4 • The Southwest Portland Post
Dear EarthTalk: Why did 34 million
wild sockeye salmon return to the
Fraser River in British Columbia this
year? The run had been declining for
20 years before now.
– David B., Seattle, WA
The miraculous sockeye salmon
run in western Canada’s Fraser River
watershed in the summer and fall of
2010—indeed the biggest run in 97
years—still has fishers, researchers and
fishery managers baffled. Just a year
earlier only one million fish returned
to spawn.
No one seems to be able to say for
sure what caused the massive 2010 run,
but most agree that it probably had to
do with the very favorable water condi-
tions that were present in 2008 when the
sockeyes were juveniles.
“They’re very vulnerable at that stage
of their life,” reports John Reynolds, a
salmon conservation expert at Canada’s
Simon Fraser University.
Roberta Hamme, a researcher with
Canada’s University of Victoria, sug-
gests in a recent study published in
Geophysical Research Letters that the
FEATURES
ash fall from the eruption of Alaska’s
Kasatochi volcano in 2008 may be one
reason for the huge 2010 run.
Iron in the ash, which was spewed
far and wide by the erupting volcano
and then dispersed further by turbulent
weather, served as a fertilizer through-
out the North Pacific.
The result was huge algae blooms
that dramatically improved the fish’s
food supply. A similar large Fraser
River salmon run in 1958 was likewise
preceded by a huge volcanic eruption
in Alaska.
What was particularly striking about
2010’s mammoth run was the contrast
against 2009, when the Fraser River
sockeye run was a disaster by all ac-
counts.
It capped 20 years of decline and
was so much worse than anyone had
expected that the Canadian government
formed a commission to investigate
possible causes, reported Daniel Jack
Chasan on the Pacific Northwest news
website, Crosscut.
The situation was terrible in 2008, as
well, so much so that on the U.S. side
of the border, then-Commerce Secretary
Carlos Gutierrez declared the Fraser
salmon fishery a disaster and allocated
$2 million to U.S. tribes and commercial
fishermen to make up for their loss of
income.
But strangely enough, just as the Ca-
nadian commission began investigating
the paltry 2009 run, said Chasan, com-
mercial fishermen “started hauling in
more Fraser River sockeye than any of
them had ever seen.”
Generally speaking, scientists and en-
vironmentalists are well aware of why
February Special
January 2011
Some 34 million sockeye salmon returned to Canada's Fraser River this past
summer and fall, following years of decline that had many scientists worried
about the future of the fish and the industry built around it. There is now great
optimism for better times ahead. (Photo by John Warrenchuck, Wikipedia)
wild West Coast salmon runs have been
declining over the past century: namely
pollution at almost every inch along the
thousand mile river-to-sea-and-back
underwater journey, overfishing in both
rivers and the ocean, and man-made
obstructions to fish passage.
But environmentalists are now opti-
mistic that the huge 2010 sockeye run
is a sign of better times ahead. Perhaps
improved logging practices, a resur-
gence in organic farming, new protec-
tions for upstream habitat or restrained
commercial fishing catch limits—or
some combination thereof—has begun
to make a difference in salmon survival.
In any event, the salmon runs typi-
cally peak every fourth year—2010
was supposed to be a peak year but
substantially exceeded expectations.
Only time will tell if the masses of
sockeyes in the Fraser in 2010 were a
fluke or foreshadow better days ahead
for the environment—and for the fish
and people in it.
CONTACTS: John Reynolds, www.
sfu.ca/biology/faculty/reynolds/The_
Reynolds_Lab; Geophysical Research Let-
ters, www.agu.org/journals/gl; Crosscut,
www.crosscut.com.
SEND YOUR ENVIRONMENTAL
QUESTIONS TO: EarthTalk®, c/o E
– The Environmental Magazine, P.O.
Box 5098, Westport, CT 06881; earth-
talk@emagazine.com. E is a nonprofit
publication.
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