Thank you for that.
As the facts have changed, our minds need to change. Our opinions need to change as the weight of evidence changes.
When I was studying fisheries 20 years ago, the ocean was really still taught as a black box—that we don't know what goes on in the ocean. There was not evidence at the time that the ocean was limited in terms of the amount of food. It stands to reason that there are always limits in nature, but we did not really have the evidence to say that the ocean has a capacity and that we are close to it.
Now the evidence is that we are at that limit and sometimes past it. The capacity is changing.
Yes, you are right. The hatchery fish from other countries are a huge part of this complex issue, but let us not kid ourselves that 60 million or so Bristol Bay sockeye salmon that are all wild are also sharing that ocean. There are a lot of wild fish that are part of this, but we have more direct control on the hatchery.
This is not to villainize hatcheries. It's the fact that we have control over that and we can use science to inform those decisions on how we should be reforming what we do with hatcheries.