Scientists at the Pacific Salmon Commission knew 2020 wouldn’t be a great year for Fraser River sockeye salmon — but they didn’t know it would be this bad.

Returns of adult sockeye averaged 9.6 million between 1980 and 2014, ranging from two million to 28 million per year. The commission predicted just 941,000 salmon would return this year. 

But returns have been so low this summer, the commission had to update that projection in early August. It now expects only 283,000 adults will return, which would be the lowest return ever recorded. 

Fraser River sockeye salmon return to spawn in the river where they were born, sometimes within a few metres of where they hatched. Most spend two years in freshwater and two years in the Pacific Ocean. They typically return between late June and October. 

Scientists base return estimates on the number of salmon that were born four years earlier. That means when returns are lower than expected, salmon went missing somewhere during their four years in the ocean.  

Tyrone McNeil, vice-president of Stó:lō Tribal Council, said he thinks 283,000 is still a high estimate. He’s disappointed by what he sees as a lack of proper response from Fisheries and Oceans Canada Canada.

“I’m really disillusioned,” he said. “[Fisheries and Oceans] doesn’t seem to be alarmed in any sense.”

Chief Wayne Sparrow of Musqueam Indian Band echoed his disappointment in the federal department’s response to suffering salmon populations.

“I’m hoping the department will do something. Or else, we will be telling our grandkids that there used to be salmon in the Fraser River,” he said.

“I don’t think it’s too late, but we’re at five minutes to midnight.”

Salmon are at the centre of many First Nations’ ceremonies and histories, and are integral to their food security. Children have inherited fishing practices from their parents and grandparents for millenia. But when there are no fish, they lose that opportunity.

Sockeye have been suffering due to a multitude of factors, including overfishing and climate change, which has caused warmer waters than the salmon are used to. Including the Pacific Salmon Commission’s latest expected return for 2020, three of the last five years will have had record-breaking low returns for Fraser River sockeye. 

Chart: Arik Ligeti / The Narwhal

Fisheries and Oceans Canada has taken actions to protect salmon, including implementing a new Fisheries Act that reinstated some protections stripped by the Harper government and launching a salmon restoration and innovation fund that commits $142 million over five years to restoration projects in B.C. 

But salmon advocates are calling for bolder action like tougher restrictions on harvesting salmon, better monitoring of fisheries and recognition of Indigenous fishing rights.

“We’ve recommended so many things to [Fisheries and Oceans] over time and they’ve never been implemented,” said Tracy Wimbush from Siska Nation, who is fisheries program manager for Scw’exmx Tribal Council. 

“These threats have all accumulated and here we are today with a collapse of our fisheries,” she said. “How many years do we have to hear this is the lowest number we’ve seen up to this point?”

Here are some of the challenges experts say Fraser River sockeye salmon are facing.

1. Lice and salmon farms

Migrating salmon pass fish farms, and those fish farms are often infested with sea lice, which can latch onto the migrating salmon. Sea lice suction onto the fish and damage their fins and scales, inflicting wounds and causing bleeding.

For juvenile salmon just a few inches long, a few lice can mean “they’re dead,” McNeil said.

Biologist Alexandra Morton, who has been studying the impact of sea lice on wild salmon for years, has found higher death-rates in salmon infected by sea lice. In one of Morton’s trials, almost 98 per cent of juvenile pink salmon with a mature louse died.

War on the waters: salmon farms losing battle with sea lice as wild fish pay the price

Craig Orr, founding member and conservation advisor for Watershed Watch, has been researching the impact of sea lice on fish since 2001. He worked on the Cohen Commission, an inquiry into the decline of Fraser sockeye that was completed in 2013. He said the inquiry identified three major drivers of sockeye decline: climate change, competition with hatchery pink salmon and salmon farms, which he called “lice factories.”

The Cohen Commission issued 75 recommendations, one of which called for the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans to prohibit net-pen salmon farming in the Discovery Islands of B.C. this fall, unless they are “satisfied that such farms pose at most a minimal risk of serious harm to the health of migrating Fraser River sockeye salmon.”

