The part about not reviving Steelhead and Coho shows how much concern some people have for the fish. There just a cash cow until there gone.
Fisheries biologists had concerns about Skeena
Government 'caved' under pressure, environmentalists charge
Larry Pynn
Vancouver Sun
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
Fisheries and Oceans Canada "caved under pressure" in 2006 to maintain a commercial gillnet fishery on the Skeena River, despite warnings that many of the fish caught were from populations too weak to withstand a major fishing effort, environmental groups charged Monday.
Documents obtained by the groups under freedom-of-information legislation and circulated at a news conference suggest that a federal fisheries biologist on the North Coast had significant concerns about the government's decision to keep a commercial gillnet sockeye fishery open last summer.
David Einarson, area chief of resource management for federal fisheries, immediately denied the accusations, arguing from Prince Rupert that decisions in 2006 were made based on stock availability, not political pressure.
He said the commercial gillnet catch reached its target of 32 per cent of the sockeye run, as it did for the steelhead catch at 24 per cent -- a figure set by user groups years ago.
An e-mail written by Steve Cox-Rogers, a federal stock assessment biologist, attributed the protracted opening to successful lobbying by Prince Rupert Mayor Herb Pond.
"Our mayor flew to Vancouver to get DFO to provide more fishing time and so we ended up fishing a few more days," Cox-Rogers wrote Oct. 11, 2006, to Dana Atagi, section head with the B.C. Ministry of Environment's science and allocation section in Smithers.
In another e-mail, Cox-Rogers said he does not believe the department can muster any technical information to demonstrate that it met its commitments to protect steelhead, which are the basis for a multi-million dollar sports fishery encompassing several tributary rivers to the Skeena. "The real issue for me is that we said we would fish selectively to minimize harvest impacts on non-target species and we caved under pressure," Cox-Rogers wrote to Atagi.
Einarson said the gillnet fleet received more fishing time because the summer sockeye run, 90 per cent of which is headed to Babine Lake, had increased to three million fish from an anticipated 1.7 million and because the fish were proportionately younger than expected and boats were having more trouble catching them.
The fleet caught more of the weaker stocks in 2006, he said, but the catch did not cause a conservation concern.
Einarson described the e-mails as a personal opinion not based on fact.
He said fishing openings are determined by the Prince Rupert office and sent to Vancouver for approval. He agreed that the Prince Rupert mayor flew to Vancouver to lobby federal fisheries for more fishing time, but said he never heard from federal officials in response to that meeting requesting more fishing time.
The documents also reveal that gillnet fishermen chose to ignore DFO's recommendations that they gently handle, revive and release the steelhead, coho and other non-targeted species they intercepted during the sockeye fishery.
Instead, Cox-Rogers reported, none of the boats were using the "revival boxes" where non-target fish are kept in order to resuscitate them before release.
"In fact, all of the fishermen I spoke to expressed little desire to participate in reviving steelhead or coho and were just throwing them back dead or alive as they hit the boat."
He also noted that compliance with a recommendation that the gillnetters use weed lines, which keep the nets at depths where steelhead usually do not swim during migration, was "very low to non-existent."
"We think these documents show DFO managers put politics ahead of science in making critical management decisions," Watershed Watch executive director Craig Orr said in a press release. "They had management tools to protect endangered salmon and steelhead populations and they chose not to use them."
According to the groups, Watershed Watch and North Coast Steelhead Alliance, DFO more than doubled the number of openings last year compared to the 10-year season average.
"This resulted in excessive by-catch of steelhead and weak salmon stocks and contributed to dangerou sly low returns to many Skeena tributaries," the groups said.
lpynn@png.canwest.comON THE SKEENA
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