MARCH 1995
FORUM PROCEEDINGS
edited by Patricia Gallaugher
GETTING THE
Missing Fish
STORY STRAIGHT
The East Coast Fishery Crisis and
Pacific Coast Salmon Fisheries:
Facts and Suggestions
continuing studies in SCIENCE
Friday, March 31, 1995
SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY
Simon Fraser University at Harbour Centre
Public Forums on Environmental Issues
©1995
Simon Fraser University
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced without permission.
Printed by Simon Fraser University
CUPE Local 3338
ISBN 0-86491-168-8
The proceedings of this Forum were taped by Rogers Cable
for broadcast by Rogers Cable 4, The Knowledge Network and CPAC.
A 30 minute video on the highlights of the Forum,
“Getting the Missing Fish Story Straight”, is available for $20.00.
Copies are available from
Patricia Gallaugher, Director
Continuing Studies in Science
Simon Fraser University
Burnaby, BC V5A 1S6
Telephone (604) 291-4653
Fax (604) 291-3851
E-mail: Patricia_Gallaugher@sfu.ca
Copies of the Forum Proceedings are available from Patricia Gallaugher for $15 each.
FORUM ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We are grateful for the financial support
of the following:
Environmental Partners Fund, Environment Canada, Government of Canada
Department of Fisheries and Oceans, Government of Canada
Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, Province of British Columbia
Ministry of Environment, Parks and Lands, Government of British Columbia
Faculty of Science, Simon Fraser University
The Steelhead Society of British Columbia
and to each of the following members of the fishing industry
of British Columbia for their financial contributions:
Albion Fisheries Ltd.
Bella Coola Fisheries Ltd.
British Columbia Packers Ltd.
British Columbia Salmon Marketing Council
Canadian Fishing Co.
Great Northern Packing Ltd.
Icicle Seafoods Inc.
J.S. McMillan Fisheries Ltd.
Lion’s Gate Fisheries Ltd.
Lynmar Seafood Brokers
Milbanke Resources Ltd.
Native Brotherhood of British Columbia
Ocean Fisheries Ltd.
The Pacific Seafood Council
Pacific Trollers Association
Seafood Products Co. Ltd.
Seven Seas Fish Co. Ltd.
Sports Fishing Institute of British Columbia
Trans-Pacific Fish Ltd.
Special acknowledgement to Pauline Heaton for giving us the opportunity
to hold the first public screening of A Last Wild Salmon
(produced by Watervisions in association with Great North Releasing, British Columbia Film
and the CanWest Global System with the participation of Telefilm Canada)
v
PREFACE
I would like to thank all the participants, both panelists and audience,
for the active role that they played in this forum. In the end, it was this
participation that made the event so successful.
I especially want to thank Dr. Colin Jones, Dean of Science at Simon Fraser
University, the members of the Advisory Committee, the moderator,
Iona Campagnolo, Ann Cowan of Continuing Studies, and the numerous
representatives of the fishing industry that I consulted with for their
advice on the program design.
Thanks also to the staff at Harbour Centre, to the personnel at Rogers
Community Channel, and to Christina Robb, Calvin Peters and their
supervisor, Dr. Randall Peterman in the School for Resource and
Environmental Management, SFU for their contributions.
A special thanks to Iona Campagnolo for the superb job she did as ‘traffic
cop.’ She kept the program moving along, focussed, and enabled us to
complete what we had set out to do. Also, special thanks to John Fraser,
our committed Ambassador for the Environment, for his frankness and
forthrightness in discussing the Fraser River Sockeye 1994 Report and for his
personal involvement in the forum.
Finally, I would like to acknowledge the continued interest and support
of John Fraser, Iona Campagnolo, Ron MacLeod, Rick Routledge, Dick
Haedrich and Bob Brown in ensuring that the discussion points and issues
raised on fisheries sustainability in this important forum are not set aside.
Patricia Gallaugher
Director, Continuing Studies in Science
Simon Fraser University
September 1995
iii
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Opening Remarks
Dr. Robert C. Brown, Simon Fraser University, Institute of Fisheries Analysis...........................................1
Mr. David Zirnhelt, Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food .................................................................1
The Honourable Iona Campagnolo ...................................................................................................................3
The Global Fishing Crisis: Paying the Price for Over-Expansion
Mr. Peter Weber .....................................................................................................................................................6
Discussion ..............................................................................................................................................................9
Perspectives on the Canadian East Coast Fishery Crisis
Dr. Richard Haedrich .........................................................................................................................................12
Dr. Jake Rice, Respondent to Dr. Haedrich .....................................................................................................18
Discussion ............................................................................................................................................................18
Fraser River Sockeye 1994: Problems and Discrepancies .....................................................................................20
The Honourable John Fraser .............................................................................................................................20
Dr. Lee Alverson..................................................................................................................................................22
Dr. Peter Pearse, Respondent ............................................................................................................................29
Discussion questions addressed to John Fraser, Lee Alverson and Peter Pearse ......................................30
General Audience Commentary .......................................................................................................................34
Final Response of Fraser/Alverson/Pearse ...................................................................................................36
Fish Stocks and Habitat Panel Discussion
Dr. Michael Healey .............................................................................................................................................38
Dr. Mike Henderson ...........................................................................................................................................39
Mr. Fred Fortier ...................................................................................................................................................42
Dr. Craig Orr ........................................................................................................................................................43
Mr. Wayne Harling .............................................................................................................................................43
Dr. Ehor Boyanowsky.........................................................................................................................................44
Discussion ............................................................................................................................................................45
General Discussion .............................................................................................................................................46
Harvesting Panel Discussion
Mr. Richard Gregory ..........................................................................................................................................49