The Fisheries and Oceans website claims the department has met 100 per cent of the Cohen recommendations, and notes the department will complete a disease risk assessment process on salmon farms this year. If it finds farms pose “more than a minimal risk,” the department promises “salmon farms in the Discovery Islands will be required to cease operations.”

Earlier this year, the federal Liberal government backed away from its campaign promise to phase out open net pen salmon on the West Coast by 2025.

Orr called the department’s claim to have met all of the Cohen recommendations “fiction.”

“If [Fisheries and Oceans] were serious about protecting wild fish, they would … get the farms out of migration routes,” he said. Orr advocates for farms to be moved on land.

2. Climate change

Climate change has led to warmer river and ocean temperatures, which have many negative impacts on salmon. Warmer waters mean more California sea lions on B.C.’s coast which, along with a booming seal population, means salmon are facing more predators, Sparrow said.

The warming sea also means less of the zooplankton that salmon rely on for food.

Catherine Michielsens, the Pacific Salmon Commission’s chief of fisheries management sciences, said salmon at lower latitudes in B.C. will have “difficulty remaining viable” because of increasing water temperatures. 

High temperatures in the river cause stress in fish and salmon can die before reaching spawning grounds. Changes in precipitation, causing periods of drought followed by heavy rain, can trigger events like landslides, which damage freshwater habitat. Michielsens said habitat restoration and banning salmon harvest still wouldn’t be enough to save salmon in the face of climate change.

“How much we will be able to change their downhill trajectory will depend on how successful we are in curbing greenhouse gas emissions,” she said.

“Even in low-emissions scenarios, it’s not likely that all salmon populations will remain viable.”

Salmon are also losing habitat due to industrial activity. The Fraser estuary has lost 70 per cent of its salmon habitat, which juvenile salmon rely on as they adapt from fresh to saltwater. Conservationists are concerned about a number of industrial projects proposed for the lower river, including the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion, the expansion of the Tilbury LNG plant, and Roberts Bank Terminal 2,  a container terminal that will destroy 177 hectares of salmon habitat.

3. Government inaction on fisheries practices

Fisheries and Oceans Canada forecasts salmon returns every year in order to develop fishing plans prior to the season, according to the department. As salmon return, data from test fisheries, hydro acoustic counters and environmental information are factored in to adjust fishing plans.

The department said it does not expect a Fraser River sockeye fishery this year.

But McNeil and others think large-scale, long-term pauses on fishing will be necessary to save salmon and understand how they are doing year-to-year without the stress of harvesting.

“If we don’t know the numbers, we shouldn’t be fishing them,” McNeil said.

“Everyone will have to bite the bullet, at least for a little while,” Sparrow agreed. Allowing salmon populations to recover, he said, could mean pausing harvesting for three to four years. Others have advocated to only allow harvesting near spawning grounds rather than at sea, to ensure enough fish make it back to spawn.

Amid Closure of B.C. Salmon Fisheries, Study Finds Feds Failed to Monitor Stocks

Conservationists have advocated for more selective harvesting practices to be introduced, like fish traps and live capture, so fishers can focus on stocks in greater abundance and not catch fish from struggling stocks. They’ve also called for better monitoring of fisheries to enforce best practices, including the use of surveillance cameras.

Orr wants to see the government fulfill all recommendations of the Cohen Commission, and stop acting as a salmon farming regulator and promoter “at the same time.”

Last year, the federal government signed the Fraser Salmon Collaborative Agreement with 76 First Nations in B.C., promising to include First Nations in conservation and management decisions. But Wimbush said First Nations are still experiencing “parental oversight” from Fisheries and Oceans Canada and haven’t been involved in any decision-making.

“Fisheries and Oceans was set up to push out First Nations from the fisheries and allow the colonizers more access to the fisheries, and it has worked really well over time,” she said.

4. Big Bar landslide

The Big Bar landslide, discovered in June 2019 but thought to have happened in 2018, “blocked virtually all of the natural migration of the Fraser sockeye” until late August 2019, according to a study by Fisheries and Oceans Canada. The slide devastated the early Stuart sockeye stock, the first run every year, that spawn above the slide in July and August. Fisheries and Oceans Canada reported that 99 per cent of early Stuart didn’t make it past the landslide.

