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[Sage2106]

We need to take our fish away from the dfo. As soon as they get out of the tidal waters tell them to pound salt we will look after them. Lets put this is basic math lets say the dfo says 100 chum past mission. Fn beach seine says they harvested 10. But they also threw 10 up onto the beach beacuse they were already depositing single eggs and dont wanna deal with them again. Now we are down to 80 but the seine nets dragging through the reds destroys another 10 chums spawn. Now we are down to 70 which doesnt include predators poaching or sports harvest. Now lets base this over say the last dozen years of beach seining... hmmm every year less and less fish return kinda of a head scratcher isnt it

[poper]

Maybe time for a another poll? 

[avid angler]

Ralph is only fooling himself if he thinks FN are accurately reporting their catch for any species of fish. It’s not a figment of anyone’s imagination but his own.

[RalphH]

. Now lets base this over say the last dozen years of beach seining... hmmm every year less and less fish return kinda of a head scratcher isnt it

yet if we compare recent returns, 2016 & 17 these are higher than most of the years from 1951 to 1993 per some of the links to papers STS provided. 2016 was the highest on record.

Doesn't quite fit with your claim beach seines are destroying the run. In fact if look at most of the runs in the table of: http://www.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/Library/192607.pdf on pg 23, most of the runs are lower than this year's return of about 800k.

That spawning capacity of the lower Fraser System has been increased to about 2 million thanks to the DFO administered SEP of the 70s and 80s it could be argued chum have been over enhanced and that has lead to higher exploitation which has contributed to putting IF coho and steelhead in peril. 

[Sage2106]

Your going off a cbc report from what the dfo said was the biggest return? Same as the huge return of late run sockeye this year that didnt materialize? Yep your right if the cbc says its a bumper year it must have been. Go actually spend some time out on the river and see what actually goes on.

[avid angler]

There’s a reason literally everyone who spends more then 2 days a week on the river has the opposite opinion to Ralph. He’s the white knight for DFO and all the sheep that buy into all the garbage they spew. Baaaaaaaaaaa🐑

[BBarley]

While I’m no advocate for what Ralph has to share, I wouldn’t dispel everything he has to say as pure heresy. I’ve watched the beach seines for both pinks and chum and know how they are done and while one could argue that it has a detrimental effect on spawning salmon by way of redd destruction, the same can be said for nearly any action on the river during a spawn. Maybe not to the same scale, but everything has a cumulative effect.

Chum salmon create a paradox in that they are extremely important to the lower portions of many river systems in the biomass the contribute but are also extremely valuable for their roe. I’ve seen it on the Kitimat where a heavily subsidized chum hatchery program led to a substantial commercial fishery and I’ve never heard nor seen the numbers recover to what they once were.

So I do believe their is a relationship between the SEP’s artificially enhancing the number beyond what is naturally sustaining and that there is a negative effect on comigrating salmon/steelhead because of this.

[RalphH]

Your going off a cbc report from what the dfo said was the biggest return? Same as the huge return of late run sockeye this year that didnt materialize? Yep your right if the cbc says its a bumper year it must have been. Go actually spend some time out on the river and see what actually goes on.

..and you are asking other people to rely on you?

I do spend time on the local rivers particularly in the fall - 2 to 3 times a week. Grew up by a salmon spawning stream.

[Old Blue]

I think we're due for another poll if Ralph should be put in silence mode for a bit. 

[Sage2106]

Im not asking people to rely on me im stating what ive seen with my own eyes. The dfo has no true numbers on anything anymore cause they have no boots on the ground and go off historical data. But like i said they dont take into account what actually happens on the river so they are always basing their estimates on the high end and are continually coming up short. How about the year the million sockeye made it past mission but disapeared somewhere past that but no one can figure it out? The fraser stocks took a nose dive as soon as they allowed gill nets to be drifted and fish to be ripped off their reds in a selective fishery. The strong fish with the stkngest genes will swim in the stongest current drifted gill net wipes them out. The rec sector has been shut out and curtailed for years. My dad said bar fishing years ago they were allowed to run 2 leaders off 1 rod. Then we went to 1 leader treble hooks. Then we were reduced to single hook and then single barbless with intermittent bait bans. Fn went from set nest only from friday night to sunday night to drifting 300 600 and even 1000 foot gill nets for days even weeks on end yet we are the first ones shut down? 1986 the rec sector was closed to retaining wild steelhead on the fraser yet the nets kept on going and increasingly got worse yet we pay the consequences. I dont care they shut us down but they need to shut down the true monster of the river. The chum are the life blood of all our fish so once theyre gone everything will be gone. I pay to fish i have i limit what i pay to fish helps put money back into the resource yet other group's take and dont put anything back. Why do the hatchery coho returning get loaded into totes and givin to fn? Why not let the hatchery sell off those fish and put the money back i to the hatchery? Oh wait thats common sense cant have that in this day and age now can we