Mr. Dennis Brown ...............................................................................................................................................49
Dr. Parzival Copes ..............................................................................................................................................51
Mr. Alvin Dixon...................................................................................................................................................52
Mr. Dick Carson ..................................................................................................................................................52
Discussion ............................................................................................................................................................53
General Discussion .............................................................................................................................................54
Response from the Panel....................................................................................................................................59
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Management panel discussion .................................................................................................................................62
Dr. Richard Routledge ........................................................................................................................................62
Dr. Randall M. Peterman ...................................................................................................................................62
Mr. Ian Todd ........................................................................................................................................................63
Mr. Roy Alexander ..............................................................................................................................................64
Mr. Charles Bellis ................................................................................................................................................64
Mr. Ron MacLeod................................................................................................................................................66
Discussion ............................................................................................................................................................67
Wrap-up
Mr. Peter Weber ...................................................................................................................................................70
Dr. Richard Haedrich .........................................................................................................................................70
Mr. Ian Waddell ...................................................................................................................................................70
Mr. Ron MacLeod................................................................................................................................................72
Dr. Lee Alverson..................................................................................................................................................72
The Honourable John Fraser .............................................................................................................................74
Final comments from the audience ..................................................................................................................75
Closing Remarks ........................................................................................................................................................78
Mr. Louis Tousignant..........................................................................................................................................78
The Honourable Iona Campagnolo..................................................................................................................83
Dr. Bob Brown .....................................................................................................................................................84
Speakers’ Biographies ...............................................................................................................................................85
viii
SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY
ADVISORY COMMITTEE
continuing studies in SCIENCE
Chairman
Dr. Colin Jones
Dean of Science
Dr. Robert C. Brown
Department of Geography
Acting Head, Institute of Fisheries Analysis
Dr. Leah Bendell-Young
Department of Biological Sciences
Dr. Tony Farrell
Department of Biological Sciences
Dr. Randall M. Peterman
School of Resource and Environmental Management
Dr. Rick Routledge
Department of Mathematics and Statistics
Member of the Fraser River Sockeye Public Review Board
Dr. Patricia Gallaugher
Program Director for Science
Continuing Studies
iv
FORUM PROGRAM
Opening Remarks
Dr. Robert C. Brown, Simon Fraser University; Mr. David Zirnhelt, Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, Government of BC; The Hon. Iona Campagnolo, Moderator
Presentations and Discussions
Change Can Occur in Fisheries
Peter Weber
The Global Fishing Crisis: Paying the Price for Overexpansion
Dr. Richard Haedrich
Perspectives on the Canadian East Coast Fishery Crisis
Dr. Jake Rice, Respondent
The Hon. John Fraser and Dr. Lee Alverson
Fraser River Sockeye, 1994, Problems and Discrepancies
Dr. Peter Pearse, Respondent
Panel Discussions
Issues of Concern and Possible Solutions
to Ensure Long-Term Sustainability of Fish Stocks
Environment
Dr. Ehor Boyanowsky, Mr. Fred Fortier, Mr. Wayne Harling,
Dr. Michael Healey, Dr. Michael Henderson, Dr. Craig Orr
Harvesting
Mr. Richard Gregory, Mr. Dennis Brown, Dr. Parzival Copes,
Mr. Alvin Dixon, Mr. Dick Carson
Management
Dr. Richard Routledge, Dr. Randall Peterman, Mr. Ian Todd
Mr. Roy Alexander, Mr. Charles Bellis, Mr. Ron MacLeod
Wrap-up
Mr. Peter Weber, Dr. Richard Haedrich, Mr. Ian Waddell,
Mr. Ron MacLeod, Dr. Lee Alverson, The Hon. John Fraser
Closing Remarks
Mr. Louis Tousignant, Director General, Pacific Region,
Department of Fisheries and Oceans; The Hon. Iona Campagnolo,
Dr. Robert C. Brown, Simon Fraser University
vi
Opening Remarks
Dr. Robert C. Brown, Simon Fraser University,
Institute of Fisheries Analysis
My name is Bob Brown. I’m the former dean of
the Faculty of Arts at Simon Fraser, and more
importantly for this occasion, I’m the acting director
of the Institute for Fisheries Analysis at SFU. It’s my
pleasure to welcome you all here on behalf of our
university, and especially of our Faculty of Science,
which in cooperation with the Division of Continuing
Studies is offering a series of public forums on
major environmental issues. We’re beginning this
series with fisheries, because we recognize that the
challenges facing us with respect to this resource are
so immediate and so serious.
We here at SFU understand that one of our most
important roles as a public institution is to encourage
open dialogue on the major issues of our time, and
we’re committed to using this exceptional facility in
downtown Vancouver to bring people like yourselves
together, to join with us in attempting to unravel, and
resolve some of these issues. The importance of the
threat to our fisheries is self-evident. Your attendance
and your participation here today endorses this. We
hope that today’s events will bring you to an increased
resolve towards trying to save our fishery resources
here in British Columbia. Maybe we can, at the end
of the day, try to find better ways to work together
to make our new environmental term, sustainability,
more meaningful. So, once again, on behalf of Simon
Fraser University let me welcome you all here today,
and I hope you have a very positive experience with
us. Now it’s my pleasure to introduce to you the
Honourable David Zirnhelt, Minister of Agriculture,
Fisheries and Food, who will present a few remarks on
behalf of the provincial government.
