Sockeye salmon over Bonneville Dam on the Columbia River. Lower temperatures in 2008 North Pacific waters brought in fatter plankton, which, along with greater outflows of Columbia River water, fed the resurgent populations. Proposed legislative efforts, such as the Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act, are attempting to protect the headwaters of the sockeye salmon by preventing industrial development in roadless areas. Record numbers of a once-waning population of sockeye salmon have been returning to the Northwest's Columbia Basin (as of June 2012), with thousands more crossing the river's dams in a single day than the total numbers seen in some previous years.
Pain in fish birds, frogs, salamander, reptiles, fish, and crustaceans. A recent article by Howard Browman and colleagues provides an overview of what different perspectives regarding fish pain and welfare mean to in the context of aquaculture, commercial fisheries, recreational fisheries, and research. It has been argued that fish can not feel pain because they do not have a sufficient density of appropriate nerve fibres. A typical human cutaneous nerve contains 83% GroupC nerve fibres, however, the same nerves in humans with congenital insensitivity to pain have only 24–28% C-type fibres. Based on this, James Rose, from the University of Wyoming, has argued