I mourn the decline of Atlantic salmon. I need politicians who get what's at stake

CBC

25-04-2025

This First Person column is the experience of Roger Jenkins, who lives in Storeytown, N.B. For more information about CBC's First Person stories, please see the FAQ.
In the summer of 1962, I was allowed to tag along with my father on his job. He had been hired by a local association through the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) to haul adult salmon whose path had been blocked by a dam on the Saint John River.
Our task was to scoop the salmon from a cage on the Beechwood Dam using a hand net onto the back 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 also had to deposit any lamprey (a predator of the salmon) that we found into a 170-litre drum on the deck of the dam.
Why did we spend all summer doing this? A typical Atlantic salmon can leap about three metres high. So the installation of a hydroelectric dam 18 metres high on the St. John River presented an impassable obstruction.
Trucking the salmon became the only option to ensure this key species returned to its spawning grounds. Returning to the ocean after spawning also presented an additional obstacle as the only way back to the ocean was over the dam spillway or through the turbine. Think of it like putting your goldfish in a blender for a few seconds.
When I look back, I can't help but think of just how absurd the whole situation was to put the future of the species in the trust of a 10-year-old boy and a middle-aged man with only Grade 3 education.
Now, some 60 years later, I see my old friend is in trouble again. That's why in this federal election, the management of Atlantic salmon is my ballot box issue.
I was born near the Tobique River in the early 1950s and raised in the small community of Riley Brook, N.B.
We had running water in the house at the time but no toilet until I was in my teens. Life was simple in those days and running across the road to catch a salmon for supper was a normal occurrence. My first summer job was at a fishing lodge. One of the lodge guests, an executive with a major resource company, felt my technical skills could be better served in the industrial divisions of the company.
I became an engineer and eventually a management executive, but I continued to fish as a hobby. Fishing was also a networking tool. We'd take clients up to salmon lodges. I remember a time when I could go out and easily come back with the allowable limit on any given day.
Now, as a retiree, I live beside the Miramichi River in Storeytown, N.B., but I no longer fish salmon. It's not fun to go out and stand for hours and catch nothing.
WATCH | Shockingly few Atlantic salmon in N.B. rivers, says this biologist:
Atlantic salmon population is in serious trouble, says fish biologist
5 months ago
Duration 3:43
'The times have never been this dire,' says Tommi Linnansaari, a biology professor at the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton, talking about the low numbers of Atlantic salmon in the province's waterways.
The last time I hooked and landed an adult female salmon full of eggs, it made me feel like a hypocrite. I had been aware for some time that salmon returns to the Miramichi were in decline and I felt I had just let the entire species down by jeopardizing her life and the future of thousands of her offspring. In my corner of New Brunswick, the Atlantic salmon is listed as a species of special concern. It's endangered in other parts of the province.
As I carefully removed the hook and released her, I realized at that moment in a small way I once again held the future of the species in my hands.
Salmon returns in the Miramichi River have been on a dramatic decline for some time and have accelerated dramatically since 2010. This time, the obstruction is not physical in the form of dams and is instead bureaucratic.
The Miramichi Salmon Association, under the direction of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, manages and maintains a salmon barrier on the Dungarvon River. To protect them from poaching, adult salmon are held between two barriers in the river during the summer months and released to continue up the river to spawn in the fall.
I live close enough to one such station and can easily visit several times during the summer using my ATV. Each trip has left me saddened and more discouraged. Under DFO management, the annual count of adult salmon returning to the barrier has steadily declined from 1,039 fish in 2011 to a mere 51 in 2024.
At the same time, DFO reports that because of its successful management plan, populations of the striped bass — which eat Atlantic salmon smolt — have rebounded in the same river system from several 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 approach of managing and promoting a predator species at the expense of a prey species is the same as releasing wolves into our northern forests and letting the caribou sort it out for themselves. I can't imagine we'd do that to either iconic species, so why should the Atlantic salmon deserve any less?
To argue the Atlantic salmon is just another fish is the same as suggesting the monarch butterfly is just another bug. Its unique life cycles make it an environmental messenger — a canary in a coal mine — for the health of our oceans and rivers and we should be paying more attention.
For villages, tourist operators, guides, birds, Indigenous communities and the environment, the salmon represent a way of life that cannot be easily replaced by any other species. It represents food for many people and wages for others.
And, for me, losing this particular fish is like losing an old friend. The Atlantic salmon epitomizes what it means for me to be a proud Maritimer.
The New Brunswick government has called on the federal government to take immediate action on the province's historically low salmon population. Too often, it feels like we have politicians who have little appreciation or understanding of what's at stake.
I have yet to see any federal party put together a concrete plan for how they want to manage Canada's fisheries and the implications will ripple across Atlantic Canada.
During his visit to Newfoundland and Labrador early in the campaign, federal Liberal Leader Mark Carney's first stop in St. John's was met with angry protesters who were upset with cuts to crab quotas off the northeast coast of Newfoundland. They said his party needs to do better.
In Nova Scotia, the lobster industry is a cornerstone industry, and a major campaign issue. Ottawa has struggled to satisfy both commercial fishermen and Mi'kmaw communities that are asserting their treaty right to fish for a moderate livelihood. In Newfoundland and Labrador, the opening of the northern cod commercial fishery was described as a political decision.
The Atlantic salmon is barely surviving and is but one painful reminder of how Ottawa needs to do better by Atlantic Canadians.
I hope before it's too late, we can elect we can elect a government that ensures its fisheries minister is a knowledgeable person who creates a workable plan to protect the Atlantic salmon. Then I will feel much better about my vote.