The managed decline of British Columbia's commercial salmon fishery

Abstract

Commercial salmon harvests have declined dramatically for all Pacific salmon species in British Columbia, mainly over the period 1995–2000. Much of this decline is attributable to declining abundance, but some of it has been due to deliberate reduction in allowable exploitation rates. Various reasons have been given for this reduction, but the main rationale appears to have been concern about declines in a few relatively small and unproductive stocks that are intercepted in mixed-stock fisheries. Reductions in exploitation rate have generally not been followed by the increases in stock size that would be expected if overfishing had been the main cause of the declines. Current procedures for setting exploitation rate goals do not appear to involve explicit analysis of the risk-reward trade off relationship between mixed stock exploitation rates and yields.