VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) - Predicting salmon returns on the Fraser River is far from an exact science, but apparently this year's once-in-a-lifetime sockeye run wasn't completely out of line with the predictions.
A director with federal fisheries says forecasts are based on probabilities and this year's put a 25-million fish season on the Fraser at 10 to 20-percent. The unexpectedly high count comes a year after 10 million fish were predicted, but only 1.5 million showed up.
Simon Fraser University researcher John Reynolds says forecasting the number of fish is not easy. "There are so many things that can happen to these small fish between the time they leave the fresh water lakes, head to the sea, and come back two years later."
But Joy Thorkleson, with the United Fisherman and Allied Workers Union, says the predictions are key to a fisherman's livelihood. "It's important to have predictions because fishermen, like everybody else, like to have an orderly life. But fishermen have long been optimists and every season they think the fish are going to come back."
Thorkleson says the average fisherman is now in his or her sixties, and young blood isn't willing to take it up.