Mt. Nusatsum

Mt. Nusatsum

Sunday, August 1, 2010

Chum Salmon

In early July I wrote a post about the fishing fleet and the first weeks of the chum fishery.  There was some nervousness then about the early low numbers of chum salmon showing in the gillnet fishery, but it usually takes till past the middle of July to tell the story.

We are now at the end of the month and it seems like the chum run is returning in very low numbers to the Bella Coola River and the spawning tributaries, there has been very limited commercial fisheries and closures.  I'm hearing that there will likely be no more now that numbers are not showing.  Too bad, it's the second year in a row that the chum salmon return has been very low.  Grizzly

2 comments:

  1. What is this change attributable to do you think? G

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  2. Well, there are probably lots of opinions on that, but we did have some flooding conditions in 2006 which would affect the 4 yr old fish, but there is a large federal government hatchery that enhances chum and if it was just the flood the effects of it would have been buffered by hatchery production. This doesn't seem to have happened, so it points at something in the Pacific Ocean affecting survival. Grizzly

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