Decline of the eulachon: Are candlefish getting snuffed out?By Jeff Nagel
Black Press
Mar 24 2006
Fears are rising for the health of the Fraser River as a the number of a small, oily fish that once swam upstream in abundance at this time of year dwindles toward extinction.
The eulachon, a smelt-like fish so high in oil content you can dry it, stick a wick in it and burn it like a candle, has been added to a federal list to assess for possible endangered species status.
“For the last 15 years, they’ve been dropping right off,” says Jimmy Adams, a Katzie First Nation band member who has been fishing for nearly 50 years.
Adams said he didn’t even try to catch eulachon last year and two years ago he got just a few hundred pounds – barely enough for band elders to smoke and keep an ancient tradition alive.
A federal fisheries survey of last year’s eulachon spawn found the estimated number of eggs and larvae deposited in the Fraser hit a new all-time low – just a tenth of what biologists had set as an alarm point for fishing closures. The report recommends there be no commercial fishery again this year.
That’s small comfort to aboriginal people who have seen the population of a fish critically important to their culture severely depleted.
Ernie Crey, the Sto:lo Tribal Council’s senior policy advisor, says close to a century ago, his people would send a lookout to the top of Chilliwack Mountain to see downstream in early spring. “They described two long silver bands on either side of the Fraser River stretching out for miles downstream,” he said. “We’re talking about hundreds of millions of fish.”
Back then, the eulachon, alternately “oolichan” or “hooligan,” were also called swewi or “saviour fish” by the Sto:lo.
“In a year of hardship we always knew the eulachon would show up in the spring by the millions to feed us,” Crey explained, noting the fish helped natives survive until salmon arrived later in the year.
Aboriginal people across coastal B.C. tell similar stories.
Besides eating eulachon fresh, dried or smoked, many would render the fish down for their oil. The resulting grease, used as a butter-like condiment, was an important commodity – it’s why aboriginal trade routes were called “grease trails.”
And it’s not just people who depend on the “candlefish.”
Big eulachon runs on healthy north coast river systems are chased upriver by hordes of seagulls, eagles, seals and sea lions.
Up until about 10 years ago, Crey said, that kind of evidence could still be seen in the Fraser near Coquitlam.
“There used to be huge colonies of sea lions and seals sunning themselves on the log booms there,” he said. “The reason they were there is they were following the eulachon up the river. You rarely see that any more.”
The Fraser placed third on the Outdoor Recreation Council of B.C.’s just-released annual endangered rivers list. Urbanization, industrial pollution, sewage, agricultural impacts and logging in the headwaters are ongoing threats, it said. The river has been in the list’s top five 13 out of the last 14 years.
Pollution, habitat loss, logging and changing ocean conditions due to global warming are among the likely reasons for the decline, according to DFO.
Shrimp trawl boats would accidentally catch large numbers of eulachon as an unintended by-catch.
“They would jettison them overboard literally by the tonne,” Crey said.
Everything from river dredging to the bark scrapings from log booms to the increased industrialization and urbanization of the region has played a role, he said. “You have to be utterly blind not to see the changes that are occurring along the river.”
Crey sees the declining eulachon as akin to a canary in the coal mine, signalling the river’s overall health is in danger.
“In my mind this represents the triumph of industrial values over environmental values,” he said.
Politicians at all levels talk about the river’s importance to the region’s economy, he said, but do little to safeguard its ecology.
“Some folks think making a buck is more important than saving a species of fish,” Crey said. “To these types, saving eulachon is about as important as saving a cloud of mosquitoes.”
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