Satellite tracking tags attached to salmon by Miramichi researchers have appeared on a beach in Greenland, but researchers are trying to find out why the fish aren’t returning.
“We’re looking for the tracks that the fish are following and we’re trying to isolate the region where the mortalities are occurring,” says biologist Graham Chafe. “They’re going out to sea and they’re not coming back.”
Scientists attached the tags to wild Atlantic salmon taken from the Miramichi River last year. It allowed them to track the salmon’s travels from the river to the Gulf of St. Lawrence, along Labrador, and finally 2,000 kilometres away to the coast of Greenland.
“They’ll record light, depth and temperature information every couple of minutes while it’s on the fish,” says Chafe. “They can be deployed for up to a year. We program them to come off after about five months.”
In recent years, the number of anglers getting a license has fallen dramatically.
“Half the rivers in New Brunswick are closed to angling because of too few salmon,” says Bill Taylor, president of the Atlantic Salmon Federation. “Two thirds of the rivers in Nova Scotia are closed to angling because of too few salmon. If we can recover some of those populations and have those rivers open back up, and businesses along the rivers opened up, this could be a 200 million dollar industry.”
The tags have also been found beyond Greenland.
“About a month ago, someone gave us an email from Ireland,” says Chafe. “They found it on the beach in the high tide line in the Shannon Estuary.”
But Chafe says in that case the tag floated to Ireland, which is about 4,000 kilometres from where it was attached in Miramichi.
With files from CTV Atlantic's Mike Cameron.
