Wild Steelhead & Salmon Magazines...

Well, I was just leafing through some old fishing magazines I had in a stack here stashed away, and found some great mags, in full color glossy print that I bought many years ago. I thumb through them and wouldn't you know it I started reading through an article called "Silver Streak" written by Don Roberts...written in 1996.

This article, details from an American perspective, the decline of coho salmon stocks in the United States. It discusses the sudden and seemingly inexplicable decline in coho stocks through the lower 48 states. Many rivers enjoyed huge runs of coho salmon, in the Hundreds of thousands returning each year, then suddenly they fell into a steep and rapid decline.

It is pointed out, quite correctly I might add, that coho are much more vulnerable to habitat encroachment and destruction than the other species of salmon...in fact it points out that of the species we tend to see returning to west coast rivers, only Sea run cutthroat trout are more vulnerable...

Now, I can remember that our local rivers were still running strong with coho in 1996. I can even recall that around that time many of our rivers would enjoy healthy returns of cutthroat with a predictability that was as reliable as the sun rising the next day...Now, I reread this article and I think to myself...self, :wink: What happened to those american rivers, and did their coho stocks rebound? I mean this article was written 10 years ago...what do we have to look forward to?

According to the article, 1.2 million coho used to return to the columbia river watershed each year, now they are nearly extinct. California, it was reported, had at one time runs of 500,000 fish and through the 70's to the 90's the numbers dwindled down to fewer than 50,000 fish total for the state.

It seems clear to me that this is the same state of affairs we are witnessing here now. Our rivers are now in decline in the same way the afformentioned american rivers were a decade ago...I can remember as recently as three years ago that returns were abundant and it seemed nothing could impair the populations of these fish...and then...WHAM!
It also is clear to me that the vast numbers of sea-run cutties went first, as there were many plentiful coho seasons when I recall asking out loud what had happened to all that great cutty fishing during coho season in the chehalis. Of course this fits into the vulnerability angle described before...

Many of the lower 48 states subsequently enhanced their runs with increased hatchery production. They supplemented the commercial catch with obscene numbers of hatchery produced fish and managed to get by for quite some time...Soon this trend of declining coho stocks began to make its way up the coast...Washington state Fisheries began to notice a steep decline in their populations, in fact a 75% decline in returning Puget Sound fish in fact was described in this article in 1996. How far would this trend move up the coast of North America?
Then, conservation advocates and concerned ecologists began to lobby for protection for native stocks of coho, seeking to protect a natural resource that was dissappearing and nobody knew why...their lobbying was unsuccessfull...at least up until the year this article was printed...

This little post of mine isn't meant to point out failings in an american system, or blame other countries for our problems, or even to claim we did it better as our losses were delayed compared to theirs...No, this rant of mine isn't really a rant as much as it is one of those moments in our lives when we realize we didn't have the benefit of hindsight, but we should have seen it coming anyway...we shouldn't expect any magical rejuvenation of our coho populations. It is a perfect example of how we have opportunities to learn from the experiences of others. We could have seen this happening, and studied the environmental changes occuring way down the coast so as to compare to our localized ecosystems and perhaps learn a thing or two in order to protect our precious resource.

Now our hatcheries will produce fish, and supplement our stocks and we will all notice, as I'm sure many here have already, that the numbers are way, way down...sure the fish are still around, but the decline has been alarmingly quick.

So the point is I have a question...let me ask you all this....

If it came down to it, if the decision were made, could you, could I , could all the other fishermen handle a province wide closure to sport and commercial coho fishing indefinitely?
Do we think it is time yet to resort to such severe measures?
Would any such action matter anyway?
Is their a way to solve this problem or is it too late?

Thanks,
Rib