Pacific Salmon Strategy Initiative
Pacific salmon need our help. In recent years, climate change, habitat loss and fishing pressures have affected Pacific salmon negatively at every stage of their lifecycle. Our Pacific Salmon Strategy Initiative (PSSI) is guiding a strategic and coordinated long term response to these issues, rooted in collaborative action, to conserve and restore wild Pacific salmon stocks and their ecosystems for all that depend on them.
Progress
Through PSSI, we are carrying out activities focused on achieving 3 key outcomes:
- restoring vulnerable populations of Pacific salmon and their habitat
- supporting sustainable fishing opportunities and reduction impacts on vulnerable stocks
- building capacity and working with partners to achieve better outcomes for Pacific salmon
Learn about some of the key activities we have supported:
Pillars
Our strategy aims to stem the steep decline of many Pacific salmon populations and to protect and rebuild stocks where possible by implementing a series of immediate and long-term solutions that focus on 4 key areas:
Conservation and stewardship
Salmon enhancement
Harvest transformation
Integration and collaboration
Engagement
We can't do this alone. We are advancing a number of actions to address Pacific salmon declines and have engaged with First Nations, governments of all levels, industry, environmental organizations, academics and scientists and more. These engagements help ensure our efforts are focused on the actions that will have the greatest impact.
Learn how you can participate through our Let's Talk Salmon portal
Watch
Transcript
Learn about the Pacific Salmon Strategy Initiative
Canada’s west coast: where millions of Pacific salmon have returned to their spawning grounds every year for millennia to repeat their life cycle. And where they have played a fundamental role in the culture of the Indigenous peoples of the region.
But recent decades have seen significant declines in many salmon populations.
An increasing number are at risk of being lost.
Fisheries and Oceans Canada launched the long-term Pacific Salmon Strategy Initiative – or PSSI – in June 2021 to help us respond to these declines and improve outcomes for both salmon and the people whose livelihoods and cultures depend on them.
While several factors are responsible, climate change has emerged as a key driver for this persistent downward trend.
Freshwater temperatures in summer are becoming too warm for salmon.
Forest fires, floods and other major events are dramatically altering watersheds.
Extreme flooding can scour eggs from their spawning gravel.
Droughts result in lower water levels that can kill juvenile salmon.
Large marine heatwaves in the North Pacific Ocean mean less nutritious food for salmon, resulting in smaller and weaker fish trying to return home.
Fortunately, some salmon species are adapting better than others.
DFO is conducting further research and monitoring to better understand and help improve how we manage salmon in a changing climate.
The PSSI is supporting action under 4 key pillars.
We are working alongside partners, such as First Nations and stewardship groups to monitor salmon populations.
Our new Salmon Stewardship group is also establishing a Habitat Restoration Centre of Expertise to provide expert advice to community-driven habitat improvement projects to help support stocks.
We’re also increasing our monitoring and enforcement efforts against illegal, unregulated, and unreported fishing on the high seas.
We are improving and modernizing current salmon hatcheries and building targeted new ones focused on conservation, to help in rebuilding key salmon populations.
Mass marking of hatchery salmon can also play an important role to rebuild vulnerable populations.
DFO is closing a greater number of commercial salmon fisheries for the long term, where weak stocks are located to allow them to rebuild.
Commercial salmon harvesters will be able to retire their licences for market value.
DFO will also work with Indigenous communities to diversify commercial fishing access to other non-salmon species, where opportunities exist.
The PSSI also aims to transform how the salmon fleet harvests in the future by encouraging them to shift to more selective fishing gear.
In the recreational sector, DFO will be looking to adapt our licensing and management tools to digital and electronic platforms.
But key to the overall success of the PSSI is integration and collaboration.
In addition to integrating DFO’s own various recent investments, we want to work with our partners and stakeholders to find solutions together.
DFO’s PSSI offers a unique opportunity to give this iconic resource a chance at survival.
Together, we can make a difference – both for the future of Pacific salmon and our own.
Transcript
Restoring salmon habitat: salmon stewardship
Any fish, any kind of seafood. All of those rely on having a healthy near-shore environment. We're very, very reliant on this interconnectivity between rivers and the nearshore and the open ocean free of plastics, free of contaminants.
And that's why we're out there is to try and pick some of that up.
The bottom of the ocean is actually, I think a lot of people think of it as almost like a desert, almost like the deep sea, but the nearshore so the part that we most interact with as people. The part that we go down to the beach and see, that's the part that's the most alive.
Our beautiful Pacific salmon, at some point, they have lived part of their life in an eelgrass bed.
Today we're out here doing an underwater marine debris cleanup in Oak Bay. And that is basically having our divers go down and they tag the debris, and then we get a crane barge in here that comes out, lifts everything up after it's been tagged, and we put it in the dumpster and make sure it's properly disposed of.
Oh, it's super rewarding. Yeah, it's a great job. You know, you get down there, and like, you see the impact, you see the difference. You go into a degraded habitat and like the eelgrass is all torn up. We get the chance to go in and clear out all that debris, all that rubbish. It's a really, really, really rewarding job. And I love it. It's the best job on the planet.
Roger.
Yeah.
You should start to find a bare spot with a bunch of debris that looks like it came from a sailboat.
So we work with a lot of different partners. So SeaChange is really about inclusivity and working with community members. And so right now, the funding that we've received from the BC Salmon Restoration and Innovation Fund, and also through the Aquatic Ecosystems Restoration Fund, is allowing us to do this work the way that we envisioned. So creating that inclusive community.
So the funding that we receive from DFO is really, allowing us to do this whole program and to be part of this larger community and bring everybody together.
Partnership is integral, to the work that we do. We're really invested in funding projects that focus on the restoration of our aquatic ecosystems and habitats.
So there's a lot of good work going on right now, but we have to keep going with continuing to restore our lost and degraded habitats.
SeaChanges call to action has always been just get involved in any way that you can. I mean, there are so many groups like ours across Canada, in your own backyard who are out there caring and who are out there doing something, even if it seems small and insignificant. It never is when you've got hundreds and thousands and millions of people all doing the same thing. It becomes a really significant action.
If every single one of us can do that. There's no problems we can't resolve.
Related
Wild Salmon Policy
We place the conservation of salmon and their habitat as the first priority for resource management.
BC Salmon Restoration and Innovation Fund
Funding for projects that support protection and restoration activities for priority wild fish stocks.
Salmonid Enhancement Program
We aim to rebuild vulnerable salmon stocks and improve fish habitat to sustain salmon populations.
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