Smaller salmon also found the Elwha to their liking, and coho, steelhead, sockeye and other fish once numbered close to half a million: until, that is, two dams were built across the river in 1913 and 1924.
This year the stakes are especially high, with a record 18m sockeye salmon expected to return to Canada's Fraser River.In this section The peace police The Yabran affair Democracy, Mexican-style Salmon war on two fronts New-found hope ReprintsThe mood in British Columbia has been even angrier than usual this year.
Studies by local and Norwegian scientists have found that sea lice and other parasites from the fish farms can infect the passing sockeye, reducing their chance of survival.
Two groups of sockeye that spawn in lakes near Vancouver are also listed as endangered.Scientists and environmentalists agree that the causes of the decline include overfishing and the destruction of spawning habitats.
Hardest hit are Fraser sockeye, once the most valuable fishery.
The fisheries committee of Canada's House of Commons and a former chief justice of British Columbia, Bryan Williams, have just examined separately why 1.3m sockeye salmon mysteriously "disappeared" from the famed Fraser river fishery in 2004.
Many migrating Fraser sockeye (both outbound as young smolts and inbound as mature fish) pass some two-dozen salmon farms in the Broughton Archipelago.
This season only 1.7m of the 10.4m sockeye salmon that were forecast to return to the Fraser river in fact made it a 50-year low.
The sockeye migrate more than 1,600 km (1,000 miles) upriver to spawn in lakes or tributary streams, the young remaining in fresh water for as long as three years.
In addition to sockeye, other species of salmon and fish such as trout and grayling inhabit the lakes and streams.
Sockeye salmon range from the northern Bering Sea to Japan and from Alaska southward to California.
