It was a banner year for Robertson Creek chinook, but biologists say it’s not going to last.
Nicholas Brown says more than 95,000 chinook made it back to the hatchery, the largest return in 30 years, but with a period of warmer El Nino currents on the horizon, the Stock Assessment Biologist predicts a return to smaller run sizes.
“It’s been building up over the last few years,” he said. “We’re now coming into some years with El Nino so I wouldn’t say we would expect this kind of abundance to continue beyond maybe one or two years down the road. I think we’re shifting back into a regime of poorer survival for chinook salmon.”
Brown says it’s good to have a large chinook run once every few years, but consistently big runs would have a negative environmental effect.
He said favourable ocean conditions in 2020 improved survivability for the chinook smolts, leading to this year’s run of more than 125,000 fish, with half being caught by commercial, recreational and First Nations fisheries.
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