Now Hear This will take an in-depth look at some of Northwest BC’s most pressing issues, the challenges they present and possible solutions developed right here at home.

By Dan Mesec

Salmon are the lifeblood of the Skeena Watershed. These are not just fish, but elite athletes of an underwater world, swimming thousands of kilometres across the Pacific Ocean, surviving the harshest challenges only to return to whence they came, spawn and die.

However, in recent years their numbers across all watersheds are becoming increasingly dismal. In the past five years Northwest BC has seen some of the worst salmon returns on record , alarming many who’ve relied on salmon for sustenance and culture.

Although harder times may still be ahead for these prized emperors of the sea, new research exploring their historical abundance and diversity is shedding light on how plentiful salmon once were in the Skeena Watershed, how severe the decline in numbers really is, and perhaps what we collectively can do to sustain their numbers for future generations.

Michal Price, a conservation scientist and PhD Candidate with the Earth to Ocean Research Group at Simon Fraser University as he undertook field work. Prices research focuses on the influence of climate, fisheries and salmon enhancement programs on changes in population dynamics of Skeena sockeye salmon over the last century. Our first stop in the Upper Bulkley watershed was to collect water samples, which can be analysed to determine what species of salmon may be in Bulkley Lake. This work will help Price better understand the current distribution of Skeena sockeye throughout the watershed.

Price has been working in the Skeena Region for years, studying salmon and the impacts that have lead to their decline. As he mentioned, this work is just one part of the Skeena sockeye story. A few years back Price began to analyze hundred-year-old sockeye scales that were collected during the hay day of north pacific canneries and fisheries in the early to mid 1900s. Those scales have illuminated a much different understanding of historical Skeena sockeye populations than previous believed.

There are 13 distinct Skeena sockeye populations within the watershed, and Prices research has show that, despite previous estimates, all 13 wild sockeye populations have declined about 56-99% over the last 100 years. Overfishing and climate change being the major contributors to this decline.

Overall Prices research points to a 75% decline in Skeena sockeye since the early 1900s, declining on average from about 1.8 million annually to just 470,000.

Price and his colleague see this in their years of research, but it’s also been noticed at the river bank for decades.

Willie Pete, a Wet’suwet’en member and fisherman at the Witset Canyon just north of Smithers on the Bulkley river. Pete has been fishing the same spot for most of his life, over the last couple of decades he too has noticed less volume and smaller sizes of salmon every year, which not only impacts their access to food but also a loss in culture.

Because of the decline in Sockeye the Wet’suwet’en have impose a ban on harvesting sockeye for several years. Although they did see a substantial jump in sockeye numbers this past season, more than 25,000 back to the Morice-Nanika system just upriver from Witset, it’s still nowhere near the historical average sockeye return of around 80,000. So the Wet’suwet’en try to target other, healthier species of salmon with a selective fishery and also run a tagging program at Witset canyon to help monitor the situation on their territory.

Walter Joseph has been heading up the Wet’suwet’en fisheries department for over 20 years and knows that without continued monitoring and the work from people like Michael Price, their understanding of what’s happening underwater and coming up stream would be much less informed.

Commercial fisheries on the Skeena, harvesting salmon to sell at market, began in the late 1800s and gave rise to several canneries along the north coast. The commercial fishing fleet once grew to over a thousand vessels, but has since shrunk to just a few hundred.

Port Essington, just a few kilometres up river from the Skeena Estuary, was home to numerous canneries at one point and remained a hub of the commercial fishing industry for many years.

On a trip this past summer to explore what’s left of Port Essington, Kirby Muldoe an indigenous leader and salmon advocate of Gitsxan and Tsimshian decent, explained that although the canneries brought great prosperity to the area at one time, the impacts of that prosperity are still being realized decades later.

Over the decades he’s heard the stories of how numerous canneries quickly went from almost city-like atmospheres, full of people, jobs and fish to mere ruins and rotting pilings in a matter of a few decades.

Although, mechanization and industrial scale fishing has had an impact on salmon populations coast-wide, climate change continues to be the greatest contributor to declines in salmon and the one factor we can’t really control.

Across the board 2020 saw a continuation of a downward trend of Skeena salmon runs that should alarm anyone who hope to see their scaly, fined backs swim upstream in the years and decades to come.

Greg Knox is the executive director for the SkeenaWild Conservation Trust, a salmon advocacy organization based in Terrace. As he provides an overview of the 2020 salmon returns, it’s clear that climate change is taking its toll and that everyone who relies on salmon needs to play a role to ensure their survival.

The department of fisheries and oceans, the federal agency that oversees and monitors fisheries throughout Canada, echoes the concerns about climate change, what impacts to salmon are already being seen and the uncertainty climate changes inherently brings to fisheries management.

During their annual presentation on environmental conditions and pacific salmon outlook for 2021, Sue Grant, Program head for DFO out of Nanimo, paints a dismal picture for the future of Pacific Salmon.

After tracking for several years the presence of a large body of warm water off the pacific coast, known as “The Blob”, DFO was hoping that a projected La Nina that typically brings cooler temperatures to the north pacific would alleviate some concerns regarding these warmer water temperatures. It hasn’t and concerns for the 2021 salmon returns are growing.

Majority of Skeena sockeye now belong to a single population, according to Michael Prices research.  About 85% of Skeena sockeye originate from Babine Lake. This is concerning for Price and other researches because it really puts all the salmon eggs in one basket. If there was a major decline in Babine sockeye, the consequences could be devastating for the entire watershed.

As well, majority of the Babine sockeye population are referred to as “enhanced”, meaning they are not completely wild because human intervention by way of specially build spawning channels at the Folton river and Pinkut creek enable a much higher survival rate and can weaken the genetic diversity of the entire system.

Prices next paper, which is to be publishing in early 2021, will look at the overall relationship between abundance and genetic diversity within Skeena sockeye in the hopes of better understanding of how vulnerable all 13 populations are and what can be done to fortify that genetic diversity and ensure better distribution of unique genetic salmon populations throughout the entire Skeena watershed.

Now Hear This is available on smithersradio.com/cick-news.