The Atlantic salmon debacle is being repeated on the north Pacific Rim. Overfishing, hydroelectric or irrigation dams, or habitat degradation and fragmentation have destroyed or severely reduced wild Pacific salmon runs in California, Washington, Oregon, British Columbia, Japan and Russia. The Columbia River has 3 percent of the salmon run it did when Lewis and Clark visited. In the Sea of Japan, overfishing, dam building and habitat destruction, such as lining streams with concrete to protect rice fields, resulted in a wild salmon return of almost nothing by 1968. Genetically homogeneous hatchery fish, farmed fish and now the prospect of genetically modified salmon, "Frankenfish," are replacing the decimated wild stocks.
Pacific high seas wild salmon fishing is not the free-for-all it was in the Atlantic thanks in part to Section 101, Part B of the Magnuson-Stevens Act. After establishing a 200 mile limit (Part A), the act asserts that the United States claims authority over all anadromous fish "throughout the migratory range of each species." In other words, if they spawn here, they are our fish.
All is not well, however. For example, Bristol Bay Kvichak River sockeye runs dropped significantly after Japan, known to drift 100-mile-long nylon nets in the open ocean, negotiated fishing agreements in Russian waters (beyond the reach of the Magnuson-Stevens Act). Kvichak salmon migrate farther west than any other Alaska salmon, into Russian waters, and some show net marks indicating they have escaped open ocean nets.
Read the complete opinion piece from the Anchorage Daily News.