The outcomes in both cases were more restrictive to the recreational fishery than logic would indicate with, firstly, a massive finfish closure in Juan de Fuca Strait eliminating hook and line fishing opportunity for all species and secondly, the reduction in the daily limit for chinook salmon from two to one fish per day around the Strait of Georgia (SoG). The reality of these restrictions is more detailed than this brief description allows but against that background, and hard as it may be to believe, DFO has recently taken a decision that in some respects is even more troubling, with ominous implications for the future management of the recreational fishery on Canada’s Pacific coast.
Simply put, DFO has decided to keep in place the now customary restrictions in the north SoG intended to lower the ER on Cowichan River chinook salmon for the remainder of the 2018 season. There is a suite of time and area restricted zones (4 chinook non-retention and 1 finfish closure) in management Areas 13, 14 and 15 and which have been in place since 2006. Three of them are currently in effect (Lambert Channel and Algerine Passage chinook non-retention ending August 15 and the Cape Mudge finfish closure ending August 30) but there was some hope these restrictions would not be implemented at all or, having started, ended early. Apparently not, with DFO indicating that as part of the management planning process for the 2019 season it will “review and discuss removal of these management restrictions in more detail with all stakeholders and First Nations.”
Cowichan River chinook are an important stock on southeast Vancouver Island, with indicator status under the Pacific Salmon Treaty. They typically don’t roam far from home during their ocean lives and when conditions are favourable prefer to stay in the Strait of Georgia, especially the northern half. They are big contributors to the inside recreational chinook fishery and are important to the local First Nation’s food fishery. Although there is some enhancement of this stock the current abundance is largely from natural production with a spawning escapement target of 6500 adults, defined as age-3 or older fish. For some reason this chinook stock also has an unusually large number of age-2 fish returning to spawn but as these are always smaller males they contribute relatively little to production.
After a period of earlier decline Cowichan chinook rebuilt strongly through the 1990’s, with the return peaking at over 14,000 adult fish in 1999. Regrettably it was all downhill after that, with a return in 2009 of considerably less than a thousand adult fish. In response to this rapid decline management measures were put in place in an attempt to reverse the trend, with the implementation in 2006 of large terminal area closures adjacent to the Cowichan estuary and the five restricted zones in the north SoG mixed-stock fishery mentioned earlier. As well, starting in the early 2000’s significant work was conducted in-river to upgrade the habitat and this is thought to have been a major contributor to the current rebuilding trend.
And what a rebuild! Since the low in 2009 the return each fall has steadily increased, meeting the escapement target in 2015 and going more than a thousand adult fish over in 2016. And the return in 2017 was bigger yet, now estimated at 14,698 adult fish or more than twice the spawning escapement target and the outlook for 2018 is similar. Cowichan chinook went from being south coast problem child to gold star status in remarkably short order.
This background is important when considering the decision by DFO this week to keep the remaining restricted zones in the north SoG in effect. There has always been considerable skepticism regarding the effectiveness of these, as anglers have simply learned to fish around them. Acknowledgement of this by DFO stock assessment staff is found in a recent briefing note reviewing sport fishery management for Cowichan chinook that states, “There appears to be no significant change in ER in the northern areas despite 5 spot closures. More analysis is required, but effort appears to have redistributed around the closures with little reduction of impact on stocks of concern.”
The briefing note cites the expected return of Cowichan chinook in 2018 of somewhere between 10 and 15,000 adult fish (or about twice the spawning escapement target), with an additional 2 – 3,000 adult chinook expected as a result of the daily limit reduction for chinook in the Strait of Georgia recreational fishery, an action expected to reduce the exploitation rate on all chinook stocks encountered there by about 30%. The briefing note concludes by stating “The reduction in recreational catch limits is expected to be more effective in reducing the Cowichan exploitation rate than the spot closures” and “There is no evidence which would suggest the expected reduction in ER would change if the northern GST chinook closures were eliminated or adjusted.”