But Michielsens said “the tragedy is that the returns had been so low already” before Big Bar.

Only 493,000 sockeye returned in 2019 when 4.8 million had been forecast.

“Big bar slide was a complication on top of that,” Wimbush said. “Fraser River people [north] of Lillooet are definitely in dire straits in regards to all their salmon stocks.”

Wimbush said there should be a ten-year hold on harvesting, if that’s what it takes to save sockeye.

“The decisions we make today will affect our children in 150 years because the decisions made 150 years ago are affecting us today.”

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Amid continued controversy, Kinder Morgan is poised to break ground on its $7.4 billion Trans Mountain Expansion Project. When the pipeline is complete, it will triple the volume of diluted bitumen, or Dilbit, that reaches Canada’s Pacific shoreline to 890,000 barrels per day.

The Trans Mountain pipeline has been in operation since 1953. It crosses numerous waterways as it snakes its way from Edmonton to Burnaby, B.C., including the lower portions of the Fraser River — North America’s primary salmon-producing river system. The pipeline expansion has raised concerns about how its failure might have an impact on these fish.

It is efficient and cost-effective to transport oil by pipeline, and leaks have been infrequent and usually small in Canada.

Yet catastrophes do occur.

Just ask residents of Marshall, Mich., about the 3.2 million litres of Dilbit that contaminated the Kalamazoo River in July 2010 after an Enbridge pipeline failed.

Salmon are integral to Canada’s West Coast

Pacific salmon are deeply ingrained in the fabric of Canada. They are a key link between aquatic and terrestrial food chains, connecting marine algae to bears and forests. They are a central element in First Nations cultures and economies. And they generate more than $500 million in revenue annually through the combined activities of sport fishing, commercial harvest and tourism.

As a biologist, what fascinates me most about Pacific salmon is their remarkable life cycle.

Take sockeye, for example, an iconic and abundant species of Pacific salmon. Sockeye eggs develop slowly during the winter months, buried in the same gravelly river sediments once occupied by their ancestors. After hatching, they spend up to three years swimming through inland lakes before transforming into silvery, salt-tolerant fish that escape to the Pacific Ocean.

Years later they return by the millions for a single chance to spawn in their birthplace streams. Afterwards, their bright red bodies decorate the riverbank, becoming a staple meal for bears and eagles, and an essential nutrient source for the forest ecosystem.

How do we prepare for a “worst-case scenario” — a pipeline failure that contaminates sockeye habitat? via @salderman80 https://t.co/fChyYqhRI4

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) January 22, 2018

In recent years, the number of sockeye returning to spawn has decreased dramatically, and this is especially true for populations of the lower Fraser River. Many factors, like urbanization, have contributed to this decline, and it is clear that the survival of the salmon’s early life stages and its successful ocean migration are key to the long-term stability of Fraser River sockeye.

Understanding how a Dilbit spill would affect sockeye during these early life stages can help prepare us for a future we hope won’t happen.

What is Dilbit anyway?

Bitumen is Canada’s black gold. It is a heavy, viscous type of crude oil found in vast quantities in Canada’s oilsands. Extracted bitumen is blended with lighter hydrocarbons (diluents) to relax its tar-like consistency into a flowing liquid ready for transport. The blended products are called Dilbit, short for diluted bitumen.

Diluting raw bitumen has another advantage besides allowing it to flow. It lowers the heavy oil’s density to below that of water, meaning that any Dilbit released into the aquatic environment should float.

But the behaviour of spilled Dilbit in water depends on many things, such as water flow and turbidity. Not to mention that the diluent evaporates rapidly, taking its added buoyancy with it. So the possibility that spilled Dilbit will sink is a valid concern — and sunken Dilbit is hard to clean up.

Four years after its spill in the Kalamazoo River, Enbridge was still dredging river sediments for sunken bitumen.

What would a spill mean for sockeye?

Like all crude oils, Dilbit is a mixture of hundreds of chemicals, and we know that many of these are toxic to fish.

