In June 2021, Canada closed nearly 60 per cent of B.C.'s commercial salmon fisheries.
The decision was made in order to protect the salmon species, which has been decimated in recent years. What's leading this decline? Alaska's plunder is one. Fishers in Alaska now catch the lion’s share of many B.C. salmon populations, and the trend has been getting worse over time.
In 2021, commercial fishers in Alaska logged over 3,000 boat-days and caught over 650,000 Canadian-bound sockeye salmon while our fishers were tied up at the dock and Indigenous communities were not meeting their food needs.