Mr. David Zirnhelt, Minister of
Agriculture, Fisheries and Food
I bring greetings from the British Columbia Government and I would also like to acknowledge the role
in this forum of the Honourable Iona Campagnolo
and the Honourable John Fraser. They really highlight
the level of political expertise here, but I would also
recognize the impressive level of fisheries expertise
here in the audience. Also, I would like to commend
Simon Fraser University for undertaking such an
important event. This really is a summit for salmon in
British Columbia. This issue you are tackling is one of
the most important in the province in the year of 1995,
and will be with us for some time as a major issue. The
future of the West Coast salmon fishery depends on
how we react, on how we come together to deal with
these issues.
The BC government is deeply concerned about
salmon stocks, and is active locally, nationally and
internationally to protect BC salmon for British
Columbians. No discussion about Pacific salmon
conservation can ignore the fact that we share the
resource with the United States. Now how we share
it has been the source of a lot of frustration. The
unresolved issues around the Canada-US Pacific
Salmon Treaty threaten to undermine conservation
on the West Coast. Last week I sent a letter to Brian
Tobin, praising his work in the turbot fight. But I
also reminded him that it is time for a similar level of
conviction on the West Coast where the US refuses to
acknowledge the conservation challenges before us.
Along with balancing the salmon harvest, between
the US and Canada, the Pacific Salmon Treaty is
intended to help each country to meet its conservation
objectives. The treaty should be the platform on
which we build our conservation efforts. Without it,
as witnessed in 1994, we are left with instability and
uncertainty. The Salmon Treaty is needed so that our
best conservation efforts are not erased in the nets of
American fish boats. The process has dragged on for
too long and the fishing season is fast approaching.
If there is no progress soon then I have suggested to
Brian Tobin that the whole issue has to be put to third
party arbitration. We must assert our rights to be fully
protected to manage, and to get access to, our share of
the fish here on the West Coast.
I would like to acknowledge His Excellency John
Fraser and his review panel—the efforts that they
made to give another wake-up call to the West Coast,
to Canada and to the world—and thank them for their
landmark report on Fraser River sockeye. It assesses
what is wrong with the fishery, and it sets a course for
fixing it. There is debate on some of the details of the
course, but there is no question we have to set a new
course. The Fraser report reinforced what I said back
in October, that there needs to be an active public role
in the monitoring of the state of BC fisheries. And the
Carl Walters report, a few months ago, reiterated the
same point—that is, we need a public watchdog. The
Fraser Report also addressed this point by calling for
a Pacific Fisheries Conservation Council that will help
restore the public confidence in fisheries management.
The salmon belong to the people of British
Columbia. I know there is also debate around
the salmon for their own sake, seen really as an
environmental issue, as part of keeping the Earth
whole. What this is founded on is the deep concern
amongst the people in British Columbia, about
what it means in terms of our communities and
our employment, and our ability to have a food
source that is clean and always going to be there. So
we do not want to wait for the establishment of a
conservation council that will watch over conservation
and management effort here. And I think this is
one weakness in the federal response to the Fraser
Report; that is, the response to Recommendation 10,
and the idea that we could not establish this council
immediately, rather than ten months down the road.
The proposed council is not a huge institution, it is just
a matter of reconfiguring some of the efforts so that
the public can understand that there is someone there
auditing what is going on, on behalf of all the people
of British Columbia, and all of the stakeholders.
Now for a word on British Columbia’s role.
We have been taking, I think, unprecedented steps
in the salmon conservation and habitat protection
business. We understand that it is important to
conserve habitat. That is the key to the sustainability
of salmon stocks. An example of these steps was the
Task Force on Fish Processing that I set up. I set this
up because one of my primary responsibilities is
the property and the business and the commerce of
fish. This points to just how important sustainability
of the resource is; without it we have nothing. The
2
Task Force reported in October, and we have taken
steps to work with the industry to make it work
better—the key recommendations of the report are
there in your binder for you to review. Secondly, we
have established the watershed restoration program,
that Moe Sihota (Minister of Environment, Lands and
Parks) and I announced last fall as a major initiative
under the Forest Renewal Plan. This year we will
be spending $70 million in supporting projects that
correct old wrongs in the forests and create jobs
renewing watersheds and restoring fish habitat. That
$70 million comes from the forest industry, from
stumpage fees, not from taxpayers’ pockets. And
third, the Kemano Completion Project was rejected
by the BC Government for the sake of the salmon. We
say that the KCP was a bad deal for salmon in British
Columbia, it was a bad deal all around, it was a bad
deal for Alcan.
We have said in the Throne Speech this year that
we will take further steps to protect the Fraser, so that
the salmon habitat itself is protected. We have made a
major commitment to salmon conservation, and you
today will be trying to answer a number of questions.
Where do we go from here? Is the fishery that we have
sustainable, and how do we achieve greater public
accountability? I wish you luck, and I look forward
to the recommendations that will be made by your
summary panel.
The Honourable Iona Campagnolo,
Getting the Missing Fish Story Straight
Moderator
Welcome all. It is in the nature of conferences like this
for each one to be considered the most important ever
held. For years now, we have seen many occasions such
as this, where there are hopeful beginnings, burgeoning
opportunities, some genuine elements of good-will
and incipient co-operation all of which have helped
us to develop a consciousness of change that we must
call upon today to manage, conserve and sustain our
precious Pacific fish stocks. Most of us acknowledge
that we are at a decision-making watershed. In my
opinion, a massive exercise of comprehension and
adjustment has been taking place for many years, and
as a result we can likely bring about a greater degree
of consensus that is popularly believed to exist. If
wonderful words could save the fish, we would be
faced with an overabundance of stocks. There have been
so many publications, reports, inquiries, Commissions
and endless meetings, all aimed at accommodating vast
and necessary change, yet in spite of it all; the fate of
our fishery is at stake!