One consequence of crude oil exposure in developing fish is the damage it can cause to the heart. Much of this toxicity is blamed on a single class of chemicals in crude oils called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs for short. Fish embryos exposed to individual PAHs or to crude oil, at real-world concentrations, can develop heart deformities that affect cardiac function.

Often, and perhaps not unexpectedly, this cardiac toxicity can lead to reduced swimming performance. For a sockeye, that’s a scary thought. These aquatic athletes depend on their strong hearts to complete two rigorous migrations.

So how do we prepare for a “worst-case scenario” — a pipeline failure that contaminates sockeye habitat?

Using science to plan ahead

For the past four years, I have been working with experts in cardiovascular adaptations, oil toxicity and salmon physiology to build a comprehensive understanding of Dilbit toxicity to early life stages of salmon. Our collaboration is part of an ongoing commitment by Fisheries and Oceans Canada to support research on environmental issues related to the oil and gas industry.

In controlled laboratory experiments, we expose salmon to low and environmentally relevant concentrations of Dilbit over realistic exposure times. We test fish at a variety of early life stages and look for sub-lethal effects that might indirectly affect their survival.

So far, our research shows that spill-like exposure conditions can impair the swimming performance of juvenile fish by as much as 10 per cent and lead to pathological changes in heart tissue.

This is a big deal. It means that persistent Dilbit contamination in a young salmon’s environment could conceivably reduce their chance of successfully migrating out to the ocean, and contribute to further population decline.

Our current work will determine if swimming performance can be recovered and if the heart pathology is reversible once the fish move to clean water.

We are also working towards developing blood biomarkers of Dilbit exposure. Blood biomarkers are a valuable diagnostic tool, and could be used to monitor and manage the health of wild salmon following a spill.

A take home message

All eyes are on Kinder Morgan now, but the Trans Mountain pipeline is just one branch in transport network that delivers oilsands products across the continent. Like it or not, our world still runs on fossil fuels and Canada’s vast bitumen reserves are a difficult resource to ignore.

But there is a silver lining to this story.

At the lowest concentrations we tested, and at the shortest exposure times, the salmon’s swimming performance was not impaired. A rapid response to contain a Dilbit spill is therefore crucial to minimizing the effects on sockeye.

More importantly, the federal and provincial governments must rigorously enforce pipeline regulations to make sure that companies like Kinder Morgan build and maintain their pipelines to the highest standard.

Sarah L. Alderman, Research Associate in Environmental Physiology, University of Guelph

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Illustration: David Seibold via Flickr

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Nearly one year after the catastrophic collapse of the Mount Polley mine tailings pond, which sent an estimated 25 million cubic metres of contaminated mining waste and water into Quesnel Lake, the project is permitted to partially reopen.

The B.C. government approved a permit to temporarily restart the gold and copper mine at half capacity even though the company has no long-term plan to deal with an abundance of water on site. A backlog of water, which overburdened the tailings storage pit, contributed to the accident last August according to an engineering panel that investigated the incident.

Mines Minister Bill Bennett said the province will approve the short-term permit while the mine figures out how to deal with the excess water.

“Our choice was: Do we wait for them for a year to do absolutely everything that shows they have a long-term plan, or let them operate for a few months and get people working again and allow the company to earn some revenue, given there’s no negative impact to the environment?” Bennett said.

The Mount Polley Mining Corporation, owned by Imperial Metals, has until June 30, 2016 to craft a long-term water treatment plan. The province will review the mine’s operation permit at that time.

Major Water Contamination Concerns Remain

Despite assurances from the Ministry of Environment and mining officials that no permanent damage was caused to the lake, locals remain skeptical.

Until recently Mount Polley provided drinking water to residents drawing directly from Quesnel Lake or the river. But according to locals, the mine decided to cancel that program.

Greg and Ingrid Ritson, who live on and draw water from the Quesnel River in Likely said the company has always insisted the water was safe to drink but provided them for months with bottled water.

“I think water’s one of the biggest issues we’ve got to deal with,” Greg Ritson said.

Ritson said he and his wife shower in water they draw from the lake and the effects of doing so have him worried.