Given all this, one has to question why senior management staff insists on keeping the five spot closures in place because the decision is poisoning the relationship between the recreational fishery and DFO. In light of the other decisions made this year regarding chinook management in the southern BC recreational fishery, which they themselves could easily have been different while achieving the same possible benefits, there is an urgent need for a win-win decision but instead DFO has managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
Overshadowing any short-term disappointment at not being able to fish where there’s no good reason not to do so, earlier I described the decision to keep the spot closures as having “ominous implications for the future management of the recreational fishery on Canada’s Pacific coast” If the department can’t bring itself to remove demonstrably ineffective seasonal restrictions far from the river of concern terminal zone, on a stock of salmon with a population trajectory and current abundance that is amongst the best of any in the Pacific region, what hope is there that Canadians can expect rational and objective management of any species in the recreational fishery in the future?
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Being guiding season life has been busy for me and once again I regret the absence of timely commentary in this space. Several weeks ago I wrote another piece for the Island Fisherman magazine website, this time on the relative abundance of coho in the Strait of Georgia this summer and the link can be found here:
About the only other comment I’ll make about coho right now is in regard to the weather. This extended hot and dry spell amounts to a death sentence for small stream coho and rain can’t arrive quick enough. If coho fishing in 2020 is slow just think back to the weather this summer.
]]>Elsewhere, in inner Barclay Sound adjacent to Port Alberni the sockeye fishery for returning Stamp/Somass fish is now underway. The forecast is for a reasonable return but it’s early days with lower abundance observed so far. The daily limit for anglers remains at 2 fish per day, hopefully that will be increased to 4 sockeye per day sooner than later.
Meanwhile the chinook fishing continues to be productive around much of Vancouver Island and near Vancouver. Good fishing stories are being reported from widely separated locations such as Port Renfrew, Barclay Sound, Northwest Vancouver Island, and numerous places between Campbell River and lower Howe Sound. A new development in the north Strait of Georgia was the recent arrival of coho, in Campbell River they simply showed up over the Father’s Day weekend. One day there was none, and hadn’t been all year, and the next there were reports coming in of encounters from all over. Naturally given the date the coho are still on the smaller size but they’re ambitious, hammering larger plugs fished deep for chinook, so once they start eating adult herring they will start to grow quickly.
Counter to all the gloomy news coverage in mainstream media fed by anti-fishing NGO’s, the real story is that there’s lots of productive salmon fishing being had around the southern BC coast, long may it last!
]]>Around the Strait of Georgia an excellent example of citizen science has been underway since the winter of 2010/11. At that time south coast DFO stock assessment staff asked a few anglers to collect basic bio-data to develop a better understanding of those chinook stocks using inner SBC waters during the non-summer period when there is less fishing activity. Criteria such as tissue samples for DNA analysis, length, weight and possibly scales from retained fish for age analysis, plus the presence or absence of an adipose fin to help assess the contribution of hatchery origin chinook in the overall encounter rate. As well this program is applied not only to retained fish but those of sub-legal size, if possible.
Like all good things this program has really taken off, becoming a project undertaken all year and now including coho, acquiring the name Avid Anglers. Recently DFO held the fifth annual meeting with participants to review the ongoing and steadily expanding stream of data. There are currently about three-dozen participants with the largest number coming from the southeast end of Vancouver Island. Further up the strait the participants are more spread out, with none as yet over on the Sunshine Coast, and I’m one of three from the Campbell River area.
In addition to collecting bio-data participants also keep a logbook of their fishing trips and analysis of the combined information is enabling DFO stock assessment staff to put together an increasingly comprehensive picture of the individual chinook and coho stocks using the strait. In 2017 Avid Anglers encountered (brought to the boat) 2,189 chinook and 270 coho and of the measured fish 62% were of legal size while the logbook data allows encounters to be categorized by both fishing management area and month. One important finding based on five years worth of data is being able to develop an estimate of the contribution of hatchery vs. non-hatchery origin fish to the fishery. Canadian origin hatchery chinook are not adipose fin-clipped unless they have a coded wire-tag, the majority of which do not, while in the US all hatchery origin chinook and coho are adipose fin-clipped, a program known as mass-marking. The logbook data shows that 26% of encountered chinook are adipose fin-clipped however the DNA analysis indicates that 42% of all chinook encountered in the strait are of hatchery origin. To no great surprise the Avid Angler program has shown that in general in the Strait of Georgia the mark rate increases the closer to the border an angler is fishing.