This is not a time or recrimination or fingerpointing. The organizers of the forum have been as
balanced as humanly possible in its composition.
They are looking for action toward the creation of a
workable, realistic fisheries strategy and a structure,
firmly anchored in accountable and responsible human
stewardship. This conference then, could be a departure
point from our mutual past, or it can become just
another competitive “talk-fest” where political points
are scored, scape-goats are “fingered” and the necessity
to change is avoided for yet another “round” in which
the fishery slips toward oblivion. Every time we allow
ourselves the “luxury” of delay, we slip closer to the
edge of an abyss of lost stocks and further extinction of
species. My job today is to discipline our process, so this
conference will be as important and successful as each
one of you here today determines it will be.
Common Cause has never come easily to British
Columbians, I think that it is fair to say of us, that our
characteristic contribution to Canadian Culture is that
we are not homogenous and in fact are as distinct from
each other, as are the genealogical variances among
salmon. We pride ourselves on our individuality born of
great freedom, but we are compelled to remember that
great liberty demands equally great responsibility. It is
that level of responsibility that we are here to probe.
It was said of Count Otto von Bismark that “he
learned nothing and forgot nothing,” in short he was
incapable of change. Consider whether say, back in 1975
you could have imagined a situation in 1995 where the
government of Canada was arranging to use “Warp
Cutters” on the gear of foreign fishing vessels contrary
to international law in support of conservation, while
Greenpeace also on the same scene, was urging
caution, discussion and non-violent intervention in
Common Cause? Canada is not as a nation always
the white knight that we like to think we are, but the
demise of the Atlantic cod stocks finally shocked this
country into learning a vital lesson from that multifaceted disaster.
The so-called “un-Canadian” response of federal
fisheries to Spanish fishing of the turbot stocks off
the “nose and tail” of the Grand Banks, beyond our
200 mile limit, indicates that yes, Canada has learned
something about conservation and sustainability.
And, that the government has rededicated itself to
its constitutional obligation to protect this critically
endangered resource. We have never been a bellicose
people, but if we look at how Canadians have
responded, we know what side of history we are
on in this case! So what is it about the turbot of all
fish, that has forced us to “grow up” and take a solid
unequivocal position on the side of conservation
at last? The brilliant glare of the Atlantic spotlight
has always been a difficult one to shift to our Pacific
waters. If I may say so, it’s a bit like getting our
Southern brethren to concentrate on Northern BC
fisheries responsibilities and potential.
In fact should you be a casual reader of Eastern
or European publications only, you would think that
this country of three oceans, had just one, and at
best two species of salmon swimming in it! So much
for perceptions, they are not as popular wisdom
tell us, reality. I have no doubt that the century we
are entering is the Pacific century in every respect,
including the fishery, and that global spotlight will
soon glare Westward with the same intensity that it
has for the past century illuminated almost exclusively
the old world of the Atlantic!
Until it does however, we must speak louder than
our numbers and act with greater effectiveness. We are
“co-adventurers” in a world of tumultuous change,
the old systems no longer work, and are leading
inexorably toward devastation. New structures remain
to be developed. We are forced by circumstance to
come to terms with our historic and corrosive interindustry competition and to accept that all our futures
depend on our joint ability to adapt successfully to
the needs of this time. We are what Management has
called for the past decade, a “Team of Rivals,” people
who in former times would not have shared so much
as a cup of coffee with each other, now pressed by
Forum Proceedings
3
ever accelerating change into making ‘common cause’
with each other. Our history has been exacerbated by
deeply vested interests, mutually exclusive usage’s,
overcapitalization, ethnic conflict, cultural differences,
fisheries, gear practices, even academic language
and all those dozens of other real or imagined
impediments that have been used for years to delay
the day of reckoning. As the great Barbara Ward said
in Spaceship Earth twenty years ago, “we can not afford
the luxury of despair,” (nor we might add, do we have
the luxury of time in which to express it.)
We live in a Global Society, in which there exists
a de facto Global Economy. Capital moves freely
through once sovereign boundaries but people do
not, and goods and services are still only partially
free to move. The turbot wars are as much about
sovereignties as about conservation. Who owns
the world’s fishery and food resources? The global
economy is as yet unbalanced by a compensating
global social ethic that would make it responsible and
accountable to the human family.
Adding social justice to an exclusively economic
world agenda will in my view be the work of the
next 50 years, yet that is in part why we are at this
forum. National governments are evolving outward,
gradually becoming supra-national entities, tied
together with intricate trade treaties that include
security and environmental trade-offs. This problem
is addressed in the recent UN report entitled Our
Global Neighbourhood that outlines some of the first
real provisions for global governance as well as
preliminary discussion of global taxes to pay for
global needs. The coming G-7 meeting will address
a possible global financial transaction tax named for
John Tobin (ex-US government official) to be allocated
to world-wide needs in human rights and democratic
development.
So on the one hand national governments are
evolving outward toward planetary decision-making,
while at the same time they are devolving downward
to the community-base for decision-making and
implementation. Sovereignty isn’t what it used to
be. Remote bureaucracies and politicians speaking
for yesterday are less and less tolerated in a “handson” world. In the business of fisheries, where once,
a traditionally well-placed “few” at the top gained a
mighty return on their private investment in return for
relatively modest recompense to those who actually
did the work. Today such authority is increasingly
being supplanted by a host of what are called “special
interest groups” who are in reality interim structural
arrangements, temporarily replacing outmoded or
4
no longer operational structures until such time as
all the component groups can agree on the shape of
structures that will work! That evolution is now in
full flow, since increasingly you see the formation of
“coalitions of coalitions” becoming in fact the new
societal structures.
