Oregon salmon cannery early 1900s -- Oregon State University archives
Randomly came across these photos from the early 1900s. This is “salmon management” at its best. This is what “salmon management” of the day is built upon. This is what “fisheries management” is built upon.
Fish first, manage later… (look no further then the current herring fisheries opening in the Salish Sea, or the soon to be opened sport fisheries on early-timed Fraser Chinook).
Oregon salmon canneries -- early 1900s -- oh the Chinook?
And where did these beauties go?
Was there not a time in British Columbia when the Springs, the Smilies, the Chinook, the Kings… would line up like this?
Ever study economics?
Ever hear of the concept of ‘the law of diminishing returns’?
Here’s a brief little quote from Wikipedia:
The law of diminishing returns (also law of diminishing marginal returns or law of increasing relative cost) states that in all productive processes, adding more of one factor of production, while holding all others constant, will at some point yield lower per-unit returns.The law of diminishing returns does not imply that adding more of a factor will decrease the total production, a condition known as negative returns, though in fact this is common.
For example, the use of fertilizer improves crop production on farms and in gardens; but at some point, adding more and more fertilizer improves the yield less per unit of fertilizer, and excessive quantities can even reduce the yield. A common sort of example is adding more workers to a job, such as assembling a car on a factory floor. At some point, adding more workers causes problems such as getting in each other’s way, or workers frequently find themselves waiting for access to a part.
In all of these processes, producing one more unit of output per unit of time will eventually cost increasingly more, due to inputs being used less and less effectively. [key point]
The law of diminishing returns is a fundamental principle of economics…
It’s also a fundamental concept within “fisheries” management that they don’t seem to teach at the leading “fisheries” science institutions…
If you keep catching all the ‘hogs’ — the big ones — then eventually there’s going to be little left but small ones…then no ones…
Same thing happened with North Atlantic Cod prior to the big collapse. All the big ones started disappearing and sizes became smaller and smaller and more uniform… diminishing genetic diversity.
Unfortunately, good ‘ol Darwin and his ‘survival of the fittest‘ doesn’t apply when a salmon has no choice about what gill net, seine net, sport hook, or other fishing method catches it. Nor, the obsession of the current human to catch the ‘biggest’ fish…
It did apply though when there was little human intervention… bigger fish, better survival often times, eggs buried deeper in gravel, and so on… more bigger fish, more diversity.
Oregon wild salmon seining -- early 1900s -- Oregon State University archives
Get ’em out however possible…
these times seem to have largely gone with the days of the "iron chink"... (cannery hardware)
The point here isn’t to lament the past, necessarily — but don’t we ever learn?
Folks of the day also said that whole hog logging, placer mining, building dams, and pillaging the seas and river mouths could all ‘happily co-exist’… no problemo… let’s Just Do It (as a well known multinational company based in Portland proclaims).
Freedom, free enterprise, market economies, maximum sustainable yield… let’s do it.
Is this really all that different then what Justice Cohen just heard for two years at the Cohen Commission into the Fraser River sockeye declines?
Or how about the five previous “commissions” prior to that…?
Same conclusion, most likely… we can’t really conclusively “prove” that these practices damage wild salmon… it’s death of a thousand cuts… change is too hard… don’t rock the boat… (gee whiz, I retire with full government pension in five years, don’t hang me out to dry here…)
And, well… you probably know the rest of the story…