The bio-data for coho is harder to collect, not only because in general they are encountered less frequently than chinook, but also because wild coho are in most years not allowed to be retained. I’m not alone in finding that taking tissue samples quickly from wild coho that have to be released is much more of a challenge than doing the same with chinook – the “wrist” in front of the tail is harder to hold on to than with chinook and in general coho seem to squirm around more.
A newer initiative has become associated with the Avid Anglers program, one analyzing the stomach contents of chinook and coho. This is being lead by Will DuGuid, a PhD. student in the Fisheries Ecology and Marine Conservation Group, University of Victoria. Over time this project will demonstrate the importance of key prey species and enable detection of changes in the forage fish community and the broader Strait of Georgia ecosystem itself. This will be especially important for prey species that are not commercially important, which is to say most of them, and for which little or no focused research has been conducted. And it will have positive implications in understanding the dynamics of other animals such as birds that target the same prey species.
Anglers participating in this program are asked to keep the intact stomachs and intestines of retained salmon and place them in zip lock bags along with a form describing date and location of capture, depth at which the fish was caught and on what type of gear. As someone who has always been curious about what the fish I catch have been eating I have to resist the urge to open up the stomach and have a look! Will has arranged a number of drop stations around the Strait of Georgia who have volunteered freezer space, usually tackle stores and marinas, to which anglers can take their bags of treasures.
The stomach contents don’t have to be freshly eaten to be useful as undigested body parts like bones and scales can be analyzed via DNA for species ID. So far the most unusual find from one of my contributions is a northern smoothtongue found in a chinook stomach caught back in February. These fish are a deep water smelt, much more abundant that most anglers know about but infrequently encountered by salmon unless they rise up in the water column.
Hopefully more anglers and guides will become involved in both of these programs, the knowledge gained can only be positive for management of the recreational fishery and an increased understanding of the ecosystem it takes place in.
]]>Meanwhile, the chinook fishing in the Strait of Georgia in recent months can only be described as productive, at times highly so. The winter fishery in the central strait was very good and by late March went into high gear near Vancouver followed in April by some of the best chinook fishing on record off Nanaimo and which persisted right through May. Consistent with the pattern of the past few years fishing in the northern Strait of Georgia lagged behind but then it too turned on in early May. Further to the northeast from Campbell River, the fishing in Bute Inlet and the adjacent mainland shore has been possibly the best in twenty years or more.
Here are two recent local examples of this high-caliber chinook fishing. Last week I guided on a couple of afternoon tides for a large resort in the Stuart Island area, on the first of which 54 chinook were brought back to the dock. Admittedly there were 27 boats participating but the actual fishing time likely averaged only about three and a half hours, numerous fish got away and many more sub-legal fish were released. I don’t know the exact count on the second tide but judging from the activity at the cleaning table it looked similar, with the largest chinook coming in at just over 30 pounds, a big fish for the time of year. These fish were encountered over a wide area, from all around the lower half of Bute Inlet through a number of locations around Stuart Island itself and east as far as the approach waters to Toba Inlet.
In Campbell River on June 9th Royal LePage Advance Realty for the third time held its annual Salmon Derby. Although the boundaries were expanded this year to include Areas 14 and 15, almost all the contending fish were caught around the south end of Quadra Island in Area 13. Lots of chinook were brought to the weigh-in station and once again all of the largest 10 fish were over 20 pounds, with the biggest being 26.2 pounds – congratulations to derby winner Ken Bown! Final details are not available at the time of writing but once more participation was strong with 600+ registered entrants and funds raised for two local charities will likely match the $40,000+ generated at each of the past two events. Congratulations also to the organizers, this event has quickly become a fixture in the Campbell River fishing calendar.
