This First Particular person column is the expertise of Roger Jenkins, who lives in Storeytown, N.B. For extra details about CBC’s First Particular person tales, please see the FAQ.
In the summertime of 1962, I used to be allowed to tag together with my father on his job. He had been employed by a neighborhood affiliation via the Division of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) to haul grownup salmon whose path had been blocked by a dam on the Saint John River.
Our activity was to scoop the salmon from a cage on the Beechwood Dam utilizing a hand internet onto the again of a five-tonne truck fitted with a water tank and transport them 50 kilometres upriver to Arthurette, N.B., on the Tobique River. We additionally needed to deposit any lamprey (a predator of the salmon) that we discovered right into a 170-litre drum on the deck of the dam.
Why did we spend all summer season doing this? A typical Atlantic salmon can leap about three metres high. So the set up of a hydroelectric dam 18 metres excessive on the St. John River introduced an impassable obstruction.
Trucking the salmon grew to become the one possibility to make sure this key species returned to its spawning grounds. Returning to the ocean after spawning additionally introduced an extra impediment as the one manner again to the ocean was over the dam spillway or via the turbine. Consider it like placing your goldfish in a blender for a number of seconds.
Once I look again, I am unable to assist however consider simply how absurd the entire scenario was to place the way forward for the species within the belief of a 10-year-old boy and a middle-aged man with solely Grade 3 training.
Now, some 60 years later, I see my outdated pal is in bother once more. That is why on this federal election, the administration of Atlantic salmon is my poll field situation.
I used to be born close to the Tobique River within the early Nineteen Fifties and raised within the small neighborhood of Riley Brook, N.B.
We had working water in the home on the time however no bathroom till I used to be in my teenagers. Life was easy in these days and working throughout the street to catch a salmon for supper was a standard prevalence. My first summer season job was at a fishing lodge. One of many lodge company, an government with a serious useful resource firm, felt my technical abilities could possibly be higher served within the industrial divisions of the corporate.
I grew to become an engineer and finally a administration government, however I continued to fish as a interest. Fishing was additionally a networking device. We might take shoppers as much as salmon lodges. I bear in mind a time once I may exit and simply come again with the allowable restrict on any given day.
Now, as a retiree, I reside beside the Miramichi River in Storeytown, N.B., however I not fish salmon. It is not enjoyable to exit and stand for hours and catch nothing.
“The instances have by no means been this dire,” says Tommi Linnansaari, a biology professor on the College of New Brunswick in Fredericton, speaking in regards to the low numbers of Atlantic salmon within the province’s waterways.
The final time I hooked and landed an grownup feminine salmon stuffed with eggs, it made me really feel like a hypocrite. I had been conscious for a while that salmon returns to the Miramichi had been in decline and I felt I had simply let all the species down by jeopardizing her life and the way forward for hundreds of her offspring. In my nook of New Brunswick, the Atlantic salmon is listed as a species of special concern. It is endangered in different components of the province.
As I rigorously eliminated the hook and launched her, I noticed at that second in a small manner I as soon as once more held the way forward for the species in my fingers.
Salmon returns within the Miramichi River have been on a dramatic decline for some time and have accelerated dramatically since 2010. This time, the obstruction is just not bodily within the type of dams and is as an alternative bureaucratic.
The Miramichi Salmon Affiliation, beneath the course of the Division of Fisheries and Oceans, manages and maintains a salmon barrier on the Dungarvon River. To protect them from poaching, grownup salmon are held between two limitations within the river through the summer season months and launched to proceed up the river to spawn within the fall.
I reside shut sufficient to 1 such station and may simply go to a number of instances through the summer season utilizing my ATV. Every journey has left me saddened and extra discouraged. Beneath DFO administration, the annual rely of grownup salmon returning to the barrier has steadily declined from 1,039 fish in 2011 to a mere 51 in 2024.
On the similar time, DFO studies that due to its profitable administration plan, populations of the striped bass — which eat Atlantic salmon smolt — have rebounded in the identical river system from a number of thousand in 2010 to an estimated 500,000-plus fish in 2024. Both fish species are native to the region, but one is being protected at the expense of the other.
This misguided method of managing and selling a predator species on the expense of a prey species is identical as releasing wolves into our northern forests and letting the caribou kind it out for themselves. I am unable to think about we would try this to both iconic species, so why ought to the Atlantic salmon deserve any much less?
To argue the Atlantic salmon is simply one other fish is identical as suggesting the monarch butterfly is simply one other bug. Its distinctive life cycles make it an environmental messenger — a canary in a coal mine — for the well being of our oceans and rivers and we ought to be paying extra consideration.
For villages, vacationer operators, guides, birds, Indigenous communities and the surroundings, the salmon signify a lifestyle that can not be simply changed by another species. It represents meals for many individuals and wages for others.
And, for me, dropping this explicit fish is like dropping an outdated pal. The Atlantic salmon epitomizes what it means for me to be a proud Maritimer.
The New Brunswick authorities has referred to as on the federal government to take immediate action on the province’s historically low salmon population. Too usually, it appears like we now have politicians who’ve little appreciation or understanding of what is at stake.
I’ve but to see any federal party put together a concrete plan for how they want to manage Canada’s fisheries and the implications will ripple throughout Atlantic Canada.
Throughout his go to to Newfoundland and Labrador early within the marketing campaign, federal Liberal Chief Mark Carney’s first cease in St. John’s was met with offended protesters who had been upset with cuts to crab quotas off the northeast coast of Newfoundland. They mentioned his celebration must do higher.
In Nova Scotia, the lobster trade is a cornerstone trade, and a major campaign issue. Ottawa has struggled to fulfill each business fishermen and Mi’kmaw communities which can be asserting their treaty proper to fish for a reasonable livelihood. In Newfoundland and Labrador, the opening of the northern cod business fishery was described as a political decision.
The Atlantic salmon is barely surviving and is however one painful reminder of how Ottawa must do higher by Atlantic Canadians.
I hope earlier than it is too late, we will elect a authorities that ensures its fisheries minister is a educated one that creates a workable plan to guard the Atlantic salmon. Then I’ll really feel significantly better about my vote.
What is the one situation that issues probably the most to you on this federal election? CBC Information will publish a spread of views from voters who share the non-public expertise shaping their selection on the poll field. Read more First Person columns related to the election here.
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