Thousands of wild B.C. salmon returning to former fish farm locations

A B.C. Indigenous leader and wild salmon advocate says pink salmon are making a triumphant return to areas near former fish farms along B.C.’s Central Coast.

First Nations Wild Salmon Alliance spokesman Bob Chamberlin says thousands of salmon have come back to the areas after years of minimal returns.

“When you get a fish run down to just a couple hundred fish, you’re so close to extinction, you don’t want to breathe,” said Chamberlin. “Now as a result of removing those farms, we now have found a few thousand coming back.”

While Chamberlin does now an exact, precise number of how many pink salmon have returned, he says people in the community are happy to see fuller stocks.

“I’ve seen video footage and I’ve heard from a lot of people say ‘it sure is nice to see the fish jumping again,'” he said.

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Longtime commercial gill net operator Mitch Dudoward says sockeye salmon returns in northwest B.C.’s Skeena River have been the best he’s seen in more than 40 years in the industry.

“We had a good year. I put in a fairly large number of sockeye,” said Dudoward.

He believes there was enough salmon in the river to continue fishing until the end of August.

“There’s no scientific reason (to stop) except that they’re afraid that we’re gonna hurt other stocks,” he said.

According to the First Nations Wild Salmon Alliance, Piscine Orthoreovirus (PRV), a highly contagious virus affecting salmon, has hit salmon farms hard.

The group says, quoting a scientific paper partly done by UBC, that “wild chinook salmon from areas near the farms are far more likely to pick up the infection than chinook in areas without farms.”

Fisheries and Oceans Canada says it also expects a larger sockeye run in the Fraser River this summer, though returns of chinook, coho and chum to northern and Central Coast rivers are expected to be low.

With files from The Canadian Press