Department of Fisheries and Oceans

British Columbia's poor salmon returns are beginning to hit more than the fishing industry. Grizzlies and black bears along the coast are starving to deathfrom lack of food, reports Mark Hume in the Globe and Mail. Officials attribute the strikingly low number of bears observed to low chum salmon runs the past few years, and suspect some bears may have died in their dens over the winter because they lacked the body fat necessary to survive. Conservation Director of Pacific Wild Ian McAllister states it plainly:

"River systems that in the past had 50,000 to 60,000 chum have now got 10 fish. The chum runs have been fished out. We've seen the biological extinction of a [salmon] species, and now we're seeing the impact on bears."

McAllister and others made a statement to the Department of Fisheries and Oceans requesting it cancel this fall's grizzly bear hunt and shut down all chum salmon fisheries. This comes after the Fraser River crisis, which InvestigateWest reported on further here.

"The collapse of the Fraser sockeye and now the north-coast chum salmon runs is leading to ecological collapse of our coast ecosystems," McAllister said.

– Emily Linroth

Nearly 10 million salmon should have swam up the Fraser River this summer, not the dismal 1.37 million that did, setting the record for lowest returns and effectively shutting down all but small harvest opportunities for First Nations who depend on the fish.

What's killing the salmon? The culprit could be changing ocean currents, food supply shifts, infections from sea lice at fish farms, or a combination of things. No one knows for sure, because the science isn't being funded to find out, reports The Canadian Press.

Not much is known about salmon once they get to the ocean, but scientists can design experiments to find out. Huge cuts to grants and programs over the years have prevented these studies from becoming a reality.

"You could pick just about any aspect of the management cycle and the scientific assessment, and you can say, 'Well, we used to do this but we don't any more,'" said Scott Hinch, a researcher at the University of British Columbia who specializes in salmon ecology.

The government is focusing on tracking salmon during the season, rather than investigating what happens when they're at sea.

During the collapse of the Fraser River salmon, the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans Gail Shea was in Norway, attending the largest aquaculture conference in the world because she "supports aquaculture in Canada which is an important part of our economy," according to Rafe Mair in The Tyee.