After four years at sea, sockeye salmon return to spawn in the river in which they hatched. (CBC)First Nations leaders along the Fraser River are being asked to do something they've never been asked to do by the federal government, according to an aboriginal official — ration their salmon catch and share among themselves.

Sto:lo Nation fisheries adviser Ernie Crey said 2008 is the worst year he's seen in five decades for returning sockeye on the Fraser.

Leaders representing 94 First Nations bands made up of more than 70,000 people have been meeting to come up with a catch-sharing program, Crey said Wednesday. Normally, aboriginal fishermen have the right to catch as much as they need for their own communities' consumption.

Last summer, large parts of the commercial sockeye fishery were closed on the West Coast. If aboriginal communities do get a chance to fish sockeye on the Fraser this summer, they will have to agree on a plan to share the fish among all members on the Fraser, Crey said, something he said has never happened before.

Collapse predicted in 2004

In 2004, early sockeye numbers were only about 10 per cent of what was expected that year, and aboriginal and commercial fishermen predicted those numbers could lead to a collapse of the Fraser River fishery when the salmon spawned in 2004 return in 2008.

A sockeye salmon hangs from the gillnet of a fishboat as a fisherman brings his catch onboard. (Canadian Press)

But the Department of Fisheries and Oceans said at the time that the predictions of a demise of the fishery were premature.

"The Fraser River sockeye itself is going to be OK. I think that we're not so disastrously low that the stocks themselves will not recover," DFO spokesman Wayne Saito said in September of 2004.

Then in March of 2005 a report by the Commons fisheries committee said spawning levels were so low in 2004 that the commercial, recreational and aboriginal sockeye salmon fisheries on British Columbia's Fraser River could be wiped out in 2008.

The report blamed a failure by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans to crack down on sockeye poaching in the region and implement previous recommendations designed to save the stock, as well as unusually warm water temperatures in 2004.

It predicted extremely low levels of adult salmon ready for harvesting in 2008 and the cancellation of all fisheries for that year.