The single most radical change of the twentieth
century is democratization. In our time each informed
voice can have real weight. We can draw upon many
illustrations of how radical change has affected the
fishery, but let me just use salmonid enhancement as
an example. You all remember the S.E. Strategy, once
presumed to be a panacea by which we dreamed
oceans of new salmon would be easily propagated
with returns to our benefit. I won’t go into the whole
story since everyone here knows it so well, other than
to say that while the salmon results may not have
been what was expected, the human results were
unexpected too and are perhaps the most encouraging
resource for change. This province abounds today
with an aroused, knowledgeable and committed
community- based people, who came to consciousness
through enhancement and who are ready to dedicate
themselves to creating the broad conditions and
conservation systems that will assure survival of the
salmon species, and us too!
It is popular these days to say: “Who speaks for
the Fish”? Where once few if anyone did so, we have
changed profoundly enough to be able to say that
at this moment “everyone is speaking for the fish”
in a veritable Tower of Babel! One thing that does
not change however, it is the passion with which we
regard the fisheries resource. For most of us, the quest
for conservation and sustainability is more personal
than corporate.
There are those of us who romanticize the beauty
and magnificence and the cyclical drama presented by
the salmon as they deposit their genes for posterity:
yet we know just as well as those to who fish are just
as another profitable and exploitable resource, that
all of us are facing a world without drinkable water,
without edible food, without appropriate sustenance
for our species, if we fail in our duty. This is not the
first ‘war’ over access to food, but it is the opening
shot in a global food shortage. Oh yes, there are still
a few who say, “give us jobs in our time and to hell
with tomorrow.” They remind me of those belligerent
drivers I’ve seen bumping along rough Alaskan and
Yukon Highways, boasting a bumper sticker that
pleads: “Oh Lord, give us one more boom, and we
promise not to piss it away this time!” Like the fairy
tale of the three wishes, we have to make our own
Getting the Missing Fish Story Straight
miracles, now!
We are spurred by the thought that lack of action
could lead to the death of this priceless life-giving
resource. As thanatologist Elizabeth Keubler-Ross tells
us about death: at first comes denial, and then we are
angry, later we try to embrace the inevitable. We have
lived through a number of these processes with regard
to the fish stocks! The message of this forum is, that
there is nothing inevitable about the loss of the fishery,
it is a “human-made” disaster in progress. For 10,000
years the infinitely finely adapted 6 species of Pacific
salmon and an abundant sea-life has spawned and
regenerated in our many rivers and streams. But, as
the Neil Young song “After the Gold Rush” says: “look
at Mother Nature on the run from the 20th century”!
There is great temptation at gatherings such as
this, to reiterate known information, to reflect on a
past of which most of us have memories of fisheries
of other times, now rendered “rosy” in retrospect.
We tend to begin each of our interventions with, “I
remember when...”; let me state up front that I will
not tell you about my childhood memories working
at Colonial Cannery, if you don’t tell me yours! Let us
agree from the outset that each of us can remember
when, and just leave it at that!
So, I fearlessly begin by inviting you to accept that
no one individual or group associated with the fishery,
either in this hall, or elsewhere in this world, has the
perfect solution to the crises we all acknowledge and
face. In this conference room, there is assembled all the
expertise, the skills and the abilities we need to forge
a future in which survival of the Pacific fish stocks is
assured. This is a remarkably well-timed conference.
It is the perfect moment for a mature, responsible and
accountable group of people to do our part to facilitate
the changes that most acknowledge must come about,
to secure the salmon, and ourselves, into the 3rd
Millennium.
I am told that it is childishly naive, to even
consider inviting interests as diverse and deeply
vested as are those represented here today, to consider
interactive solution-seeking. The wise Northern First
Nations elders that I knew as a child told me long ago
that our “most important human responsibility in life
is to be a good ancestor!” And now it is my pleasure
to introduce to you some of those potentially good
ancestors in today’s first panel. I will now recognize
speakers from the floor to any of the Panelists,
however I ask that you indicate to whom you are
directing your comment as well as asking you to
give your name and affiliation, that is, what part of
the fishing constellation you belong to, every time
you speak! I will try as much as possible to allow
alternating views to be heard, and should any one
group dominate proceedings, I invite you to assist the
chair when necessary, to re-balance any part of the
debate which becomes one-sided.
We are trying to derive some sense of direction
out of each issue, so keeping to the point helps lead us
in that direction. I am, by the way, not here with any
personal axe to grind, I have been absent for a decade
from the political battle-fields and I do not believe that
ideologies have a real place in this debate. Ideologies
of what is “right” and what is “left” mean less and
less in today’s world and certainly are relatively
meaningless in discussions of the environment and
conservation. Lets try to build understanding together
as the day goes along.
My job today is simply as “traffic cop,” your
job is to change management: So let’s begin and
try not to play Spanish Trawler to either each other
or tomorrow!
