Restoring our Fishery
Pacific Salmon Foundation
About twenty years ago, Strait of Georgia wild Coho and Chinook populations abruptly and mysteriously declined to one-tenth of past peak levels.
One of the serious challenges in studying marine waters is how to determine what is happening in different places at the same time – in other words being ‘everywhere at once.’ Typically, government oceanographic vessels conduct annual surveys in a number of places a few times a year, but these surveys are always limited by cost.
The Citizen Science Program, an initiative of the Salish Sea Marine Survival Project, uses a cost-effective model that outfits private boats with special sampling equipment. In 2015, the program outfitted nine different boats in nine overlapping areas of the Strait of Georgia. These volunteers have helped compile the most comprehensive data ever collected in the Strait and what could be the key to solving what happened to our fishery. The Project is working with concerned volunteers to restore these lost fisheries.
Donors like you have been instrumental in attracting the confidence of major contributors, whose investments add up to 80% of the total $10 Million budget for the five-year Salish Sea Marine Survival Project.
But the Foundation needs to keep raising $400,000 annually from donations in order to keep the Project going at full speed. Please consider making a year-end, tax-receiptable donation through psf.ca
Hand-carved Kwagiulth reel
As an added incentive, major donors Rudy North and Peetz Reels have created a $55,000 matching fund. If you donate by December 31, 2015 your donation will be matched! Also, every $100 donation will receive one entry to win a hand-carved Kwagiulth reel donated by Peetz Reels. So $500 means five entries!