The goal of the Pacific Salmon Strategy Initiative (PSSI), a CAN $647.1-million plan covering everything from habitat restoration to financial aid for fishers, is to save the salmon and shrink the size of the commercial industry built around them.
Under the PSSI, DFO plans to close 57 percent of the 138 Pacific salmon fisheries along the west coast of British Columbia and Yukon. Closures will help protect at-risk salmon stocks from ending up as by-catch, says Neil Davis, DFO acting regional director of fisheries management. Fishing for salmon in the ocean—unlike traditional practices where Indigenous communities fish in rivers—makes it practically impossible to separate at-risk stocks from healthy stocks.
Davis says many details are still being fleshed out, and the closure of commercial fisheries is just the first step. He adds that within five years, the majority of DFO’s salmon-saving strategy will be underway. Salmon are cyclical and move from their spawning streams to the ocean, and back, in two- to seven-year cycles. “It could be two to three generations of salmon before we’ll be confident we can truly see meaningful results from our investments here. It’s a long-term challenge, and recovery is a longer-term undertaking,” Davis says.
But even in three generations, the question hovering over the plan is whether salmon can survive droughts, warming waters, and habitat degradation.
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