I think that we need to get away from the idea that simply pumping out more fish from hatcheries is going to reverse the declines. I think that we need to recognize that the marine environment is where the year class strength for many of these populations is determined, which means that the marine environment is where we need to consider taking the most action.
I think that having mark-selective fisheries for hatchery fish would mean that we would have less fishing pressure on our wild fish, so if there are enough fish to be exploited, then the exploited fish are not our wild stocks.
I think that we need to employ the newest technologies that we can to understand the synergistic and cumulative effects of different kinds of stressors and diseases, as well as the role of prey availability and predator impacts, to make decisions that are informed by models to identify the factors that we can modify anthropogenically to turn things around.
I know that there's a lot of concentration on pinnipeds. My lab actually did some of the work on pinnipeds. The molecular work supporting the diet work was done in my lab. There are many scientists within the DFO who have questions about the numbers that have been generated in terms of the impacts on salmon because a lot of the early studies were focusing mostly on pinnipeds that were feeding in estuaries. However, the vast majority of the pinniped population is not feeding in estuaries. If you can extrapolate what you see in terms of the numbers of salmon that are being consumed in estuaries compared to what is being consumed in all of southern B.C., those numbers may not match up.
I think that we need to be careful. I think that there is a potential that we're looking for the one thing that we can control to blame. I am concerned that we may be misguided in that particular decision.