At the request of agencies in Oregon and Washington hoping to protect endangered salmon, NOAA recently approved the removal of up to 60 sea lions near Bonneville Dam to reduce unnatural predation on salmon stocks as they pass through the dam’s fishway.  You can read more about the issue in a blog post I wrote a short while ago regarding this issue.   You can also read the full news story here.

From habitat projects to breeding and stocking programs, it appears that nothing short of removing dams will reverse declines in Pacific Salmon populations in the Northwest. At least that’s what most experts believe.

But removing predators could make a difference, albeit small. In addition to the many predatory birds that take advantage of the highly altered travelways of migrating salmon, sea lions stack up near fish ladders in places like Bonneville Dam on the Columbia River, eating all the salmon they can catch.

NOAA Fisheries Service recently recommended killing about 30 sea lions at the Dam, far fewer than Washington, Oregon and Idaho had hoped for, but it’s a start.

At least three runs of salmon passing through Bonneville Dam are threatened. Sea lions are not. But that pesky Marine Mammal Protection Act prevents states from doing anything about the sea lion problem without permission from the feds. And permission from the feds to do most things (as you may know) can take time.

I’m not saying that predators like sea lions are necessarily bad.  In fact, they play an important ecological role in their natural environment. But they’re chomping down on some very valuable salmon that we’re paying big money to save, under conditions far from ‘natural’ at the base of fish ladders.

Animal rights activists will no doubt pressure NOAA significantly, turning this into a huge issue likely requiring large amounts of red tape.

But on a positive note, sea lion control might actually make a difference. I for one hope that NOAA commits to this wholeheartedly and tries to make it work. Let’s do every reasonable thing within our power to give salmon a chance to recover.

An intensive approach to Atlantic salmon preservation has been ongoing in the UK and other parts of Europe, evident in a recent FishUpdate.com article.

Officials are stocking fingerling salmon, adding and renovating fish passage at dams, and working with farmers to reduce runoff, which can cause silt to clog up salmon redds and kill incubating eggs.

Such an approach seems to be working in Europe, with record high numbers of salmon returning to nearby Scottish waters. 

Atlantic salmon restoration has been much less successful in the United States, where salmon numbers may have declined beyond recovery.  Efforts in the U.S. continue, but their effectiveness remains to be seen.  Maybe Americans need to mix it up a little, and try some different approaches…..or focus recovery efforts elsewhere. 

Salmon recovery and preservation in Europe is very driven by the sport fishery, providing incentive for agencies and citizens alike to have a vested interest in making things happen for salmon.

Throughout most of the eastern United States, however, hopes of recovering Atlantic salmon populations to the point where they provide a significant fishery have been dim at best, which has further distanced anglers from the center of salmon recovery.

However, I should note that the Maine Atlantic Salmon Commission recently opened salmon fishing to Maine’s Penobscot River.  While only a handful of salmon have actually been caught, the new season appears to be a move in the right direction and may revitalize salmon clubs along the river, fueling interest in salmon recovery once again.

Recent research from Oregon State University has raised a considerable amount of concern about the role of hatchery fish and their use in salmon recovery efforts.

The study has shown that domesticating salmon in the hatchery environment can significantly reduce their reproductive potential, so that individuals do not contribute to future generations nearly as much as wild fish do. 

While the study calls to question the role of hatchery fish in recovery, I think that hatchery salmon still play a significant role in providing a sport fishery, and buffering the impacts of angling on wild salmon.

Concerns about the genetic (and other) consequences of mixing hatchery and wild salmon may become even more considerable as a result of this work.  But I think the real question is whether or not we can even recover wild salmon without the help of hatcheries, especially considering the incredibly high percentage of hatchery fish making up many of our salmon runs on both coasts.

Full story from Science Daily

Statistics from a recent report show that Atlantic salmon catches in Scotland in 2006 were among the highest on record, totaling nearly 86,000 salmon!  Fishery managers believe that the increased catch is indicative of a larger salmon run, resulting from the buyout of commercial fishing interests among other conservation measures.  In addition, more anglers than ever are releasing caught salmon.  Experts still caution that care should be taken to ensure that this encouraging trend continues, and they cite uncertainties in marine survival and escapement of hatchery stocks as management challenges.

Despite the great news for salmon, catches of sea trout (sea-run brown trout) have declined considerably, and are among the lowest on record.

See related stories  

The conflict between Native American tribal rights, recreational fisheries, and fisheries conservation as a whole has been highlighted by recent events in Canada’s Fraser River sockeye salmon fishery. 

Native Americans are protesting a ruling by the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans that will prevent them from fishing for sockeye salmon in the Fraser River using traditional native fishing methods this season.

The ruling to close sockeye fishing came as officials got the news that only about 1.6 million salmon were estimated to return to the river, significantly down from the expected 6.3 million.  The Fraser is reported to be the largest salmon producing river in the world, and the reason for the sharp decline in numbers is believed to be a result of poor ocean survival in 2005.

Management of the Fraser River sockeye highlights a very complex set of rules, regulations, and priorities that often cause different user groups to be at arms.  In short, the top priority in sockeye management is to ensure that enough fish return to spawn in order to support a sustainable population.  Next in the line of priorities come the Native American tribes, which claim traditional rights to the fishery.  Finally, commercial and recreational anglers rank at the bottom of the list.

Natives have voiced strong opposition to the Fraser River recreational fishery and have demanded that it be shut down.  Even with the commercial fishery shut down and the recreational fishery closed to the taking of sockeye, they’ve accused recreational anglers of taking ‘their’ sockeye illegally.

 And so in lieu of the latest closure to the sockeye fishery on the Fraser River, natives vowed to protest and fish anyway.

Natives of three local bands took their boats out on the lower Fraser River and fished on Saturday and Sunday.  This was done with the knowledge that they would be able to fish legally if the time were taken to draft a sharing agreement with the government.

Federal officials charged 35 of the protesters for fishing in a closed season over the weekend.  The individuals were using gillnets to capture sockeye salmon.  Officials kept a close eye on recreational fishermen in the Lower Fraser, who were targeting chinook salmon over the weekend, and stated that no sockeye salmon were kept illegally.

So what do you think?  Were the native bands right in protesting for their rights to the fishery?  I don’t think so.  We’ll have to wait and see how the courts rule, but I don’t think anything positive was accomplished by the move.  While I don’t intend to deny respect for Native American tribal rights, I think this was a very poor decision by the group that protested.  If anything, it expanded the divide between native and recreational anglers, and these bands showed that they are more concerned about ensuring they have one up on the recreational guys, than about the well being of the salmon population. 

One would think that a group whose livelihood is based partially on the salmon resource would be concerned about preserving it for the future rather than making sure they got more than everyone else.  These folks could have fished legally for chinook, just like the recreational anglers. 

Read more about the issue in the following articles:

DFO Curtails Harvest of Fraser Sockeye

Natives Promise to Defy Ban on Sockeye Fishing

Natives Ignore Fishing Ban

35 Natives Charged With Breach of Sockeye Fishing Ban