“You’ve got to watch. You will find if you shower every day, you will get dry spots, like I’ve never had in my life,” he said.

“But there’s lots of people here that have horrendous problems: breaking out in skin rashes and stuff that they’ve never, ever had. And no body can tell you why. If you ask what are the long-term effects of the chemicals in the water, they’ll say ‘oh they’re fine,’” he said. “But if they’re fine why couldn’t we drink them? There seems to be an imbalance there.”

Ritson said the initial water bans warned people not to drink or bathe in the water and to keep their pets away. Now with no substantial change, he said, “we’re supposed to bathe in it. Where did they come up with that?”

Fisheries biologist Richard Holmes near his home in Likely, B.C. Photo: Carol Linnitt

Major Remediation and Fisheries Questions Unanswered

“People are still wondering what the future holds for them and for Quesnel Lake,” fisheries biologist Richard Holmes told DeSmog Canada.

“Even though we’ve been at it for months now there are still a lot of questions left unanswered.”

Sitting in his home, a five-minute drive from the Quesnel River, Holmes said he is left wondering what the spill means for his community and the lake's aquatic species.

“You saw the damage done to Hazeltine Creek when you were here in August of last year, but even though they say that’s been repaired there’s so much left to be done. “

Holmes said sediment was dispersed from top to bottom in Polley Lake immediately adjacent to the mine and throughout Quesnel Lake for many months.

“We think the impacts will be long term but we just don’t know how severe they will be.”

“We can only hope the regulatory bodies do their job and that the regulations become much stronger. We have to expect better from these people.”

Recently groups in Alaska have expressed alarm at the B.C. government’s mismanagement of mines. There are currently 10 advanced mining projects proposed or operation along the B.C./Alaska transboundary watershed that Alaskans are saying pose a significant threat to the State’s fisheries and tourism.

“The world is watching us,” Holmes said.

“We have to keep stressing to the company and the government that they can’t shortcut this remediation. Unfortunately the mining company has a mindset of bottom line: what can we do as fast as we can for the least amount of money. That has to stop.”

“Right now we’re faced with the immediate concern of getting the excess water offsite.”

Even if the mine never reopened again they’d still have this water issue on site, Holmes said.

“It’s not just about re-openeing the mine but getting rid of contaminated water on site.”

Waste material from the Mount Polley mine tailings pond at the base of the Hazeltine Creek on August 11, 2014. Photo: Carol Linnitt

B.C.’s Sockeye Salmon Still At Risk from Mount Polley Spill

Sam Albers, manager of the Max Blouw Quesnel River Research Centre, said he’s concerned with the massive deposit of mining waste that remains at the bottom of Quesnel Lake.

In a recent paper published in Geophysical Research Letters, Albers and his team of co-authors estimated the waste deposit was roughly 600 metres long, one to three metres deep and over a kilometre across.

But Albers said that estimate was based on current information made available by the mine.

“A new report, the post-event environmental impact assessment, shows that deposit is way, way bigger,” Albers said. What concerns him is the effect of mining contaminants on aquatic species.

“There are a lot of resident fish here and they have a lot of value. But there’s a ton a sockeye salmon here as well.”

In his research Albers found that during peak years the amount of sockeye salmon returning to Quesnel Lake represents as much as 50 or even 60 per cent of the province’s sockeye salmon population. That’s during peak years, Albers said, adding sockeye tend to return in “a really pronounced four year cycle,” a natural rhythm that is to this day not exactly understood.

Quesnel River. Photo: Carol Linnitt

“We had a million fish come back this most recent year and two years before that we had 700 fish come back — which is natural. But the thing is this is an important salmon producing lake.”

"The big concern,” Albers said, “is that copper and salmon really don’t mix all that well.”

“Specifically dissolved copper and salmon don’t mix well. It can get into their olfactory system — so the fish equivalent of a nose — and really mess with their ability to utilize their ecosystem properly.”

Albers said studying the levels of dissolved copper in Quesnel Lake over the long-term will be critical to understanding the impact of the spill on sockeye.

“You’ve got that huge deposit on the bottom of the lake that’s what worries me,” he said.

