Pacific great blue herons consume thousands of juvenile salmon

An array of predators that consume juvenile salmon (Oncorhynchus spp. Suckley‎, 1861)‎ may account for the poor returns of adult salmon to the Salish Sea. However, the Pacific great blue heron (Ardea herodias fannini Chapman, 1901) is rarely listed among the known salmon predators, despite being regularly seen near salmon streams. Investigating heron predation by scanning nesting sites within 35 km of three British Columbia rivers for fecal remains containing Passive Integrated Transponder (PIT) tags implanted in >100,000 juvenile salmon from 2008-2018 yielded 1,205 tags, representing a minimum annual predation rate of 0.3–1.3% of all juvenile salmon. Most of this predation (99%) was caused by ~420 adult herons from three heronries. Correcting for tags defecated outside of the heronry raised the predation rates to 0.7–3.2%—and was as high as 6% during a year of low river flow. Predation occurs during chick-rearing in late spring, and accounts for 4.1-8.4% of the heron chick diet. Smaller salmon smolts were significantly more susceptible to heron predation than larger conspecifics. The proximity of heronries relative to salmon-bearing rivers is likely a good predictor of heron predation on local salmon runs, and can be monitored to assess coast-wide effects of great blue herons on salmon recovery.