There may be some thus far unknown big picture environmental reason or reasons for this strong chinook fishing around the inner southern BC coast, confounding forecasts, generating an “inside distribution” of fish, a phrase more usually associated with coho salmon. The Area G commercial troll fishery along the west coast of Vancouver Island in May was notably unproductive compared to past years at the same time and further way reports coming from places like Langara Island in Haida G’waii are similar so far this summer. In a place renowned for big chinook small fish, 10 pounds or less, are being encountered, something almost unknown in previous years.
Another unusual occurrence this spring and early summer is the high prevalence of marked chinook (i.e. adipose fin-clipped) being encountered in Bute Inlet and nearby areas along the mainland. One guide I talked to there said he’d caught 40 marked chinook already this year, extraordinary! Given that hatcheries in Canada only mark those chinook which contain a coded wire tag, usually about 5% of the production with higher rates (15%) applied on those which are indicator stocks under the Pacific Salmon Treaty (e.g. Quinsam River), this very high encounter rate with marked fish would imply that many of these fish are from the US. By law in Washington and Oregon all hatchery origin chinook are adipose fin-clipped, a practice known as mass marking, simply to denote they are hatchery fish enabling mark-selective chinook fishery management, whereby unmarked thought-to-be wild fish must be released.
Quite why there would be such a relatively large number of these fish, some big ones well over 20 pounds included, migrating to this part of the world is currently unknown but it is certainly a noteworthy occurrence. Obviously the fish are chasing feed and judging by the stomach contents of retained chinook there appears to be lots of herring around, but this is true also elsewhere around the Strait of Georgia. Perhaps a review of recovered CWT’s and of water conditions (temperature, salinity etc.) will produce an answer to this mystery, I hope so.
In closing there has been much negative comment about the cooler and wetter weather over the past couple of weeks, but not from this guy. As in so much of the rest of the world we seem to have lost all balance in the weather, dominated by extremes one way or the other. After getting an above average snow pack on local mountains this past winter it has largely melted away already as a result of drier and hotter than usual weather in April and May and I began to despair for the creeks and the fish life they contain. If you, like me, care about the freshwater survival of coho then this current weather pattern is just what is required and it can stick around for a while yet as far as I’m concerned.
]]>Once again I was asked to write a column by Island Fisherman magazine about this and the link to its website is copied below.
Even more ironically the chinook fishing broadly around the Strait of Georgia in recent months has been very productive, with hot fishing from Vancouver to Campbell River and most places in between – the reality on the water simply doesn’t match the negative picture portrayed by DFO and those interests not favourably disposed to our fishery. Pictured below is a 20lb chinook I caught recently, a bit bigger than average but demonstrating the quality of fish being caught regularly here.
I know it has been too long since my last post. It’s not for want of things to write about, rather the time and right frame of mind to do so. As indicated earlier this spring there are some big management challenges ahead for the recreational fishery on the BC coast for the 2018 season and, if nothing else, the outcomes are far from settled even now and I haven’t wanted to comment on ‘maybe’s”, the stakes are just too important.
Last week the BC Supreme Court made a decision of significant importance to the BC recreational fishery and you can read my perspective on it here:
As with the negotiations for the existing Salmon Allocation Policy starting a quarter-century ago, the recreational fishery will be represented in the policy review by the Sport Fishing Advisory Board and there’s lots of experience by members in these sorts of discussions to put forward the best possible case for our fishery. The important thing will be that the existing priority access for the recreational fishery in harvesting chinook and coho salmon before any commercial harvest takes place is maintained.
On other topics briefly, the new license year has started without a change to the fee structure, now 23 years and counting. Surely one of the all-time bargains from government after that long a time period so enjoy it while you can – at some point the fee structure will change i.e. increase significantly, but hopefully in exchange for agreement with government that all the additional revenue will return to the Pacific region to be used in ways that better support management of the recreational fishery. A topic to be explored more fully for another time.
And just like last year hot chinook fishing has broken out across much of the Strait of Georgia in recent weeks, something to give hope for the rest of the summer season ahead.