“This is a really important sockeye salmon lake so monitoring the sockeye food source seems like a really prudent thing to be doing.”

Image Credits: Carol Linnitt

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A former luxury fishing lodge on a remote island off B.C.’s Central Coast has been transformed into a cutting-edge research centre, producing some of the province’s most innovative science.

From early April until mid-October each year the off-the-grid Hakai Institute field station on Calvert Island houses renowned scientists, university professors, graduate students and post-doctoral students researching all aspects of the B.C. coast, from grizzly bears and sea otters to sand formations, archaeology and microbes.

The breadth of the research was show-cased Friday when more than 200 scientists and First Nations researchers gathered in Sidney for the Hakai Research Exchange.

And, sitting at the back of the room, listening intently to the presentations, were the two people who have made the field research station a reality.

The Hakai Institute and, now, a new field station on Quadra Island, are funded and run by Eric Peterson and Christina Munck, co-founders of the Tula Foundation.

The concept was born out of a love for the B.C. coast, combined with a realization that — despite a lot of talk about areas such as the Great Bear Rainforest — almost no coastal science was being conducted at the community level, Peterson said.

That science gap convinced the couple to put their money into the project after they sold their successful information technology company.

“I talked to university scientists and they would say it was so difficult to do work up there because there were no facilities,” Peterson said in an interview.

“The Department of Fisheries and Oceans and Ministry of Environment and all the government services were stepping backwards. The paradox was that, with all the talk about how wonderful our coast is, at the community level and First Nations level, there was no work on the ground.”

Peterson decided to combine his entrepreneurial skills with Munck’s background in conservation and botany to create a venue where up-and-coming scientific talent could be mentored.

The Tula Foundation purchased the fishing lodge in 2009 and then the work of turning it into a field station started in earnest.

“We had to rebuild the power grid and the water system and the sewage system and the docks and then in 2012 we started doing science in a significant way and since then the enthusiasm has been almost frightening,” Peterson said.

“The growth has been greater than I would have expected. I think it indicates there’s such a pent-up demand for long-term ecological research.”

Chris Darimont, Hakai-Raincoast geography professor at the University of Victoria, has seen the benefits first hand as he conducts bear research.

“At a time when support for science has generally eroded across Canada, an absolute explosion of discovery is occurring in one of the least studied, but most beautiful parts of the planet,” he said.

The foundation funds graduate students and post-doctoral students, most of whom are itching to have the opportunity to get out of their laboratories and into the field, Peterson said.

In addition to becoming a place where “brilliant students can come and do their work” it is also a place where various parties and agencies can come together and talk about controversial issues, Peterson said.

“It’s a special place where politics gets left at the door.”

Research Includes How Sockeye Salmon Are Coping With Climate Change

Research themes are based on answering important questions, excellent science and great opportunities for teaching, Peterson said.

But, even with those criteria, there have been surprises, such as the archaeology program, he said.

“I had no interest in archaeology, but people pointed out to me that, where we were on the Central Coast, was a particularly appropriate place to do world-class archaeology. That was our first hit record,” he said.

At the Research Exchange, researchers described nine sites around the Discovery Islands where evidence of human activity from about 7,500 years ago is being studied.

“And there is at least 6,000 years of human history before that time,” said Quentin Mackie, a University of Victoria anthropology professor, describing discoveries of stone tool technology.

PhD student Will Atlas is studying how sockeye salmon are coping with warmer water temperatures and hoping a tagging program will help explain how climate change will affect salmon populations around the Central Coast.

Sam Harrison, of the University of Victoria’s Environmental Law Centre, is venturing into controversial territory as he looks at how diseases at fish farms are reported.

Information released by the federal government is useless as it is not specific — meaning it does not reveal which farms have diseased fish — and it is not accessible, he said.

“Disease publication matters because it enables independent research and informs decisions about farm siting,” he said.

Disease reporting falls far short of the information provided in Scotland and Norway, Harrison said.

For Peterson, the variety of research demonstrates that his vision has become a reality.

“There’s tremendous chemistry,” he said.

“It’s magic when (people) work on accomplishing something together.”

Image: Hakai Institute

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