5. Food Systems in British Columbia
Case Study 2: Managing the BC Salmon Fishery
A fishery is a marine environment concerned with breeding and or or harvesting populations of fish and other forms of marine life, such as bivalve molluscs (e.g., mussels, clams). “Fishery” often refers to the area, the type of fish, the method and tools of fishing (including the vessels if any, used in fishing) and the people responsible for stewardship, harvesting and other forms of managing the fishery. BC fisheries are a key natural resource to both the physical and material wealth of the province, yet they are complex environmental systems. While fish are a renewable resource, they are difficult to manage. Estimating populations, as we shall see below, is increasingly difficult due to their mobility, the changing nature of global and localized environmental processes and considerations for other human activity in the region.
Ten thousand years before European settlers arrived in BC, Aboriginal people were sustained by the abundant marine life available along the Pacific Coast and up through the many lakes and rivers. For example, the oolichan harvest was, and remains, an important first spring harvest of fish, coming before the spring salmon runs. Oolichan, rich in nutritionalvalue, was sought after not only as a food but also for the oil that was rendered from it. Oolichan oil was transported along “grease trails,” or trade routes that extended south and east beyond the borders of what is present-day BC, and into southern California, Alberta and Saskatchewan. These same trade routes supported other trade and migration in the area. When European settlers and fur traders travelled west, they did so using Aboriginal guides taking them along the established trade infrastructures that were made for transporting the bounty of Pacific coast fisheries.
The same fisheries that sustained people in the region for the past 10,000 years were also seen as an abundant renewable natural resource by European settlers. With colonization came commercial fishing in a form similar to what we know today. Commercial fishing is the harvesting of wild fish for sale on in the marketplace. It stands in relation to aquaculture, which is the farming of marine life under controlled conditions.
In BC today, there are both commercial fishing and aquaculture industries. Over 80 ocean and freshwater species of fish are traded from BC. This includes several types of salmon, with five species dominating trade: coho, sockeye, pink, chum and chinook. As of 2012, salmon has a declining overall share of the overall seafood harvest.
| Scientific Name | Common Name | Market Name |
|---|---|---|
| Oncorhynchus tshawytscha | Chinook salmon |
Chinook, spring, king |
| Oncorhynchus keta | Chum salmon |
Silver-bright, semi-bright, dark; dog; summer; keta |
| Oncorhynchus kisutch | Coho salmon |
Coho, silver |
| Oncorhynchus nerka | Sockeye salmon |
Sockeye, reds, red salmon |
| Oncorhynchus gorbuscha | Pink