Scientists run test salmon fishery before heading to the open ocean
VANCOUVER — Scientists aboard the Russian research vessel Kaganovsky ran a test fishery Monday off the west coast of Vancouver Island before heading to sea.
The dry run enabled the group to test its blend of Russian scientists, fishing gear and laboratories with the scientific gear and expertise brought aboard by more than a dozen researchers from Canada, the U.S., South Korea and Japan.
This week, the group will begin the first of 50 test fisheries for research purposes across the Gulf of Alaska planned for the fiveweek voyage. The salmon they recover will be used to answer some nagging mysteries about the ocean-going adult lives of Pacific salmon species.
The expedition is a rare opportunity for scientists from both sides of the Pacific to collaborate on “questions related to the health of salmon in a part of the ocean that hasn’t been studied very well,” said the expedition’s chief scientist, Evgeny Pakhomov.
“In this situation, we combine our techniques and calibrate so that in the future we can compare data,” said Pakhomov, a director of the Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries at UBC. “We launched this expedition for the International Year of the Salmon, but we envisage this as the start of a long-term program.”
The mix of species and their location, their health, size and fat content will be recorded. Genetic testing will later allow the group to determine which stocks the fish belong to and even their home rivers and streams.
The 62-metre Kaganovsky and her crew typically perform test fisheries in the western Pacific Ocean to inform abundance estimates of Asian salmon stocks.
The rusty steel cables and deeply grooved rollers of the trawling gear attest to years of experience at sea, but the ship wears her nicks and rust stains like an old leather jacket.
Federal Fisheries Minister Jonathan Wilkinson and B.C. Agriculture Minister Lana Popham headlined a sendoff party on Saturday. “Canada is proud to work with international partners in the groundbreaking science research expedition to better understand the health of Pacific salmon populations and to create solutions for supporting their recovery,” Wilkinson said.
Retired B.C. fisheries researcher Dick Beamish chartered the Kaganovsky and paid to outfit her for a four-week research voyage, with $1.3 million raised from government, B.C. salmon farmers and private donors.
The volunteer scientists he recruited will put up with freezing winter conditions on the open ocean for weeks to collect their data, said Beamish. Rough weather has already imposed on the trip, causing a delay in the ship’s arrival in Vancouver.
“They are willing to do it for the science and that’s going to be huge,” he said. “There are real discoveries to be made.”
By assessing fish at the end of their first winter, researchers will be able to make better connections between the condition of B.C.’s juvenile salmon as they rear in the protected waters of the Salish Sea and their ability to feed, survive and thrive into adulthood.
Vlad Radchenko, executive director of the North Pacific Anadromous Fish Commission, will perform abundance estimates based on the catch from openocean test fisheries, as he did on the same vessel on the western Pacific a decade ago.
“We are also interested in the presence of larger predators such as sharks, so we will take note of where we find them as a potential predator for these salmon.”