An annual Vancouver parade celebrating the return of salmon took on new meaning this year, as 2018 is a peak year for some species of salmon in a four-year cycle. But it's also a year that saw the decline of southern resident orcas who feed on the salmon.

The march of the Wild Salmon Caravan through downtown on Saturday, came just one week after frantic efforts to save an emaciated southern resident orca, named J50 by scientists, failed, and the young whale was found dead.

There are approximately only 74 southern resident orcas left. Their preferred food is chinook salmon, which has also been in decline.

“Some of the salmon runs have been drastically very, very low, and [that] has been of huge concern to everyone," said caravan co-founder Eddie Gradner.

“[The salmon] feeds not only the humans, but such a wide range of species."

While a recent federal study showed that the entire Pacific Ocean’s supply of wild pink, chum, and sockeye had risen by 2015 to its highest point in 90 years, the local situation on the province's coast is of concern in the majority of audited areas. 

The Department of Fisheries and Oceans’ salmon outlook for 2018 shows that 68 percent of British Columbia’s salmon spawning grounds, where there is sufficient data, are expected “to be of some conservation concern” or are of “mixed outlook.”

The red-coloured sockeye, though, will peak this year, resulting in millions of the fish swimming up into the interior, where some groups, like the Adams River Salmon Society, have organized once-every-four-year festivals to witness the fish arriving between Sept.28 and Oct. 21.

Independent salmon biologist and anti-fish farm advocate Alexandra Morton says Ottawa needs to do more to protect the southern resident orca’s food source. “This [J-50] baby whale starved to death. It’s an indicator that you have to bring their food back,” she said Saturday.

Morton has long put the blame on wild salmon’s decline on the lice, pollution and piscine reovirus (PRV) that flows from open-net fish farms that harvest Atlantic salmon in British Columbia’s Pacific waters. She’s currently suing DFO over its policy of allowing the transfer of juvenile salmon into the fish farms without testing for PRV first. 

The industry maintains that the high percentage of farm fish infected with the PRV virus does not result in risk of disease to the wild salmon.