Environmental Conditions: State of the Salmon for 2021

DFO’s State of the Salmon Program gave a presentation at the Preliminary Salmon Outlook Meeting on Dec. 17, 2020. It details environmental conditions that will inform salmon returns in 2021. In summary, given broadly similar conditions in recent years it is expected that there will be below average survival for many Fraser stocks, coast-wide declines…

Pacific Salmon: Responses to Changing Climate and Habitats

On August 22nd, the DFO released a new report examining broad scale trends in Pacific salmon. They found that species that spend more time in freshwater (chinook, coho, sockeye) are declining more than those that do not (chum, pink), in general. Read the abstract below, or download the full article. Report Abstract: At DFO’s first…

Fraser River sockeye salmon populations recommended for listing under COSEWIC

(Globe and Mail, December 4th, 2017, by Ivan Semeniuk) For centuries, sockeye salmon have raced up British Columbia’s Fraser River to spawn in the millions, completing an astonishing life cycle that spans four years and thousands of kilometres. Now, scientists have determined that many populations of Fraser River sockeye are in such alarming decline that they…

Species and population diversity in Pacific salmon fisheries underpin indigenous food security

A study just published by Holly Nesbit and Jonathon Moore at Simon Fraser University highlights the importance of population diversity in Pacific salmon fisheries. Summary of the paper: 1. Indigenous people are considered to be among the most vulnerable to food insecurity and biodiversity loss. Biodiversity is cited as a key component of indigenous food security;…