[RalphH]

Beach seining has been around since the 90s. It was introduced as a selective method for FNs during the fall IF coho shut down and have been in place since at least 2003.

Suddenly in 2018 when the Fraser closure is extended by 2 1/2 weeks and everybody goes ballistic beach seining - mostly ignored to this point - becomes a hot button issue and the cause of the collapse of everything except maybe Western Civilization. Is it coincidence or something else?

Something else is my guess.

[wildmanyeah]

Beach seining has been around since the 90s. It was introduced as a selective method for FNs during the fall IF coho shut down and have been in place since at least 2003.

Suddenly in 2018 when the Fraser closure is extended by 2 1/2 weeks and everybody goes ballistic beach seining - mostly ignored to this point - becomes a hot button issue and the cause of the collapse of everything except maybe Western Civilization. Is it coincidence or something else?

Something else is my guess.

Sports fishing groups choose to work with first nation groups over the last 10 years rather then launch a public campaign against them that seems to be materializing now.  Beach Seining was not being ignored and everyone knew this was happening but the sports fishing groups were largely okay with it when sportfishing on the river was open. Sportsfishing groups were largely silencing there members over this is. They would say things like "yes we have seen this happen but this is only done by a few bad apples and we have seen the beach seine fisheries and they are selective. I brought this issue up before with the Fraser river peacekeepers and SFAC and that was pretty much what I was told.

When DFO closed sportfishing for conservation reasons but kept beach seine open then this was a big shot in the gut to the sports fishing groups who have been working tirelessly behind the scenes with DFO,First Nations to keep selective fishing open for all.

Over this same time period a lot of people managing the fisheries in DFO have retired and a lot of the First Nations Chiefs are no longer Chiefs.

as you pointed out in a different thread all over north america is also seeing this change in management.

Our sports fishing groups want a round table process similar to the ones that are in Nootka Sound and Port Alberni. Everyone fishes or no one fishes. altho that model is more a harvest agreement then a conservation one that promotes increased returns in the years to come.

[Sage2106]

Ralph i love how you tey to spin this into a racist issue every chance you get. If it helps you sleep any better my cousin is a member of the cheam band and i work with a member of the cheam band so i get alot of my information first hand. My issue is if the river is closed for conservation for 1 its closed for all. I could call what the dfo is doing now racist against me because im not fn.

[Blood_Orange]

I could call what the dfo is doing now racist against me because im not fn.

But you wouldn't call it that because then we'd laugh at you because that's not how racism works 

[RalphH]

Ralph i love how you tey to spin this into a racist issue every chance you get. If it helps you sleep any better my cousin is a member of the cheam band and i work with a member of the cheam band so i get alot of my information first hand. My issue is if the river is closed for conservation for 1 its closed for all. I could call what the dfo is doing now racist against me because im not fn.

I didn't say racism though there certainly is racism involved. Historically there's been a lot of racism against FNs.

Resentment is another r word and almost every socio-economic study shows people tend to evaluate how well they are doing relative to others within a reference group not society as a whole. There is no doubt FNs have won more than they have lost over the last few decades. They gotten a larger share of a shrinking pie; the pie being both the total fish return and the access to fishing opportunities.

There could issues with reporting, selective methods not applied as they should be, waste but there really isn't a lot of hard evidence to support it. Generating resentment tends to undermine confidence in traditional measures. DFO's reliance on broad probability estimates (just read the estimate above the stated probability range is about 50% of the minimum run estimate) and not on actual counting introduces the very uncertainty that probability tries to express. For most people that's hard to grasp and on the face of it looks unreliable.