Thank you.
My message is that there is an international Pacific salmon emergency and a need to see a bigger picture. There were unprecedented declines in Pacific salmon abundances throughout the entire north Pacific in 2020. The total commercial catch by all countries was the lowest in 30 years. The total catch of all species was 605,000 metric tons, and that's a 38% decrease from the average for the past decade.
In British Columbia, the total commercial catch in 2019 and 2020 was the lowest in history. The average for both years was 5,200 metric tons, which is just 7.5% of the average annual catches in the 1970s. The unexpected poor catches in 2019 and 2020 extended north throughout all of southeast Alaska. The total abundances of sockeye salmon produced in the Fraser River were the lowest in history in 2019 and 2020.
Looking across the Pacific, in Japan virtually all salmon catches are chum salmon produced in hatcheries. Beginning in 2010, catches started to decline from a recent 10-year average of about 221,000 metric tons to just 59,000 metric tons in 2019, which is a shocking 73% decline. The releases of chum fry from Japanese hatcheries over this period really did not change much, showing that the collapse of their catches resulted from declines in ocean survival and not from a shortage of juveniles.
In Russia, the commercial catch of all species in 2020 declined 33% from the recent 10–year average. The surprise reduction in catch in 2020 was sufficiently alarming that their government organized an international virtual conference about a month ago, in English, to consider explanations for the decline and expectations for the future. I was invited to give the opening presentation, which will be published in a Russian journal.
There is a principle in ecology that the abundance of plants and animals that produce large numbers of seeds or babies is determined by the available habitat, and not by the number of seeds or babies. As you know, salmon produce a large number of babies, and the available habitat is mostly the ocean. There now is solid published evidence that once salmon are in the ocean, their abundance is mostly determined in the first months.
The large-scale declines in British Columbia in 2019 and 2020 and throughout the north Pacific in 2020 must result from a common mechanism. A mechanism could be that fewer salmon grow faster and more quickly to be able to store the energy needed to survive the first ocean winter. A possible explanation for the collapse is that a changing climate has resulted in a reduced capacity of the coastal ocean to support salmon.
The emergency is that we now need to understand the mechanisms that regulate salmon abundance in the ocean if we are to understand the future of Pacific salmon. I believe that we have the researchers and technologies we need from around the north Pacific to make the needed discoveries if we could find a way to work together as an international team.