Once the local commercial fishers in the Fraser River have made good money but now it appears the fishing have collapsed due to small return of the sockeye salmon. Merle Jefferson, natural resources director for Lummi Nation, said that although some hope remains that the fish may still arrive late in large enough numbers to permit a commercial fishery, the chances of that appear to be fading.
Jefferson also told that there’s going to be no fishery unless there’s a miracle, unless they’re real, real late. It is observed that if no sockeye fishery materializes this year, it would be the third straight year of little or no sockeye catch in local waters. Earlier in 2009, biologists had estimated that sockeye would return by the millions to the Fraser and its tributaries this season.
For Lummi Nation, the sockeye fishery means more than income. Jefferson said that they have a dietary need for salmon. The commission said something went wrong between 2007, when the juvenile fish moved into the salt water by the millions, and summer of this year, when a tiny fraction of those fish began their return migration as adults. The sockeye collapse also affects non-Indian fishers like Riley Starks of Lummi Island, who in a normal year would reefnet sockeye, market them via the Lummi Island Wild cooperative, and serve them at his restaurant at the Willows Inn.
