2024 Salmon Re-cap: Part Two, North and Central Coast

You could feel the mood of the fleet sag as crews added up the money it cost them in fuel and grub to come all the way over to Masset. After another 30 or 40 minutes of drifting around, a third boat set without much enthusiasm.

As soon as the crew closed up the net and pursed the rings, trapping the fish within the net, now alongside the boat, I could see, from my position up on the dock, bubbles throughout the net. By the time he had drummed half the net back it came alive with pink salmon. On boats throughout the inlet, black smoke poured from the long idling engines as skippers blasted their horns, signalling their skiffs to let go, intending to set before the boat alongside them did. Before the week was up the fleet had caught over a million pink salmon.

I tell this story, and I could tell more of the bountiful fall chum fisheries on Haida Gwaii. Stories of flying over in a small Cessna two or three days a week for 3 or 4 weeks from mid-September through early October to manage gillnet and seine fisheries in the various inlets on the east and west coast of Haida Gwaii. (It sounds like fun until you think about the flying weather in Hecate Straits in late September-early October).

I always thought the way DFO managed this area was the way most of the coast should have been managed and my hat is off to Pat Fairweather who was in charge of it. We did not fish until DFO determined a stream had sufficient spawners. We started to fish with a large boundary around the stream. The boundary would collapse as the necessary escapement target was secured in the stream. But I digress, my memories are of a Haida Gwaii with plentiful salmon.

I forecast a good pink salmon return to Area 1 in 2024, going as far as to urge Ocean Wise to add Area 1 seine-caught pinks to their recommended list in preparation for a fishery. Unfortunately, while pink returns were near target throughout Haida Gwaii, there were insufficient fish to trigger openings. I am hopeful we will see fisheries for Yakoun River pinks again in 2026 based on the number of this year’s spawners. I am not so hopeful for the other smaller pink salmon systems throughout Haida Gwaii. While they all also had good returns, there were extremely high levels of pre-spawn mortality because of low stream levels and high temperatures.

It tells a similar story to what we will see for Skeena sockeye and other north coast pink systems, as well as for Fraser sockeye. Salmon live in two worlds: a marine world and a freshwater one. Good marine productivity no longer necessarily translates into better spawner success. It is wonderful to see salmon return in abundance, but what we are often seeing now is that the impacts of climate change in a salmon’s freshwater environment can take what should have been a good return and convert it into a poor one. Haida Gwaii, like the rest of the planet, is a different place than it was 40 years ago.

Haida Gwaii chum returns, on the other hand, continued their decades-long trend of poor returns. I have no idea why Haida Gwaii chums have become much less abundant. My guess is the fry are not surviving their migration out of the inlets and into the near-shore marine environment.

Meanwhile, DFO is charged with opening fisheries targeted on a few abundant species or stocks, while ensuring these same fisheries do not drive the much greater number of smaller and weaker salmon populations below sustainable levels.

Managers are tasked with achieving the above while also trying to satisfy the interests and demands of four major First Nations, commercial and marine recreational fishers, conservationists, steelhead guide/outfitters and local communities. And each of those interests are split, meaning none are necessarily advocating for the same thing as the other in their group. Now, throw in the uncertainty of climate change.

Balancing Competing Interests Across Stakeholder Groups

For instance, while I wrote that there are four major First Nations in the watershed, three have similar cultural and linguistic backgrounds; one comes from a remarkably different cultural and linguistic background. The Lake Babine Nation are Dakelh, or Carrier, people. The Tsimshian, Gitxsan, and Wet’suwet’en are coastal peoples. Over 85 per cent of Skeena sockeye return to territory belonging to the Lake Babine Nation (LBN) people. Most of these fish are artificially enhanced using massive engineered spawning channels. The majority of LBN’s wild sockeye populations, the ones they relied on for the past 8,000+ years, have crashed. Meanwhile, because of colonization, the other three First Nations’ access to salmon returning to their territories is severely compromised, meaning they, and other harvesters, have become hooked on enhanced sockeye, to the detriment of wild unenhanced populations throughout the watershed.

It is in this environment DFO managers must determine how to deliver harvesting opportunities to all the various groups while ensuring weaker stocks persist. I use the term ‘persist’ because there appears to be little intent to recover these populations. And this frightens me because a goal of having a population merely persist is likely insufficient in a time of rapid climate change and uncertainty.

SE Alaska Harvests and Their Impact on Skeena Salmon

What further increases managers’ challenge is that it is not B.C. harvesters that have the largest impact on many Skeena salmon populations. The proportion of the total catch of Skeena sockeye and coho (and most likely pink, chum, and steelhead) caught in Alaska is often much higher than it is in B.C. DFO managers are thus allocating what is left over after Alaska takes what it wants.

