I agree with Charlie that Canada has quietly exited out the side door when prioritizing salmon management and access for our sports-, commercial- and FN-needs.
The start of this ongoing debacle was after the BC government (under the newly-elected BC Liberals) gutted and destroyed the BC Fishery Renewal program, after Glen Clarke and the NDP lost.
That signified to the feds that the time was right to follow suit since the political outfall would be less as the province demonstrated that a branch of government could destroy grass-roots support for salmon and get away with it.
The feds then pulled the rug out from the federal funding equivalent - the HRSEP (Habitat Renewal and Salmonid Enhancement) program. Many of you posters on here may well remember this.
This gutted any government support for community-minded fisheries.
Then the feds caved-in to Alaska's allocation requests for the next negotiation of the 1999 Pacific Salmon Treaty, where BC lost many millions in forecasted revenue, while Alaska fishermen received an ever increasing share of most Pacific salmon species at the expense of BC, Wash, & Ore.
The pay-off recorded on paper was the abysmal support for Canada where Canada kicked-in an astounding low $2 million, while the US payed-off with a ~20 Million investment into the Northern and Southern Funds.
The writing has been on the wall since.
Another beneficary of that allocation shift has been the pollock fishery in Alaska - presented as a mid-water trawl fishery. The figures below are from:
http://alaskafisheries.noaa.gov/npfmc/PDFdocuments/bycatch/GOAChinook311.pdf
They take upwards of ~150,000 pieces of sub-adult salmon every year; mostly chinook and chum. The average weight of Chinook salmon caught as bycatch varied from 6 to 9 pounds, depending on the time of year.
In 2010, over five Chinook salmon were estimated to have been caught for each metric ton of pollock. Over 21,000 Chinook salmon were estimated to have been caught in one week, alone. The annual pollock catch is approx. 50,000-80,000 metric tons, but has been substantially higher than that some years - upwards of 150,000 mts.
In 2007, the Chinook bycatch was 130,000 pieces.
They say they release the fish - but what is the survival rate for the trawl-caught fish?
They also have a low percentage of observer coverage, especially the smaller boat fleet - which means if you have an observer aboard for this trip - you head to the fishing areas that normally have less by-catch interception - so these are low estimates.
I have not eaten another McFish burger from McRotten's since I found this out.