]]>I will be continuing with material solely for my blog but I anticipate there will be the link to an Island Fisherman column posted here from time to time in the future.
A reminder that licenses for both the fresh and saltwater recreational fisheries will expire March 31st, time to renew!
]]>As hoped for the recreational halibut season began March 1st, but despite the significantly lower allowable catch this year the size regulations until the end of the month are the same as last years, this because the license (April 1 – March 31) and total allowable catch (January 1 – December 31) years are misaligned. New maximum size regulations, as yet unknown, will come into effect beginning in April for the remainder of the season. However the more fundamental issue of an equitable allocation policy between the commercial and recreational sectors will have to be addressed again. The combination of an early closure of the recreational season in 2017 and the consequences of a lowered national total allowable catch and thus 15% recreational share in 2018 have triggered an urgent need to have the inter-sectoral allocation policy revised.
While on groundfish, the management of the outside yelloweye rockfish stock is causing real grief for those fisheries that may encounter them – deliberately targeting these fish has essentially become a thing of the past. As with halibut the final regulations for rockfish opportunity for the outside waters recreational fishery in 2018 have not been announced, however the proposed measures to keep within a cap for the recreational fishery of less than 15 metric tons (the preferred metric for these fish by DFO) of total mortality – not landed catch – will likely restrict access to other more abundant fish such halibut and lingcod. It needs to be repeated that this is the consequence of gross mismanagement of the outside yelloweye rockfish stock by DFO thirty years ago.
Despite generally productive chinook fishing around southern BC in recent decades, the possibility of numerous threats to continued access in a way the recreational fishery has been accustomed to in the past are presenting themselves. The most immediate is the federal governments apparent determination to use fishing closures or severe restrictions beginning in the 2018 season as a means of providing more chinook salmon as prey for the endangered Southern Resident Killer Whale population, this despite the fact that the best available science indicates the net benefit to the killer whales themselves is uncertain or minimal. A case of management by optics to convince the Canadian public that government is actually doing something to ensure the future viability of these animals.
The challenge for the SFAB is to convince the federal government to implement measures that will provide some benefit to the killer whales of concern (SRKW) without destroying the recreational fishery in a wide area around the bottom end of Vancouver Island, through parts of the Gulf Islands and off the mouth of the Fraser River. Firstly, finfish closures wherein no one can fish must be avoided to sustain legitimate bottom fishing opportunities for species like lingcod and halibut. Secondly, there must be breaks between restricted and non-restricted areas in order to provide some opportunity to go chinook salmon fishing. And thirdly, other users must also face constraints otherwise any chinook foregone by the recreational fishery will be “lost” to these whales in the ongoing noise pollution that compromises their ability to hunt and which likely
is as much a cause of insufficient feeding as insufficient feed.
Looking into the not so distant future, 27 naturally reproducing chinook stocks in southern BC will be reviewed by COSEWIC (Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada), an at arms length from government body of scientists tasked with providing advice to the federal government on endangered wildlife and their habitats. An assessment in the endangered or threatened categories can mean a listing under the federal Species At Risk Act (SARA), with all kinds of management actions designed to secure the future of the animal under scrutiny to follow. You can expect to read more about this initiative before too long.
Discussions on “regular” salmon management issues continue as always. In my part of the world attempts are being made to reduce the time component in the five time and area restricted areas around the north Strait of Georgia which are intended to lower the harvest rate by the recreational fishery on Cowichan chinook. In place (this time around) for a dozen years at least, they commenced at a time when this important chinook stock was in big trouble. Thanks mainly to significant habitat work in-river this chinook stock has rebounded strongly and has significantly exceeded the spawning escapement target (6500 age 3+ fish) in both the last two years, yet DFO gives no indication that it will move on the SFAB’s request to cut the time component by 50%. This could be a real test of the departments’ ability to act as an honest manager of the recreational fishery, or whether it will in effect “move the goal posts” and continue to find reasons to maintain the regulations that are a significant and now unjustified constraint to our fishery.
