One of the reasons why there is a derby for Pike Minnows.
Opponents bury hatchets to save salmon
Threat to sockeye met by rare unified action
The ProvinceI dropped by Cultus Lake the other day to check out a tip that something fishy was happening.
It was indeed "fishy" — and a unique example of how stakeholders in the usually fractious Fraser River salmon fishery have buried their well-worn hatchets and now work together to save the diminishing Cultus Lake sockeye salmon.
Cultus Lake sockeye are dwarfed by much larger Fraser River groups, such as the Adams River sockeye that number in the millions.
In their best days, returning adult Cultus Lake sockeye totalled only 75,000, says fish biologist Dave Barrett. "Currently, there are only about 1,000 returning," he says.
Unfortunately, the Cultus Lake sockeye return to spawn at precisely the same time as their more numerous Adams River cousins, Barrett says. Because the two groups mix on the return journey, any catch quota that's appropriate for the huge Adams River run could be devastating for the tiny Cultus Lake run.
Conversely, setting a catch quota to help the much smaller Cultus Lake run recover would have significant economic impacts from under-harvesting the Adams River run.
Realizing this, two of the stakeholder groups, who for years were at loggerheads over Fraser River sockeye -- the Commercial Salmon Advisory Board (commercial fishers) and the Sto:lo First Nations -- finally put their heads together.
This led to a groundbreaking agreement several years ago that resulted in formation of the Fraser River Salmon Table Society, a non-profit group dedicated to improving salmon stocks while reducing the political conflicts over the Fraser fishery.
Since then, two other stakeholder groups who also contributed to this fishery conflict — the recreational-fishing sector and conservation groups — have joined the Salmon Table Society.
"We quickly learned that impacts on the young sockeye while they're still in Cultus Lake's fresh water were part of the problem," says Barrett, now the society's president. That's because a particularly voracious predator of young sockeye, the pike minnow, has overrun Cultus Lake.
The society now oversees a Cultus Lake project where, in late spring and early summer, pike minnow are caught by a commercial seiner in a bid to lower their stocks, giving more sockeye smolts a shot at survival.
The project, with the co-operation of the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans, is financed by a $400,000 fund created by the commercial salmon fishery.
"There's no doubt pike minnow are one of the reasons why sockeye stocks here are so low," says Regan Birch, who owns and skippers the seiner working for the society.
Both Birch and Barrett say very early indications show that Cultus Lake sockeye stocks are beginning to improve. Barrett says that the goal is to reduce pike-minnow numbers from around 80,000 to 90,000 to about 30,000. This, hopefully, would result in adult sockeye stocks increasing from 1,000 to about 20,000.
"This project is certainly teaching us a lot more about salmon biology," Barrett adds, "but it's also teaching us how to work together."
blewis@theprovince.com
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Topic: Pike Minnow Derby At Cultus Lake (Read 25221 times)