Weak stocks pinch B.C. sockeye outlook

摘要

As British Columbia heads into another salmon season, there could be substantial fishing opportunities for the commercial fleet, but as it has for six years, conservation of weak stocks will control fishing time, sometimes harshly. For the Fraser River, Bert Ionson, salmon resource manager at Fisheries and Oceans Canada, says continuing concern over early returning late-run stocks and associated mortality could limit fishing on the anticipated 5.5 million sockeye swimming into the Fraser this year.Ionson says the agency is looking at ways to design fisheries to crop the midsummer run, though commercial harvests could be held to an unusually tight 500,000 sockeye. "That is what we're looking at even though the run is that size. Because of concernsfor those stocks we won't be harvesting to the full amount we would ordinarily harvest to," he says.