CBC News: Fraser River salmon almost wiped out
"A new report says spawning levels are so low that the commercial, recreational and aboriginal sockeye salmon fisheries on British Columbia's Fraser River will be gone in three years."
This is criminal. The sockeye are in trouble. The Atlantics are in trouble. What the hell are we doing? Here in Southern Ontario, the fly fishing community are closely watching the Green Drake mayfly in the Credit River. Numbers of the fly have been dwindling drastically. Studies are underway to find out why. No bugs - no trout. Why is it I think we're going to find that some kind of nasty shit has been dumped into the river?
2 comments:
One of the saddest things about being a canoeist is seeing (and smelling) all the nasty shit that gets washed into rivers after a big rain. Seeing an oily brown film on floodwaters make one heartsick, because you know that eventually your children and grandchildren will ingest that stuff in thier drinking water, or their food supply. It is disheartening.
this happens in places that appear to be pristine. I u sed to go on fly in fishing trips out of Red Lake ONT. The area looked as if it was untouched by man, but after a big rainstorm, you could smell the chemicals that washed into the river and lake from the gold mines. One year, we were told to limit our fish consumption because of high arsenic levels.
Mining is incredibly destructive. Sometimes I go trout fishing down in Pennsylvania. There are still some good streams with wild trout down there. At the same time, there are huge areas that have been totally destroyed by mine tailings - for instance, most of the Lehigh Valley. They stock big trout that can only survive a season at best, and pretend it is the same as a wild stream. Nature is resilient though. Spring Creek, near State College survived mirex and keypone spills and still produces wild trout. The hatches are now very limited, though....sulphurs, caddis and midges, mostly.
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