Other examples of completely unjustified restrictions that defy logic include a prohibition on retaining salmon near the Fraser river mouth in January and February even though there are no stocks of concern there and prohibition on retaining adipose fin-clipped chinook in the southern Strait of Georgia recreational fishery in the spring and early summer period, even though these hatchery origin fish may contain a coded wire-tag which everywhere else DFO wants anglers to turn in.
And then there’s the annual struggle to try and secure some limited retention of wild coho around southern BC. The proposal that the SFAB put forward in 2017, and which was turned down, would have seen very modest retention opportunity (e.g. one unmarked coho per angler per day starting September 1 in the Strait of Georgia) that, according to DFO’s own data, would have increased the recreational harvest rate in marine waters by one or two tenths of one percent, a difference to the returns that can’t be measured on the spawning grounds. Apart from providing some welcome additional opportunity in the latter part of the season with almost no conservation risk, the ability to retain a small number of wild coho would provide an opportunity to easily take tissue samples for DNA analysis in order to get a better understanding of the stock composition by management area. This proposal has gone forward once again in 2018 in the hope that DFO will look more favorably on it.
So it goes, to say nothing of trying to secure meaningful recreational opportunity for Dungeness crab and prawns in many areas of the BC coast. And overlaying all of this is exactly what the ramifications for the broad fishing community in Canada will be from the current federal government’s initiative regarding what is termed reconcilliation with First Nations. Don’t take any recreational fishing opportunity for granted!
]]>In late January the International Pacific Halibut Commission (Canada & US) held its 94th annual meeting, in Portland. Against a background of declining recruitment to and abundance of this fishery resource, for only the second time in the history of this particular treaty process the two countries were unable to reach agreement on allowable catch shares between them. While it is apparent that halibut in the northeast Pacific Ocean are experiencing a low productivity phase, something that all wildlife goes through in the eternal “peaks and valleys” cycle of abundance, the situation is aggravated by the unwillingness of Alaska to deal with the large and persistent issue of halibut by-catch, usually high numbers of smaller fish, caught in fisheries directed at other species. The numbers are truly large and given that, as a generalization, halibut migrate in a northwest to southeast direction across their range this issue has big implications for recruitment to and allowable harvest along Canada’s Pacific coast.
In the absence of a bilateral agreement DFO has taken the precautionary approach and made the decision to reduce the Canadian total allowable catch (TAC, all fisheries) to 7.1 million pounds, down from 7.45 million pounds in 2017. After the various fishery allocations have been accounted for, including most importantly the 85/15% commercial/recreational sharing formula used by the government, the recreational fishery allocation for 2018 is 928,000 pounds. Given that the maximum size and bag limit regulations in place last year in combination with a 1.18 million pound recreational catch allocation resulted in an early closure (September 8), it quickly became obvious there were going to be some painful discussions regarding halibut opportunities in 2018.
These took place this past weekend at the most recent main Sport Fishing Advisory Board meeting, beginning at the Groundfish/Shellfish working group session on the Friday. Needless to say there were a variety of opinions in how best to utilize the allowed recreational catch share but once again maximizing season length was a priority consideration and there’s a number of variables like weather, price of fuel and how good salmon fishing is that nobody can predict and which have potential impact on the amount of effort directed at catching halibut. Of course this isn’t the first time this sort of discussion has had to occur, albeit with less constraints previously, and working from a decade of experience and with some maximum size and probable rate of catch scenarios developed by DFO groundfish staff the SFAB volunteers developed a set of recommendations which, based on past experience, will be implemented by the department.
The season start date will be March 1, a one month delay, and the annual limit of halibut remains at 6 fish with a daily bag limit of 1. A number of participants advocated for a possession limit (in possession away from home) of one fish also, in order to allow for a larger maximum size limit but in the end the recommendation is for continuing a 2 fish possession limit, with the smaller of the fish having a maximum size of 83 cm/33 inches, about a 15-pound fish. The larger size limit on one of the two fish is 115 cm/46 inches, a halibut in the low 40-pound range.
