The Incredible Shrinking Salmon Worries Industry Downsizing Of Fish Blamed Mostly On Fishing Techniques, Overgrazing

Salmon are shrinking.

No, we’re not talking about endangered runs here. We’re talking size - and what some experts see as a threat to the health and fitness of the species.

In just a dozen years, the average salmon returning to five Washington hatcheries shrank by 11 percent to 27 percent. The run with the sharpest decline shriveled from more than 6 pounds per fish to less than 4.

There is strong evidence that salmon have declined in size for decades across the rim of the north Pacific Ocean - from waters off California, Oregon, Washington and British Columbia through the Gulf of Alaska to seas off Russia and Japan.

That is shaking the fishing community.

“It points a finger at our overall policy for salmon fishery management,” said Brian Bigler, biologist for Seattle-based Wards Cove Packing Co.

The trend means fewer trophy fish and less valuable commercial catches, but much more is at stake. Smaller salmon may mean fewer, feebler salmon.

It also raises difficult questions about fishing gear, hatchery management and a possible international scramble for salmon “grazing rights” in the seas.

“It’s going to be a real controversial issue,” said Katherine Myers, a biologist at the University of Washington’s Fisheries Research Institute.

Though causes are debated, biologists tend to blame human sources, mainly fishing techniques that skim off the big fish and the overgrazing of the ocean by billions of hatchery fish.

Physically shrunken fish present graphic evidence of man’s capacity to change this resource for the worse. Evidence of the shrinkage is spawning studies and debates over how to halt or reverse the trend.