WATCH: Fraser River sturgeon are facing a new threat. Linda Aylesworth looks at what illegal activity has claimed a number of these protected fish.
White sturgeons are considered the dinosaurs of the Fraser River and despite the giant primitive fish surviving two ice ages, some troubling new discoveries are raising concerns over their long-term survival.
When the Pink Salmon Fishery opened on the Fraser River last Saturday, recreational fisherman Bryan Bronswyk grabbed his rod and made his way to one of his favourite spots under the Mission Bridge. After spending some time fishing at the river, Bronswyk headed out and noticed an illegally set gill net tied to a tree.
The net wasn’t empty, it had more than five young dead white sturgeon inside it. It is illegal to kill a sturgeon in B.C. since they are considered a threatened species and are protected.
“On my way back up the trail I noticed something suspicious inside the nets,” Bronswyk says. “And I discovered one, that was about three foot long and then looking upon it a little bit more, I saw there was about another four or five smaller sturgeon trapped inside those nets…. It looked like they were there overnight.”
Bronswyk figures the net had been intended for salmon and the sturgeon were caught accidentally but instead of returning the fish to the river, they were left on the shore to die.
“They are a catch and release fish. People come from all over to fish because these prehistoric fish have been around centuries and it’s one of the few that are left,” Bronswyk explains.
“So when I see something like this it disgusts me because it shows they have no regard for our resource. These fish have fought many years to survive and live in this river despite having civilization come in and industries come in.”
They’re a resource that has been struggling to recover from nearly being wiped out in the early 1900s when sturgeons, many over 100 years old, were regularly taken from the Fraser. That lasted until the fishery collapsed in 1910.
Today, catch and release is allowed and many have been tagged so their progress can be tracked. Killing sturgeon is against the law but there are still threats to the prehistoric fish.
“Right at the top of our list is set gillnets,” says Sarah Schreier with the Fraser River Sturgeon Conservation Society. Gillnets are vertical panels of netting normally set in a straight line where fish are caught when they get wedged, gilled or tangled in the mesh. While set gillnets are allowed, they must be mesh with openings at least 20 centimetres in diameter.
“Right along with poaching as well as habitat loss and the lower numbers of juvenile fish that we see.”
It’s the loss of juvenile sturgeon that Bronswyk found more tragic.
“There are approx 50,000 of them left in our Fraser River system, so everyone is crucial to our system,” Bronswyk says.
“If we want to have these for many more generations to come, we need every single one of these fish to live and to reproduce.”
~ with files from Linda Aylesworth
Comments