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5
The Global Fishing Crisis:
paying the price for over-expansion
Mr. Peter Weber
It’s a pleasure to be able to be here today to speak to
you—a very important occasion and I hope that we
can bring ourselves together to address the important
problems of the fisheries here. First of all I’d like to put
the conference in a global context, within the context
of the crisis that’s occurring on a global basis in marine
fisheries. I don’t have to tell you about the problems
here, but I think if you understand that there is in
fact a global sense of fisheries crisis, you can not only
see that you’re not alone, and compare yourselves
to problems that are going on elsewhere, but you
can also put yourselves in the context of the political
forces which are at work, and the political forces
which have made it so that single fisheries around the
world have collapsed, or have had problems, which
have resulted in a general public sense, no matter
how vague, that fisheries are in trouble and there is
a crisis. This has created a political will, a political
momentum for politicians to act. A momentum
which has resulted, in one case, in unilateral action
by Canada in international waters. Furthermore,
the global nature of the crisis has created somewhat
of a political movement within the circle of policy
makers, so that, in particular, policy makers who are
comparing problems between fisheries, start to focus
on the over-capacity problem. And policy alternatives
which are thought to address fishery problems, begin
to address specifically overcapacity problems. It’s
very heartwarming, actually, to hear our beginning
speakers talk about this. It is not simply the fish that
are at stake, it’s the jobs, it’s the community, it’s the
people that have traditionally relied on these fisheries,
that are central. Without the fish, the fishery doesn’t
exist. Of course, they’re essential. But without the
people, without the communities, you basically will
be losing the benefits you’ve achieved from your
fisheries for, in some cases, centuries. So I believe
it’s important for you to be careful to craft your own
solutions, not simply to go along with broader political
movements that are stemming out of a sense of global
crisis, so that you address both conservation and the
community development issues that are at hand.
First of all, I’d like to give you a short history of
6
how we have got to where we are today on a global
basis, give you an overview of the global numbers,
and then I will talk briefly about management and
elements of solutions that I believe are important.
Since the 1960s, we basically had an
understanding that we were running up against the
limits of marine fisheries, and in some cases, such as
the North Atlantic cod, the catch actually peaked in
the 1960s, and overfishing was already becoming a
problem. Furthermore, the lack of national jurisdiction
over coastal waters resulted in international
conflicts. In part, the Law of the Sea Conference
that started in 1973 was convened to address these
sorts of international conflicts. And as part of those
negotiations, the 200 mile exclusive economic zone
was made acceptable on an international basis.
In some ways, this was seen as the solution to the
problems that were occurring in marine fisheries.
But now, instead of having overfishing by foreign
fleets, we have, largely, overfishing by domestic
fleets. And instead of having international conflicts,
we largely have domestic conflicts over fisheries,
although there still are international conflicts. The
fishing industry and government regulators basically
ignored the writing on the wall, that there were
limits to marine fisheries, and they took the exclusive
economic zone, the expansion of jurisdiction out to
200 nautical miles, as a green light for expansion.
Encouraged by generous government subsidies, the
industry expanded roughly by two-fold, on a global
basis, since 1970. But the resource base, obviously,
hasn’t expanded, and under pressure from expanded
fisheries, we started to develop a crisis situation,
where stagnating and declining catches have resulted
in approximately 100,000 job losses in North America
within the last 4–5 years. What we have got into is a
sort of double bind between limited marine resources
and overcapacity in the industry.
First of all, let’s think about the limits to marine
fisheries themselves. Since the 1970s, the growth in
the total world catch has slowed down, and in 1989
it peaked and declined slightly. Of the world’s fifteen
Getting the Missing Fish Story Straight
major fishing regions, all but two have had declines in
the total catch, and in four of the major fishing regions
such as off Canada’s East Coast, the decline has been
over 30% in total catch. When you look at individual
species, you can see that there are even larger declines,
and so the fact that the global catch has been stagnant
and hasn’t declined that much, is partially a result of
the fact that we’ve increased the catch of lesser-value
species on one side, and also to some extent more
high-value species, such as salmon, which have been
able to bring in extra capital for enhancement, or
further technologies.
On a global basis, you can see that the catch
has peaked at approximately 80 million tons; the
world catch is up around 100 million tons (Figure
1). The United Nations Food and Agriculture
Organization estimates that we could approximately
reach 100 million tons on a global basis, but the
only way we’re going to reach that level, is through
improved management of stocks, conservation, and
environmental protection. And if we expect to be
able to maintain increased catches, we’re going to
have to have better management, which will be more
responsive to fluctuations in stocks, which can be
damaging when you’re pushing up against the limits
of individual fisheries.
Let’s take a look at the situation within the
fisheries themselves, the overcapacity problem. The
United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization
estimates that on a global basis we have approximately
doubled the capacity necessary to make the annual
catch; that is, we could basically have the same
industry that we had in the 1970s, and still be able to
make the 80 million ton catch that we are currently
making. That’s a rough estimate on a global basis,
but countries that have done estimates for their own
fisheries, have come up with estimates between
approximately 60 and 40% overcapacity (see Table
1). So we see that that estimate is not necessarily
off the mark. Individual fisheries have found even
greater overcapacity. In one case in the surf clam
fishery in New Jersey, they found that there was an
overcapacity, and there were ten times the number of
boats necessary to make the annual catch. In a fishery
in Nova Scotia, when they introduced the quota
system, they were estimating that the number of boats
could decline to one fourth of what they were in 1990,
when the system was introduced. But it’s not simply
a matter of how many fishers are out there. Typically
the double bind we’re in—the limited resources and
the overcapacity—has led people to believe the cliche
that “too many fishers are chasing too few fish.” There
FIGURE 1
World Fish Catch, 1950–93
is some truth in that, but when you look at individual
fisheries, you see that it’s not just a matter of the
number of fishers, it’s also a matter of the size of the
nets, the size of the boats, the number of traps they’re
deploying.
