Canada: British Columbia's trawlers dump thousands of salmon, depleting orcas' food source

VICTORIA — A British Columbia wildlife protection group says chinook salmon that form the key diet for endangered orcas are being caught in their thousands by trawlers, only to be dumped or turned into compost. Pacific Wild said it had obtained a yet-to-be-published Fisheries and Oceans Canada report on groundfish trawl bycatch, which found more than 28,000 salmon were netted as bycatch in the 2022-23 fishing season, with 93 per cent of them — more than 26,000 — chinook salmon. Pacific Wild marine specialist Sydney Dixon said the valuable and threatened fish were wasted and the bycatch would have been enough to feed three or four endangered southern resident killer whales for a year. "Chinook salmon are the primary food source for these critically endangered southern resident killer whales," Dixon said Friday. "There are only 75 of these whales remaining. To be eliminating their primary food source is pretty tragic especially with these fish just being killed and wasted." Dixon ...