Detail British Columbia's salmon: Socked   Oleh:  [s.n] Jenis: Article from Bulletin/Magazine Dalam koleksi: The Economist (http://search.proquest.com/) vol. 393 no. 8658 (Nov. 2009), page 46. Topik: British Columbia; Salmon; Overfishing; Habitat Ketersediaan Perpustakaan Pusat (Semanggi) Nomor Panggil: EE29.58 Non-tandon: 1 (dapat dipinjam: 0) Tandon: tidak ada     Lihat Detail Induk Isi artikel A MYSTERIOUS decline in the numbers of spawning salmon has become one of the rites of autumn in British Columbia, bringing worries of financial and job losses, threats of extinction and a perplexing lack of answers. This season only 1.7m of the 10.4m sockeye salmon that were forecast to return to the Fraser river in fact made it—a 50-year low. That prompted Stephen Harper, Canada’s prime minister, to ask Bruce Cohen, a justice of British Columbia’s Supreme Court, to hold an inquiry into the causes of the sockeye’s decline. Applause was muted. Four other federal inquiries held over the past three decades have failed to halt the decline. Many British Columbians fear that the province’s rich salmon fishery, worth about C$500m ($475m), could disappear like that for Atlantic cod. Of the five species of wild salmon involved, two (pink and chum) remain relatively abundant. But stocks of coho, chinook and sockeye are down by more than 70% since the early 1990s. Chinooks on the Thompson river are officially listed as endangered. Hardest hit are Fraser sockeye, once the most valuable fishery. Two groups of sockeye that spawn in lakes near Vancouver are also listed as endangered. Scientists and environmentalists agree that the causes of the decline include overfishing and the destruction of spawning habitats. Some also blame unauthorised fishing on the Fraser by First Nations, as Canada’s indigenous peoples are called. But the biggest controversy concerns the claim that diseases are being spread from open-pen salmon farms. Many migrating Fraser sockeye (both outbound as young smolts and inbound as mature fish) pass some two-dozen salmon farms in the Broughton Archipelago. Studies by local and Norwegian scientists have found that sea lice and other parasites from the fish farms can infect the passing sockeye, reducing their chance of survival. Fraser salmon that take the southern route around Vancouver Island, where there is no gauntlet of fish farms to run, do not display these infections. Opini Anda Klik untuk menuliskan opini Anda tentang koleksi ini! Kembali

Copyright © 2006, 2007 Unika Atma Jaya, all rights reserved