Assuming the recommendations are implemented by DFO, because the halibut allocation is for the calendar year but the regulations are linked to the license year (April 1 – March 31) the season will begin March 1 using last year’s regulations in which the larger fish maximum size limit is 133 cm/53 inches or approximately a 70-pound fish. Effort in the early season is generally low so hopefully there won’t be too much of a gold rush mentality by those looking to harvest a larger halibut and accelerate the landed poundage, with potential early closure implications later in the year.
As halibut go a fish in the low forty pound range is not a large one and there will be lots of disappointed anglers, especially when they have to release a much larger halibut, that they won’t be allowed to keep good-sized fish. The combination of last years early closure along with what are expected to be this year’s highly restrictive size limits has ensured the need to change the commercial and recreational fisheries inter-sectoral halibut allocation policy, so expect hear more about this in the not so distant future. No argument has ever been made that the value of a pound of halibut caught in the commercial fishery is worth more to the Canadian economy than that which might be caught in the recreational fishery, so why should several hundred commercial fishing Canadians have control over 85% of the resource that a hundred thousand or more anglers wish to access via the recreational fishery?
The other challenging issue dealt with at the recent main SFAB meeting concerns management of what are termed outside yelloweye rockfish, meaning those caught along the west coast of Vancouver Island and on the central and north coasts; these fish are now recognized as genetically distinct from those living in inside waters, i.e. Strait of Georgia and Johnstone Strait. Like all of the some three-dozen rockfish species, yelloweye’s are very long-lived, non-migratory, slow to mature and with erratic spawning rates and, crucially, are prone to barotrauma or the inability to deal with pressure change when brought up from the deeps.
The outside yelloweye stock (OYE) has been assessed as in need of the utmost protection, no easy matter when they are readily caught by those fishing for halibut, lingcod and other groundfish species. Hook and line fishermen of all kinds are now paying the price of the gross negligence by DFO groundfish staff several decades ago, when they allowed OYE harvest in the range of 800 – 1,100 tons per year in the late 1980’s to early 1990’s, almost all by various commercial fisheries. Now the demographic shoe has dropped and DFO wants to cap the all-fishery (commercial, First Nations and recreational) harvest to 100 tons per year, with the recreational share cap based on past sector harvest averages of just 13 tons annually. This is going to be close to mission impossible without draconian measures such as large area closures because even with the recent year bag limit of 1 yelloweye per angler per day the assessed recreational catch is running at 50+ tons per year.
In an effort to avoid some of the worst possible effects of probable new management measures, various recommendations were made to DFO, including the mandatory use of descending devices by those anglers specifically bottom fishing. There is a growing body of evidence that a rockfish quickly returned to depth and released has a pretty good chance at surviving the experience and there are a number of devices on the market that enable the angler to do this fairly easily. Expect to hear more on this challenging issue before the outside fishery summer season gets going in earnest.
]]>The management framework that DFO operates with is rooted in a series of policies, for example regarding wild salmon, catch monitoring and allocation between sectors for salmon and halibut, as well as those that are more generalist like the Species At Risk Act, which covers all animals and their habitats in Canada. And beyond these policies management domestically is also guided by treaties with other countries – in the Pacific region Canada is signatory to treaties with the USA on halibut, tuna and salmon and a separate multi-country treaty managing salmon on the high seas.
Of the two Pacific salmon treaties Canada is party to the latter one has less obviously to do with the regional recreational fishery, all the same the activities of the North Pacific Anadromous Fish Commission are important and for those interested in the big picture regarding Pacific salmon there’s plenty of interesting reading to be found on its website (npafc.org).
The Pacific Salmon Treaty between Canada and the US was first signed in 1985 and has undergone periodic revision since then. The core issue the treaty is designed to address is the harvest in the waters of one country (the “intercepting” party) of salmon originating in the rivers of the other (the “producing” party). Salmon are of course oblivious to the invisible lines on a chart that now define the boundaries of each country and given the hundreds if not thousands of salmon stocks roaming around the nearshore ocean across their range in the northeast Pacific the potential for inappropriate and/or unacknowledged harvest is significant.
