly appreciate where their salmon comes from.
Have a member of Watershed Watch join the Sport Fish Advisory Board so that you get first hand the process for the annual fish. Get plugged in to the Sport Fishing Institute to find out what they do as well. It is worthwhile to be involved.
And on fish farms, look at my site for global issues: fishfarmnews.blogspot.com/.
Thanks Greg. Another nicely informative article. I for one appreciate hearing about long-time fishing families like the Brajcichs. It twigs one’s memories and grounds the article. Keep up the good work, your views are important.
Don Lawseth
Immediately we need to treat salmon as sacred. Salmon feed all life – mammals, birds, fish, soil, insects , trees – what a giver of life! Here in the dammed Columbia Basin, the lack of salmon still has our water, land and all life, starving for marine nutrients even after years of scientific fixes, Salmon’s marine nutrients cannot be replicated, only the salmon feed everything in the ecosystem – that is why they are sacred.
Thankyou. How is the rate of reforestation now enhancing the rate of recovery in our watersheds? What compensation actions and money are the logging companies providing?Are there examples of remediation by mining companies that are restoringpoisoned waters?
Thank you for your thoughtful comments.
Dave, your leadership in, and dedication to, developing sustainable known-stock salmon fisheries that take only those salmon that our surplus to ecosystem needs is inspiring.
DC Reid, while I won’t be joining the SFAB, we are beginning to work with angling researchers and experienced guides to better understand Fishery Related Incidental Mortality (FRIM) on released salmon. This will allow us to better measure total mortalities associated with the recreational industry relative to recovery objectives and harvest caps for endangered salmon.
Nice to hear from you Don. I too recall these people and families with fondness and respect.
Susan, thinking about has happened on the Columbia keeps me up at nights. Roderick Haig-Brown was a leader in the fight to ensure the Fraser wasn’t dammed. His vision has gifted us with the opportunity to save our salmon and not go the way of the Columbia. But to do so means we have to embrace Haig-Brown’s courage and relentless fight to place salmon before industry, development, and extraction.
Your questions are good ones Doran. But typically, by the time governments and people wake to the need to remediate an industry’s negative effects, the industry is crying poverty because of the lack of the very resource it exploited.
Regarding what actions/money the logging companies are providing ..this is really a mute point as they continue to log old growth forests on Vancouver Island ..Destroying ancient tress and bio diversity that can never be replaced