Whether or not this research is correct, the general trend does not look good for Chinook. On the Dungeness River, for example, even with 25 years of recovery work, they are not seeing Chinook return as expected. In Canada, the huge growth of Vancouver, the vast clear-cutting and mining going on in spawning streams coupled with a lack of any enforcement in protecting those streams and rivers seems to be a precursor to the kind of destruction of habitat as Western Washington witnessed a few decades ago.
New climate-change research involving a University of British Columbia scientist predicts that one of the West Coast’s most prized salmon stocks could be wiped out over the next 85 years. A study has concluded that there is a five per cent chance of a catastrophic loss of the chinook salmon by 2075, and a 98 per cent chance the population will suffer catastrophic losses by 2100, if climate change warms the water. An international research team looked at the ability by the chinook to adapt to warming water temperatures caused by climate change. (Canadian Press)
Filed under: Puget Sound | Tagged: chinook, Puget Sound, Salmon |
The implications of recent research on the health of the Chinook salmon population are that we will loose the fishery and anything that depends on that fishery (many species of marine mammals) unless we take aggressive measures to save it. One choice (opposed by commercial, recreational fishermen and the tribes) would be to suspend fishing for a number of years and see if salmon numbers improve. Yes, we’d also have to deal with man-caused environmental threats (storm-water runoff, degradation of salmon habitat, and fish farms) and there would be severe hardships for all, but possibly there would be salmon for the next generation of NW fishermen. Otherwise we can just go on pretending… and watch salmon disappear.