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Pacific salmon play a crucial role in our culture, economy and environment. However, managing them sustainably is difficult because fisheries can catch fish from multiple locally adapted populations (mixed-stock fisheries) potentially including those that are struggling or at-risk. These challenges are made worse by declining salmon numbers, unpredictable returns due to climate change, habitat loss and other stressors, causing significant problems for communities that rely on salmon.

In collaboration with key stakeholders and rightsholders, this project aimed to develop and implement genomic tools that support sustainable fishing practices and aid the recovery of at-risk salmon populations. By identifying the specific origin of each salmon, genetic stock identification (GSI) tools can help guide the activities of fisheries that catch mixed stocks. Since different salmon populations migrate at different times or via different routes, these tools can help fisheries identify and avoid fishing at times or locations that are at a high-risk level in terms of catching struggling salmon stocks, as well as pinpoint the times and areas that are more sustainable to fish.

Researchers from Simon Fraser University, Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO), Wild Salmon Center and Coastal Rivers Conservancy, together with Indigenous partners, successfully developed a new GSI tool for sockeye salmon. This tool will replace the less precise microsatellite panel that has been used for two decades. Sockeye salmon were chosen due to their cultural importance and conservation concerns.

The new GSI tool comprised a single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) panel with 566 unique SNP markers. It was used to genotype over 21,000 sockeye salmon from 241 populations to establish a reference for genetic stock identification across BC and Southeast Alaska sockeye populations.

By applying this new GSI tool to three mixed-stock fisheries from the Skeena River, Bella Coola River and Central Coast, populations could be differentiated into distinct run timing and spawning populations (within the Babine Lake stock complex) with higher accuracy than previously possible. There is a strong differentiation between lake-type and river-type sockeye within the Bella Coola/Atnarko watershed.

The improved GSI tool is being used by the DFO for population and fishery monitoring and is helping First Nations and DFO fishery co-managers develop harvest strategies for culturally and economically important fisheries that preserve sockeye salmon abundance and diversity.