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B.C. trawlers dump thousands of salmon, depleting orcas’ food source: wildlife group
VICTORIA — A British Columbia wildlife protection group says tens of thousands of chinook salmon are being dumped overboard or turned into compost by a commercial fishery that is threatening a primary food source of threatened southern resident killer whales.
Pacific Wild says it has obtained a recent Fisheries and Oceans Canada report on the groundfish trawl fishery that shows more than 26,000 chinook were netted as bycatch during the 2022-2023 commercial fishery.
The group says the report estimates more than 20,000 chinook caught in the nets were dead and thrown overboard while another 3,700 were either discarded as offal, waste or compost.
Pacific Wild marine specialist Sydney Dixon says the bycatch of the trawl fishery recorded by the Department of Fisheries was enough to feed three or four southern resident killer whales for a year, out of a total population of 75.