But when we look at the industry on a global
basis, we see that you can break it down into three
basic sectors—large scale, medium scale, and small
scale—based on gross registered tonnage. A somewhat
arbitrary division, but I think it’s informative to
look at the differentiation between the catch and
the number of people employed in each of these
sectors (Table 2). Each of these sectors is catching
approximately the same amount of fish, but the small
scale fisheries sector is employing approximately 90%
of the people engaged in fishing, whereas large scale
fishing is employing 200,000–300,000. This of course
is on a global basis, but when you look at individual
fisheries you can find similar divisions. I think it’s
important to take home the fact that it’s not simply a
matter of the number of fishers, but it’s also a matter
of the capacity. So when we talk about overcapacity,
and this has become something talked about in all
fisheries, we talk about reducing overcapacity. We
can’t think of it irrespective of sector, how it’s going to
affect the fishing industry. If you affect the small scale
industry more than the larger scale industry, you’re
going to have greater job loss, or greater displacement.
Obviously, you are not making as much money if
you’re a small scale fisher, and this is part of the tradeoffs that you’re going to have to be discussing and
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7
TABLE 1
deciding amongst yourselves.
I’m not going to talk about the food aspects of
marine fisheries. I think it’s important to realize
that it is jobs above all, not the fish, because who’s
catching the fish is largely determining who’s eating
the fish, when it comes to people who are in need of
fish for their diets, primarily in the third world. In
the industrial world, Canada and the United States,
fish is really a luxury. We get twice as much protein
as necessary in our diets, and we could basically
eliminate fish from our diets. I don’t think that’s
necessarily something you want to hear as fishers,
but it’s basically the case. So what it says to me at
least, is that the jobs, the employment, the coastal
communities, are the most important part of it. So
when we look at the policy alternatives, I think it’s
clear that, as has been said previously, it’s not just the
8
fish, it’s also the fishing communities that we need to
be paying attention to.
I want to make a couple of simple points on
policies. I think, first of all, very simply, that we need
to acknowledge that we’re running up against limits.
That’s clear. I think everyone else understands that
we’re in the same boat, and cooperation is necessary.
I think, furthermore, we need to look at policy
alternatives that lead to a greater sense of personal
responsibility within the fishery. We should stop
putting full responsibility on the federal government
to be determining who’s fishing when and where,
and allow some sort of self-regulation to come
back into the system. Part of the go-go expansion
in the last couple of decades, and the centralized
management that has gone along with it, has been a
loss of personal responsibility in the fishery and the
Getting the Missing Fish Story Straight
sense of cooperation in fisheries, and I think that we
need to regain that, both if we’re going to have more
sustainable fisheries, and also to address the questions
of equity; questions that can only be addressed at the
local level. Thirdly, I think it’s obvious that there’s
a role for government. Government has to provide
the science, has to provide the backup. Ultimately
this is a public resource, a resource which could be,
in the future, taxed to a greater extent or taken for
royalties. We’ve seen the disaster that’s come from
heavy subsidies—overexpansion and distortion within
the markets. Arguably, the public has the right to get
rents on the fisheries, particularly if we’re talking
about having industrial fisheries, but those are issues
that have to be worked out within the context of your
own fisheries. I’d just finally like to leave you with the
point that I think that it’s important that you work out
your own problems and that you work out problems
that concern issues that are close to home, and not
simply catch on to the global train of a sense of crisis
which is going around the world. Understand that
you’re in a context of global crisis but understand that
you have to make your own solutions to make it work.
Discussion
Ryan Lake: I’m a commercial fisher and I have
my own small value-added processing operation,
centering on salmon corporate giftware. That’s my
connection with the industry. Mr. Weber, I’d like to
thank you for your global overview; it put things
in context for me. I would like to ask you about one
comment that you made. You said that there was a need
for a sense of personal responsibility, and certainly I
don’t have any trouble translating that into what we
do and how we act on the fishing grounds. And you
also said that part of this sense of loss of personal
responsibility came from centralized government
control of our fisheries. I have
a concern that with the loss of federal control of
the fisheries, and a loss of the kind of clout that a
centralized, federal government can bring to a fishery,
that we could face threats from, well for example,
the likes of the Kitimat Kemano Completion Project.
In my view, I have the feeling that it takes a federal
government with federal clout, to stop that kind
of thing, and it would be very easy for that kind of
thing to take place or continue to the detriment of
the fisheries, if they only had to face provincial-sized
opposition. I hope you understand my question, and
I’d appreciate your comment on it.
Peter Weber: I wouldn’t be arguing that we have to
eliminate the role of the federal government. It’s a
public resource and we need the clout of the federal
TABLE 2
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9
government behind fishery regulations to make it
work. Even if you have a completely communityrun fishery, which is the outside case, you still need
government sanctions to allow that fishery to exist
and to enforce its own rules. We’re a long way from
that in Canada, obviously. But what I’m saying is that
you need to not just have the central government
enforce the laws and set up the structure; you also
need to have a local sense of the fishery, a sense of
management, a sense that breaking rules isn’t okay, a
sense that working together is the way to go, and that
you can get past regional conflicts, not by going back
to the federal government and asking for recourse,
but by working out things among yourselves. And
furthermore, I think that because of the double bind
that we’re in, because of the limits of marine resources,
and the extreme overcapacity in many fisheries, we’re
poised for very substantial job loss. And especially
as federal governments start to look at management
alternatives, which would basically address
overcapacity above all else, you will potentially
have extreme job loss. I think that it’s those types of
decisions, the decisions to address the overcapacity
problems, that need to be made at least at a regional
level, because if it’s dictated down from Ottawa, I
don’t think you’re necessarily going to be happy with
the outcome.
