Sockeye salmon The conservation status of sockeye populations in Canada is under review by Fisheries and Oceans Canada as part of its Wild Salmon Policy strategy to standardize monitoring of wild salmon status. Salmon runs of particular note are the Skeena and Nass river runs, and the most famous is the Fraser River sockeye run. The Fraser River salmon run has experienced declines in productivity since the 1990s, mirroring a similar decline in the 1960s. The return abundance (population) of Fraser River sockeye in 2009 was estimated at a very low 1,370,000, 13% of the pre-season forecast of 10,488,000. That represented a
Environmental issues with salmon 59 years of catch and escapement data of Bristol Bay sockeye to determine age and size at maturity trends attributable to the selectivity of commercial gillnet harvests. The study found that the larger females (>550 mm) of all age classes were most susceptible to harvest. The study suggests that smaller, younger fish were more likely to successfully traverse the gillnet fishery and reproduce than the larger fish. The study also found that the average length of sockeye harvested from 1946–2005 was 8 mm larger than the sockeye who escaped the gillnet fishery to spawn, reducing the fecundity of the average