First, thank you very much for having me on. I consider this an honour to represent over 300,000 British Columbians who are very concerned with the rapid decline in our salmon stocks. My focus is the decline in chinook, coho and steelhead. All the studies that I've been using are based on the Gulf of Georgia and the Salish Sea.
My background is that I commercially fished from 1962 to 1967, longline halibut and seined salmon, on one of the top boats of the coast at the time. My venture paid my way through UBC. I'm an avid sports fisherman, having fished most rivers in B.C. for both salmon and steelhead, and I'm very active in both fresh and saltwater sports fishing. My grandsons are the fourth generation involved in sports fishing. My son seined on the Queens Reach, one of the top boats on the coast, for nine years and is now working for DFO Nanaimo under Wilf Luedke.
For 40 years our family has had a hunting shack on Canoe Pass at the mouth of the Fraser River, and we're very tuned in to what is happening to the lower Fraser.
Let's go on to the focus of the Pacific Balance Pinniped Society, which is pinnipeds on the British Columbia coast and their impact on the outbound juvenile chinook, coho and steelhead smolts and inbound adults. Our mission is restoring the balance of pinnipeds to help bring back our salmon.
Our supporting science, number one, is Brandon Chasco and all of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NOAA. There's also our Pacific Salmon Foundation and their Salish Sea marine survival project. Dr. Carl Walters of UBC is a very strong supporter of our group, as is Ben Nelson of UBC.
I'm also quoting articles published in the Columbia Basin Bulletin and data from Peter Olesiuk, retired DFO, who did all the counts on the pinnipeds and our integrated fisheries management plan, IFMP. It is too long to go over here; that was presented to DFO some two and a half years ago to deal with this problem, and we're making very little progress inside DFO.
I want to say special thanks to Mel Arnold for getting involved in this. He's been a great help in getting us to move along.
For those who aren't dialled in, I'm going to just quickly go over some stats here on the pinnipeds, and these come from Peter Olesiuk's publications. Seal population at the start of protection under the Marine Mammals Protection Act in 1972—and this is all related to the Gulf of Georgia—was 7,000. The current population is 48,000. Steller sea lions in 1972 were approximately 10,000 and, coast-wide now, there are 48,000. As for California seals, I have an estimate only as there are no detailed studies available, and that is 20,000.
Smolt consumption by pinnipeds is our main focus. Consumption, as stated by the Pacific Salmon Foundation's Salish Sea marine survival project, is 30% to 45% of smolts, lower for chinook and higher for coho. Chasco of NOAA and King Salmon Forever studies show up to 80% consumption of chinook smolts. These studies show a consumption rate of approximately 27 million chinook smolts per year and 10 million coho smolts per year. No data is available on steelhead outbound smolts, although the stock has extremely depleted in the last 15 years and, as witnessed by the Thompson and Chilcotin runs, the run is almost annihilated.
If this consumption was cut by 50%, and using historical long-term survival rates of adults of 3% to 5%, which is currently 1% with the huge pinniped populations, what might this mean for helping restore our chinook and coho populations? As an example, I used an average of the above studies and used a consumption rate of 60%.
The math shows the following: 27 million chinook smolts, times 60%, equals 16,200,000 more survivors, times the 3% survival adults, is 486,000 more chinook adults, which is for the Gulf of Georgia system only.
Applying the same math to the 10 million outbound coho smolts per year is a return of 300,000 more adults.
Regarding adult consumption of chinook, the only current studies I could find were published by the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife. The results are the following: three to five returning adults are eaten per day on the Columbia River. With up to 5,000 sea lions on the Columbia, this adds up to 15,000 to 25,000 adults per day.
I can't find any studies on in-river consumption on the Fraser River for either seals or sea lions, but my guesstimate on adult consumption by seals in the Fraser might go as follows: 5,000 in-river seals times two chinook per week equals 10,000 per week.
The same logic would apply to both coho and steelhead adults in river.
I'm just quickly going to bring to light some additional studies supporting this—