I am at a loss, can someone explain to me how increasing production = rebuilding. Even if they make it all the way back, they aren't allowed in a lot of cases to spawn in the wild. They are packaged up in ESSR fisheries.
Just a bit of a tid bit I saw
http://www.ourcommons.ca/DocumentViewer/en/42-1/FOPO/report-18/page-72#16Prey Availability
In David Bain’s view, as a long-term measure to ensure prey availability for SRKWs, “repairing habitat is important to spawning and rearing juvenile salmon. The vegetation around streams and how we manage water flows in streams are important to salmon survival.”[85] Immediate measures to improve prey availability include fishery restrictions. Lance Barrett-Lennard stressed that “closing sport fishing on the whales' foraging hot spots” is critical to “preserve for the whales the adult fish that have made it through a gauntlet of perils as they approach their spawning rivers and move into the whales' key foraging areas.”[86]
The committee recommends:
Recommendation 14
That Fisheries and Oceans Canada increase efforts to rebuild the Chinook salmon stocks, using all available options.
Regarding the low abundance of Chinook salmon, David Bain pointed out that SRKWs also face competition from other predators such as seals and sea lions.[87] In his view:
human modification of the habitat and timing of runs has enabled pinnipeds to be more effective predators than they used to be. Also, the decline of transient killer whales that feed on pinnipeds has made a population boom in pinnipeds possible. While transients are catching up and will eventually put the ecosystem back in balance, it's an issue we need to pay attention to.
David Bain added that specific groups of seals will “park at river mouths and eat smolts that are going out to sea. That's encouraged to some degree by humans, because we'll do hatchery releases that bring large numbers of smolts into a small area at the same time.”[88] Therefore, Martin Paish called for a “targeted, science-based predator control program” as an immediate measure to improve prey availability which goes beyond fishery restrictions.[89]
Considering the above evidence, the committee recommends:
Recommendation 15
That Fisheries and Oceans Canada increase the availability of preferred prey through the establishment of a science and local/traditional knowledge-based, targeted predator control program to reduce the pinniped predation around estuary and river environments, and other impacted systems.
To rebuild the vulnerable Chinook salmon stocks in the long term, fish hatcheries were suggested as an avenue that DFO should increase focus on. Carol Schmitt indicated that Omega Pacific Hatchery’s facilities and knowledge in Chinook stock enhancement is significantly underutilized by DFO. She also mentioned that Omega Pacific Hatchery’s one-year old stream‑type (S1) smolts have a track record of higher marine survival rates compared to DFO’s S0 type.[90] Martin Paish noted that “in the 1990s, when the southern resident killer whales were demonstrating increases in their population, we produced 15 million Chinook in the Fraser River through hatchery production; now we're producing three.”[91]
In contrast, the committee heard from David Bain that hatcheries are:
A double-edged sword for killer whales. Ideally, they would serve as lifeboats where depleted runs could be supported, and then the hatchery could be phased out once wild runs were restored. However, they have become long-term sources of fish for humans, and as a result, the focus has been on numbers rather than body size. We've seen a significant decline in the size of chinook salmon as a result of increasing reliance on hatcheries.[92]
The committee recommends:
Recommendation 16
That Fisheries and Oceans Canada increase the availability of preferred prey by expanding the Salmonid Enhancement Program to include hatcheries utilizing alternative methods of Chinook production, including the rearing of S1 Chinook and the utilization of sea pen rearing techniques.
A double-edged sword for killer whales. Ideally, they would serve as lifeboats where depleted runs could be supported, and then the hatchery could be phased out once wild runs were restored. However, they have become long-term sources of fish for humans, and as a result, the focus has been on numbers rather than body size. We've seen a significant decline in the size of chinook salmon as a result of increasing reliance on hatcheries.[92]
The committee recommends:
Recommendation 16
That Fisheries and Oceans Canada increase the availability of preferred prey by expanding the Salmonid Enhancement Program to include hatcheries utilizing alternative methods of Chinook production, including the rearing of S1 Chinook and the utilization of sea pen rearing techniques.
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Topic: Chinook Rebuilding, Maybe? (Read 9490 times)