In terms of salmon this year, it was a very good year for Pacific salmon and Fraser sockeye, in particular. In fact, final formal numbers won't be in until March, but the estimate is around 20 million returned this year. We made some adjustments to management measures and we believe around 10 million were caught.
We've met our escapement measures and it really has been an extraordinary year. In fact, we've been keeping good records in terms of the number of returns since the fifties. This will be probably number four in terms of the run, certainly top five. So it was a very good year. In other runs, we saw good numbers for chinook in some areas where we hadn't seen chinook. We saw remarkable numbers in the Okanagan that we hadn't seen for years, still low numbers but some increases. So there was some good news in that regard.
With regard to Cohen, we've said previously, with respect to the department's approach, that we do take the recommendations very seriously. We've moved forward on much of it. We spend $65 million a year on salmon on the west coast, $20 million of which is on Fraser River salmon specifically, and around $16 million to $19 million, depending on the year, on science.
We have moved forward on specific issues, such as maintaining the current moratorium on new developments for aquaculture facilities in the Discovery Islands area. We've made specific investments. The recreational fisheries partnership program, which is featured in the supplementary estimates, is one piece.
We've provided an extra million dollars a year to the Pacific Salmon Foundation to do much of the work around habitat, but also the general issues that Justice Cohen speaks to, and we continue to be guided by the advice.
It has been a really good year for salmon on the west coast. It goes in cycles and in terms of the four-year cycle, this was expected to be a good year. You may recall that 2010, four years ago, was also a very good year. In 2015, we don't expect as positive a cycle, but we're hopeful that some of the signs that we saw in a number of other species, and the management measures that we've taken, will mean that we have a good year next year as well.