Last year, around the time that around 10 million sockeye salmon apparently went missing from the Fraser River, David Christian and I did an interview with David Suzuki for SBC Skateboard magazine (here's the I made about the interview). One of the questions that I was excited to ask him was about the mysterious disappearance, and what he thought had happened. He told me that the sockeye are a true natural mystery, beyond anything we'll ever be able to control or predict. He said that he had no idea why the stocks were low and that nobody would ever have the answer, that the public inquiry into it would provide next to no insight on the matter.
I imagine that in Doctor Suzuki's life he's had many I-Told-You-So moments, and he's right in the middle of one right now as a whopping 25 million sockeye (as opposed to the 1.5 million last year) are in the middle of returning to the Fraser in an attempt to get back to the place where they were born where - if they make it there - they will spawn and then die in their natural cycle of life.
25 million sockeye salmon. More sockeye salmon than have returned since 1913. So many sockeye salmon that scientists are now worried that commercial fishermen won't be able to catch enough of them and there will end up being too many in the river, that it will virtually become blocked from many of them making their way up. That's a good problem if I've ever heard of one.
is a more in-depth/expert piece from CBC. This is really, really, really awesome.
