Seafood Watch

Seafood Watch® Wild Pacific Salmon Report October 8, 2010
Figure 1.7. North American pink salmon range (Brownell 1999). 12
Synthesis
Salmon have relatively resilient life-history traits, including short life spans and high fecundity.
These traits would typically result in a very low estimate of inherent vulnerability. However,
salmon’s resilience belies a significant vulnerability based on their dependence on freshwater
environments. Freshwater spawning habitats throughout the contiguous U.S. have been severely
degraded by a large number of factors including the presence of dams, habitat alteration,
introduced species, and pollution. In many cases, these losses have crippled the capacity of
salmon runs to sustain even moderate fishing pressure. When these losses are combined with a
limited range (river-specific ESUs) and a mixed-stock fishery, the vulnerability of salmon stocks
to fishing in Oregon (north of Cape Falcon) and Washington must be considered moderate. In
contrast, the relatively pristine rivers and streams of Alaska have allowed stocks there to remain
resilient to heavy fishing pressure.
12 Northern and western Alaskan drainages were not mapped by Brownell (1999), but presumably would be ranked
as low or no risk.
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