2024: A Better-than-Expected Return of Sockeye and Pink Salmon

The 2024 Skeena salmon season saw a much better than expected return of enhanced sockeye and pink salmon. But as 2024 proved, just because fish are available to catch in B.C., it does not mean they are going to be caught.

The gillnet fleet did not come anywhere close to catching their potential allocation. A combination of precautionary management, a lack of harvesting and processing capacity, and being forced to use inefficient gear and fishing practices to reduce bycatch meant that they caught less than half their potential sockeye allocation.

While seines caught their relatively small sockeye allocation, they did not come anywhere near catching their allowable catch of pinks due to restrictions to protect co-migrating species and a lack of processor interest.

Babine River Fence

The largest harvester of Skeena sockeye was the terminal fishery conducted by Talok Fisheries (owned by the Lake Babine Nation – LBN) in front of the Fulton River Enhancement Facility.

Over 2.1 million sockeye were counted coming into the lake through the Babine River Fence. About 480,000 were spawned in the Pinkut and Fulton spawning channels and their associated flow-controlled rivers. Another maybe 100,000 spawned in wild systems as 2024 saw another very poor return of Babine wild sockeye. Approximately 250,000 were caught in terminal fisheries and maybe 20,000 in recreational and in-lake FSC fisheries. It is unclear what happened to the other 1.25 million sockeye that passed through the fence and are unaccounted for.

A large number were enhanced fish that were locked out of the channels and died without successfully spawning. But I was engaged in Talok Fisheries’ terminal fishery and I can attest that neither I nor the professional coastal fishers from Prince Rupert who caught Talok’s sockeye saw any evidence of the million-plus missing fish. When we quit fishing, there were few sockeye seen either jumping, or on the boat’s sounders.

It is possible a significant number could have been lost to pre-spawn mortality and did not survive their migration to the spawning channels. When the fish arrive at the counting fence, the fence creates a solid barrier to migration as the fish are slowly counted through the fence. A large mass of red sockeye pile up behind the fence awaiting their opportunity to get through one of the seven small counting gates that are open only during the day. In 2024 the Babine River was abnormally low and warm; lethally warm at times. Research on the Fraser River has shown such events can create delayed mortality to those sockeye subject to extended periods of stress due to poor migratory conditions. Wild sockeye streams saw similar conditions as low water often delays entry and in-stream water temperatures were high.

One must credit the Lake Babine Nation. While everyone from Alaska through the Skeena watershed kept fishing for Babine sockeye, the Lake Babine Nation curtailed their fence fishery for food. To put this sacrifice into context, LBN people have been fishing for their food at this same spot, for over 8,000 years. LBN also began experimenting with using video cameras to enable them to count fish through the fence 24 hours a day.

Species-Specific Returns in the Skeena Watershed

As we have seen through this report, in the era of climate disruption, a large return of salmon does not necessarily translate into an equally large number of successful spawners.

Coho returns in the Skeena watershed were around the long-term average, but below the previous couple of years. There was an above average return of steelhead, confirmed by anglers, who saw consistent success other than the couple of weeks washed out by heavy rains. Even Skeena chums, although very depressed, saw a better return when compared to their disastrous brood years, although 2024 was still only about half the ten year average.

It was Skeena chinook that was the outlier. Skeena chinook saw what may be their worst return on record. This continues an almost 15-year downward trend. It is interesting how Alaskan and northern B.C. chinook abundance has diverged from southern B.C. and the U.S. states of Washington and Oregon, which have seen improving abundance in the last couple of years. This is not unusual. We have seen this in the past. A decline in chinook abundance often begins in their southern range and moves north over a decade or more.

Recovery also usually begins in the south and gradually moves north in response to changes in their marine environment. Will chinook abundance in the north eventually improve as many southern chinook populations have? All we can do is hope, while protecting the habitat and getting as many as possible back to spawn every year.

It may also, as we have seen in their southern range, depend on how much of a chinook population’s life cycle is spent in environments that escape the worst impacts of climate change. Those chinook that spend an extra year or more rearing in freshwater may continue to struggle. As I said at the beginning of the re-cap, one must beware of generalizing in the new world of climate uncertainty.

Central Coast: the heart of the Great Bear Rainforest, with over 290 salmon streams, stretching from the Skeena River in the north to Cape Caution in the south. Communities include Kitkatla, Hartley Bay, Kitimat, Klemtu, Kitasu, Bella Bella, and Bella Coola