Whether to kill one species to save another has split biologists, anglers and Indigenous communities in the Miramichi

• Photographs by Brittany Crossman

Since the 19th century, Atlantic salmon in the Miramichi have lured politicians, celebrities and wealthy anglers from across North America and Europe to fishing camps along the river’s banks, its undammed branches once producing more of the fish than almost any other river on the continent. In 2010, the fishery was valued at C$16m (£8.6m) and provided hundreds of jobs.

Rip Cunningham has been travelling from the US state of Massachusetts to the Canadian province of New Brunswick to fish since the 1970s. When he first started, he would sit on the deck at the Black Brook Salmon Club, on one of the Miramachi’s tributaries, watching the water boil with the leaps and rolls of salmon.

Rip Cunningham has witnessed the decline of salmon numbers in the Miramichi River since the 1970s