Salmon 2026:  Regional abundances and upset expectations

While anglers everywhere and some commercial fishermen rejoice in amazing abundances of salmon, Fraser sockeye look to be returning at less than half of expectations. This isn’t totally unexpected:  this cycle has been in steep decline and is the only one of the 4 cycles that didn’t return more than the brood year in its last return, in 2022. Nobody’s sure what is the cause of this decline, as ocean conditions were considered ‘moderate’ until June, when an El Nino was officially declared. That brought warmer water and scarcer food sources. 

About the only place sockeye did really well was in Barkley Sound on the west coast of Vancouver Island: an area that’s never had any salmon farms. There, even the weakest of the managed stocks exceeded spawning requirements and a commercial fishery was opened. 

Meantime, on the east coast of Vancouver Island and many mainland inlets, coho, Chinook and pink salmon were more abundant than many sport fishers today have ever seen. 

One fishery stood out for us: pink salmon returned to Phillips Arm in the Discovery Islands region at astounding numbers. The river quickly filled; DFO opened both seine and gillnet fisheries to try to protect the redds already established. If more fish return than there is room for in the spawning grounds, redds can be destroyed physically or deprived of oxygen by the sheer biomass in the river.
  

Pink salmon in Phillips Arm were severely depressed until 2024: this year’s fishery was the first to open in over 40 years. The fish were small—smaller, apparently, than at least one seiner expected. In the linked video below, you’ll see vast numbers of fish gilled in a seine net that led many observers to declare the video a fake—no fisherman would deliberately gill and waste so many fish, which would be crushed on the drum as the net was taken in. (DFO investigated and prescribed mesh size for seiners to avoid this happening again.) Still, it’s a stunning testament to the bounty available this year. 

More than simply bountiful, this fishery was also responsible: as a ‘terminal’ fishery. Conducted within Phillips Arm near the river the fish were headed for, the danger of bycatch was very low compared with ‘mixed-stock’ fisheries that occur in open waters. Upwards of 20 boats participated and prices were considered good. The fishery didn’t open until successful spawning was confirmed. 

[embed or link video] 

A salmon farm operated in Phillips Arm from 1987 until it was closed by Kwiakah First Nation in early 2021. This is a real success story: they took over the tenure and infrastructure, repurposing it as a science centre to support researchers in partnership with academic institutions. They’re studying kelp and eelgrass regeneration and plan to restore historic abundances to further assist in salmon recovery. Just getting rid of the Atlantic salmon and attendant sea lice and disease may have been enough to cause this amazing rebound—pink salmon are particularly vulnerable to sea lice as they enter the ocean soon after emerging from the redd, before protective scales have formed. 

The Phillips Arm fishery this year stands as an indication of what could be, if Canada follows through on removing salmon farms and stops the misguided cuts to salmon spawning surveillance. Because in-river spawning was confirmed, DFO had the right information to be able to open the fishery. Sadly, they’re currently cutting back dramatically on what was already minimal data collection, reducing the contracts for the men and women who have paddled and walked the rivers and streams to produce the data needed to manage fisheries responsibly. 

Living Oceans is working with colleagues to press DFO to continue to collect the data that is so vital to fisheries management, particularly in light of climate change impacts.