The number of examples to describe this issue is large but to cite just a few – the chinook salmon originating in WCVI rivers as well as my own home stock in the Campbell/Quinsam system are classic treaty fish, as far north migrants the majority of these fish are harvested in SE Alaska. The flip side of this is that over the years and regardless of fishery or season, three-quarters of all the chinook salmon harvested outside the surfline along WCVI are of US origin, mostly from Washington and Oregon, but also some from Idaho and California.
Proper management of Fraser River sockeye was a big impetus for the original treaty because in years of a strong outside diversion many of these returning Canadian origin fish traverse Juan de Fuca Strait along the Washington state shoreline; in recognition of this the US now has a defined share amounting to 16% of the annual allowable harvest. A similar issue arises in Washington management area 7 near Point Roberts (thank you Kaiser Wilhelm 1!) in which chum salmon heading for the Fraser River school before heading into freshwater.
Elsewhere the Alaskan Panhandle area is riddled with management challenges whereby most of the salmon that originate in the large rivers like the Taku, Stikine and Alsek that flow into the sea there actually come from Canada. To use but one example, 100% of all chinook spawning in the Taku River do so in Canada yet about two-thirds of all Taku River chinook are caught in Alaska!
The terms of the Pacific Salmon Treaty are implemented by the Commission, which is headquartered in Vancouver, BC. The PSC has its own small staff that work with domestic agency staff and stakeholder representatives from the jurisdictions covered in the geographic remit of the treaty. This covers roughly from Oregon up to the top of the Alaskan Panhandle, outside of which area Canadian origin salmon comprise only a small minority of the catches.
For PSC management purposes this vast geographic range is split into four areas, known as Panels – North, South, Fraser and Transboundary. The first deals with all species of salmon and extends from Cape Suckling, AK to Cape Caution on the central BC coast. The Southern Panel extends from there down to the Oregon/California border and deals with all salmon except pink and sockeye salmon originating from the Fraser River, which are dealt with by the Fraser Panel. The Transboundary Panel primarily deals with boundary straddling issues as briefly described above in the Panhandle area, although in theory it could also deal with the slowly revitalized salmon stocks in BC’s extreme southern interior that originate in rivers (Similikameen, Okanagan) that are part the Columbia River watershed.
Given their range and variety of ocean life histories, for the BC recreational fishery chinook salmon are the most important species dealt with in treaty discussions. As a generalization treaty management of chinook is broken up into two broad categories of fishery – there are three aggregate abundance-based management fisheries (AABM – WCVI, NBC and SEAK) while all others are so-called ISBM or Individual Stock Based Management fisheries.
The PSC has a standing Chinook Technical Committee (CTC) made up of chinook specialists from agencies in both countries and they analyze a broad range of data (total returns, age at escapement, CWT recoveries etc.) from indicator rivers (like the Quinsam) and harvests to estimate both total chinook abundance and allowable harvests in the highly mixed stock AABM fisheries for the year to come. By about April each year these harvest ceilings are then provided to the domestic managing agencies (DFO in Canada) for sharing amongst the various fisheries in each jurisdiction according to their own allocation policies.
PSC management of coho is less complex, however there is a southern abundance-based management regime to which both countries must adhere. Based around a tiered abundance estimate (low, moderate and abundant) to each of which is assigned an allowable exploitation rate ceiling, these can influence not only the management of coho salmon in each country but also fisheries for all other salmon in which coho might be caught incidentally to the target species.
Meetings by the appropriate sections of the Salmon Commission can occur throughout the year but most usually through the winter and spring as post-season reporting and analysis and pre-season planning takes place. Outside of emergencies, the one usual exception to this is that the Fraser Panel meets weekly in-season to review test fishing and other assessment data as the runs of Fraser sockeye and pink salmon develop each summer.
This is just the briefest description of a vitally important process in salmon management, one that can have significant implications for the BC recreational fishery. As with the North Pacific Anadromous Fish Commission there is lots of interesting information available at the Pacific Salmon Commission website (psc.org), please check it out.
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