[NOTE: Under embargo until Wednesday, at 10 a.m., Pacific Time.

Study appears
as the cover story for Nature, June 3 edition. Pix and map can be downloaded at:
https://compass.sharefile.com/d-s04bc46e70c242d79]

By Mark Hume
Vancouver
The key to restoring West Coast salmon runs lies in ensuring there is a wide diversity of
stocks within a given species, say the authors of a landmark study of sockeye in Bristol
Bay, Alaska.
While big salmon rivers such as the Fraser and Skeena in British Columbia, and the
Columbia, which flows from B.C. to Oregon, have wild swings in productivity, the
Bristol Bay area has remained remarkably stable, yielding average runs of 30 million fish
annually since 1950.
Because of stock collapses last year salmon fishing was widely closed throughout B.C.,
Washington, Oregon and California. On the Fraser, for example, all fishing was banned
after an anticipated run of more than 10 million sockeye fell to around 1 million, leading
to the calling of a federal commission of inquiry.
Bristol Bay, however, had another good year with the commercial fleet hauling in a catch
worth US$120 million.
“Bristol Bay is a well known example of a sustainable fishery where sockeye salmon
have been caught in huge numbers reliably, year after year, since the first canneries were
built in the late 1800’s,” said Dr. Daniel Schindler, lead author of the study which
appears Thursday on the cover of the science journal, Nature.
“ In the last 50 years this fishery has produced more than $5 billion [worth] of salmon,
making it one of the single most valuable fisheries in North America. Our study helps
explain why the Bristol Bay sockeye fishery has been so reliable for so long,” he said in
an interview from a field camp in Aleknagik, southwest Alaska.
Dr. Schindler and his co-author, Dr. Ray Hilborn, both of the University of Washington
School of Fishery Sciences, said Bristol Bay is steadily productive because there are so
many different types of sockeye there.
He said having many different populations of salmon is like having a diversified stock
portfolio, in which strong performers compensate for weak ones, smoothing out the
bumps.
“Our study shows that the ‘portfolio effect’ is caused by small differences in how
different populations of sockeye salmon respond to their environment. Some populations
perform better in cold, wet years while others thrive while it’s hot or dry,” said Dr.
Schindler.
“The net result is that each population experiences its own ups and downs based on
environmental conditions and pure chance. But given sufficient diversity there are
enough winners to make up for the losers every year across the rivers that produce
salmon in Bristol Bay,” he said.
The concept that diverse ecosystems are more stable has long been accepted in science,
but the Alaska study is unique because it looks at diversity within a single species.
While sockeye are classified as one species, there can be many different sockeye
populations, or stocks, in any given river, each with physical or behavioral differences
shaped by the environmental.
Dr. Schindler said when stocks become homogenized - as they do when hatcheries
produce huge numbers of fish or development destroys a range of habitat - the result can
be boom or bust cycles. .
“We estimate that without the current diversity . . . the Bristol Bay fishery would close
about ten times more frequently,” said Dr. Schindler.
“We believe this new evidence from our Bristol Bay salmon study is a game changer for
managing species and entire ecosystems, because the lessons from this paper result in
specific advice for natural resource management,” said Dr. Hilborn.
He said salmon should be managed to promote diversity, and that means protecting a
wide range of habitat, avoiding a dependence on hatcheries, and keeping catches low
enough that a wide variety of stocks is allowed to return to spawn.
Dr. Hilborn said there has been a recent shift in both Canada and the U.S. towards just
that type of approach.
In B.C., for example, the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans in 2008 adopted a
wild salmon policy that stresses protecting diversity. That policy is in the process of
being implemented.
“In some sense this [research] is supporting evidence for the direction that many agencies
are currently going,” said Dr. Hilborn.