Sockeye anglers could be reeled in
Harvest from Adams River run cut back to save endangered fish
Fishermen who have been waiting four years to harvest the famous Adams River sockeye run on the Fraser River system could see their catches cut in half in an effort to save the endangered Cultus Lake sockeye.
Only about 1,000 spawners are expected to return to Cultus Lake this summer.
Because they’re swimming with millions of sockeye headed further up the river system to the Shuswap area — about one-third to the Adams River — fishery managers may have to scale back harvests in the name of conservation.
“It’s a needle in a haystack situation,” said Mike LaPointe, chief biologist of the Pacific Salmon Commission.
The conservation goal is a maximum 20 per cent harvest of Cultus Lake sockeye, which swim up the Vedder River, an area upstream of the bulk of fishing opportunities. First Nations further up the Fraser River could benefit under such a scenario.
“That puts a pretty significant restraint on the harvest,” LaPointe said. “There’s quite a few fish that can’t be caught.”
Fisheries and Oceans Canada said that a fisheries plan, including for Cultus Lake, isn’t yet available. LaPointe estimated that fishing opportunities on the so-called late Shuswap sockeye, including the Adams River, could be half of what they might otherwise be.
“If that happens, it could be a very limited commercial harvest in Canada,” he said.
The U.S. catch will depend, in large part, on how many sockeye migrate down the Inside Passage rather than the west coast of Vancouver Island, where U.S. commercial boats can target them.
The late-run Shuswap has a pre-season forecast return of 6.9 million fish, but with a one-infour chance that the run could be as low as 4.5 million or as high as 10.4 million.
The peak arrival for these Shuswap sockeye to marine areas on the south coast of B.C. is around the middle of August.
The overall sockeye forecast for the Fraser River is 13.9 million fish, down from other returns for the same four-year sockeye cycle, including 19.2 million in 2014 and 28.3 million in 2010.
“It’s less than those runs, but still a pretty healthy return,” LaPointe said.
In 2014, the last four-year cycle for the run, the lower Adams River alone accounted for about 35 per cent of female spawners to the late- Shuswap run.
Test fisheries won’t reveal for weeks yet whether the pre-season forecasts are accurate and whether factors such as ocean warming have depressed the sockeye returns, as has already happened to other stocks.
“Some of these fish were exposed to warmer temperature in the Gulf of Alaska as juveniles,” LaPointe said. “There is some concern that (returns) could be at the lower end of the range.”