Canada
Farmer helps Bay of Fundy recover lost stocks
ARESTOCKING project on Canada’s east coast that involves raising fish to adult size in sea pens is showing considerable success. In partnership with Cooke Aquaculture and the Atlantic Canada Fish Farmers Association, the Fundy Salmon Recovery programme, which is similar to the Lochy initiative, aims to reverse dramatic declines of returning wild stocks.
Unlike most Atlantic salmon from Canada, that go to the Labrador Sea to feed, Bay of Fundy salmon never have to leave the bay because the Fundy tides carry so many nutrients. They mature in a year and have become genetically distinct from other Atlantic salmon, which spend up to three years away before returning to spawn.
But the annual return of around 40,000 fish in the Inner Bay of Fundy dropped to fewer than 200, according to the Fundy Salmon Recovery website. This was due to a variety of factors, including overfishing and habitat change.
Past conservation efforts have focused on a number of initiatives, including knocking down obsolete dams, adding fish ladders and releasing young salmon into the wild. But these efforts have not made a significant difference to wild Atlantic salmon returns.
Since 2014, Fundy Salmon Recovery, funded by the Canaidan govern
ment, has taken a different approach, collecting young fish that have spent their early life stages in the wild and then growing them in a dedicated marine farm site operated by Cooke Aquaculture. When the salmon have grown to adult size and are ready to spawn, they are released back into their home rivers, the Upper Salmon River and the Petitcodiac river system. The organisation’s research has shown that Atlantic salmon that spend their early lives in rivers or streams have a much better chance of survival. The best result comes from fish that have been hatched in the wild. And for that to happen, adult salmon need to spawn in the rivers to get the population back on track. In the first stage of the restocking project, the Live Gene Bank, based out of the Fisheries and Oceans Canada Mactaquac Biodiversity Facility, collects juveniles from the wild, grows them to adult, and spawns them in captivity. The baby salmon (fry) produced from these spawnings are released back to the wild. Once the fry grow to be young smolts, they are retrieved from the river and are cared for by Cooke Aquaculture, with support from the Atlantic Canada Fish Farmers Association and the Province of New Brunswick, on the World’s first wild salmon marine conservation farm, at Dark Harbour on Grand Manan Island. The farm is equipped with custom designed conservation net pens and the fish are fed specialised diets developed for wild fish by biologists and aquaculture nutrition experts. When the salmon have grown into adults, and are ready to spawn, they are released back into their natal rivers. The hope is that their offspring will have more wild instincts than their parents and they will produce enough offspring to jump start the
wild population.
These annual releases of adult Atlantic salmon into their natal river and the anticipated survival of their eggs into healthy smolts will continue the programme.
The success of releasing marine raised adult salmon into their natal rivers will be assessed by tagging and tracking adults and collecting data on spawning behaviour.
Fundy National Park salmon biologist Alex Parker said: ‘Over the past four years, thousands of salmon have been released to Fundy National Park to spawn the next generation.
‘It’s because of these successfully spawning adults that we are seeing abundant wild juvenile salmon populations throughout the river....2018 saw a 29-year high in salmon returns to the Upper Salmon River in Fundy National Park, higher than any other monitored salmon river in the Bay of Fundy.’
There has been great community interest in the project, with hundreds of people attending salmon releases and even participating in a ‘swim with salmon’ event.
The government has now invested in another five years of the programme and has expanded the recovery model to three other national parks.