Get while the getting is good, but do so with a sense of cautious optimism.

That's what those in the fields of academics, science and politics are saying about the unprecedented Fraser River sockeye salmon returns, numbers that are projected to shatter records dating back to 1913.

About 25 million sockeye are expected to return to the waters in and around the Fraser this season, a drastic change from the roughly 1.7 million that returned last year when the fishery was deemed to be near total collapse.

"I think the most prudent thing to do is to call this an anomaly, because clearly, we've never seen anything like it in anybody's lifetime," said Simon Fraser University fish biologist John Reynolds.

"What people should not take from this is any kind of sense that we're out of the woods with the Fraser sockeye. Every year is independent of the year before, and so it's not over. But what this is showing is that you can still have incredibly good news."

The Fraser River sockeye fishery was last open to commercial fleets in 2006, when about 3.7 million fish were approved to be caught by commercial fleets.

Barry Rosenberger, area director for Fisheries and Oceans Canada, explained that a number of factors have likely contributed to the surge, namely cooler ocean temperatures in 2008, when this year's retuning salmon were in their first year in the ocean. That cooler water bolsters the amount of food for young salmon, while keeping their predators at bay. It also minimizes the amount of time and distance the salmon need to swim to find feeding grounds.

That said, Rosenberger argued that there are still more questions than answers in terms of whether this year's return is a sign of the sockeye fishery fully rebounding.

"I don't know that anybody has specific answers," he said in an interview Thursday. "We're obviously happy that we're getting them this year, but there's still ongoing scientific work and hopefully we can answer some of those questions."

New Westminster-Coquitlam MP Fin Donnelly said in a phone interview Wednesday while paddling down the Fraser River that while he's encouraged by this year's numbers, the federal government needs to invest more resources in the Pacific fishery as a whole in order to sustain healthy returns year over year.

"Of course, we don't want this to be the last good run. That means we need to take this fishery more seriously, we need to get on top of it," Donnelly said. "We need better management, better research, and we need to make better decisions so that we've got good monitoring in place, so we know the numbers and we can make good decisions."

According to Reynolds, however, gauging whether these returns are a sign of things to come may prove to be impossible.

"There is so much we don't understand about what governs the returns of these fish that I don't see any obvious way to very quickly assess where things are going to head," he said.

"Unfortunately, we have to ride out each year as it comes, but make sure we are precautionary in the way we treat these fish, and that we safeguard their habitats."

editorial@royalcityrecord.com