Eric Wickham: I’m a commercial fisherman. I’d like to
thank you for presenting the academic party line very
clearly and precisely. I’ve got some questions about
your overcapacity. For example, it’s stated that if every
car in the United States went on the road it would
block all the roads. And we know most cars only have
one person in them–is that an overcapacity problem?
Should we eliminate a percentage of the cars in the
United States? Here, the Department of Fisheries had a
budget, about $3 million dollars in the ’50s, and did a
very very good job. Now it has a budget of about $150
million, a lot more people, and does a very poor job.
There’s an overcapacity. The scientific community has
expanded fantastically in the last twenty years as our
fishery’s gone down—is that an overcapacity? I think
this simplistic solution you talk about, too many boats,
too few fish, is a detriment to the scientific community
because it’s simplistic. We looked at that solution in
Newfoundland, decided we’d go with some great
big factory boats in the ’70s and go catch our cod that
way, and forget about the 10,000 in-shore fishermen;
that was overcapacity, the few big factory trawlers
destroyed that fishery real fast. And that’s where your
solution is leading to. I think you’re doing a detriment
10
to the community and showing an ignorance in the
scientific community by presenting that argument.
Peter Weber: I think you put it very well because
my point was not that overcapacity is the central
problem. My point is that on a global basis, there is
a very strong movement, and a very strong sense
that overcapacity is the problem, and in individual
fisheries this bears out. But what this has resulted in is
a public perception that something needs to be done
about fisheries, and it’s resulted in a policy climate
which says that overcapacity is the central problem.
I actually think that in the case of New England,
they looked at it very logically, and when the halibut
and cod fisheries were collapsing, they could have
gone towards some sort of privatisation move and
basically gone the route of consolidation. But instead
they said that they wanted to cut back the catch of
each individual fisher so that they could maintain
engagement in the fishery. And I think that’s a very
important decision, that you have to consider because
it’s on the table. Consolidation is the way of the future,
unless you come up with your own alternatives. So I
think you’re right on.
Dan Edwards: I’m with the Westcoast Sustainability
Association. I’m a long-time fisherman. I have a small
boat. It seems that there are two points: one, that we’re
reaching our limits, and the second one is that the
coastal communities and the employment situation
was what you considered to be the most important
situation which we have to look into. So, from your
perspective, then, if consolidation means the loss of
coastal communities, it would be a very dangerous
and wrong-headed thing to do?
Peter Weber: Yes, I think that these are real options
that you’re facing, and unless you look very hard
at not just the conservation of fish, maintaining fish
numbers, although that’s essential, but unless you look
at what the structure of the industry is, and what the
structure of the industry is going to be, you’re doing a
disservice. Basically, you would be losing the primary
value of the fisheries. The food, the fish itself, is not
what the primary value of the fishery is, in any part of
the world, to any fishing group.
Phil Eby: I’m the executive director of the Fishing
Vessel Owner’s Association and we represent
primarily the salmon seine, herring seine and gillnet
fleets and also the halibut fishery. I don’t know if I
have a question, rather more of a comment, and that
Getting the Missing Fish Story Straight
is that we’ve had a picture painted to us today, and
we’ve had it painted in the media and every place
else for the last little while, about a global crisis in
fishing. We’ve reached our capacity, we’ve got too
many boats chasing too few fish, and that there’s a
crisis in fisheries. There is no question that there are
problems, but if you look at the salmon industry in
British Columbia, it’s in pretty good shape. We’ve
got problems, but it’s not facing the kind of crisis
that some people are alluding to. If you look at
our herring fishery, it’s a healthy fishery. It’s being
managed conservatively, and it has been done so for
years. And if you look at our halibut fishery, the same
thing applies. I think it’s inappropriate to paint British
Columbia with the same brush that you paint the
United States, or the Spanish fleet, or the East Coast
with. In general, we’ve got probably one of the best
managed fisheries in the world, and it’s inappropriate
to allude to crises in other countries and say that we’ve
got the same problems here. We’ve got problems, but
we’re not in the same position.
Peter Weber: I’d simply respond by saying that my
point isn’t to paint you in the same picture as the
global situation. I think that part of the issue is to
be able to compare yourselves—how are you doing
compared to other fisheries? But also to understand
that there is a sense of global crisis in fisheries, and
that that by proxy extends itself to your fishery. And
that is part of the political reality that you have to deal
with. In other words, a management change is coming
because of public awareness, and because of the sense
within policy circles that overcapacity has to be dealt
with. So it’s in your best interest to consider this before
you have some solution imposed upon you.
Bruce Lansdowne: I’m a commercial fisherman. I
guess my comment is more to Phil Eby than it is to
you. I used to belong to that organization, I guess I’m
called a big boat fisherman. I quit that organization
years ago because I felt it was self-serving and I think
that what’s going on here is a bunch of defensiveness
coming out towards this presentation. I don’t hear
you saying that there’s too many boats chasing too
few fish, and that’s the solution. I hear you saying that
that’s a problem, a simplistic answer that people have
been putting forward that doesn’t necessarily wash,
which I happen to agree with. And I believe that the
economics of fishing, getting into the management
of fishing, is our greatest threat, always has been,
always will be, if we don’t put conservation first. If
we don’t have the enforcement, if we don’t get the
fish back to the rivers, the herring back to the beds,
there’s going to be no resource to argue about. Why
I came today is to say one more time that we have
to get the economics out of it and get in solid
conservation.
Jacob Nyce: President of the Native Brotherhood of
British Columbia. This is not a question, I guess, it’s
just a concern. I came here to talk about the resource
that is being depleted; we cannot hide that, we cannot
deny it. My way of thinking is, when we know that
the fisheries are in trouble, what do we do about
it? I come from an area up in the Nass Valley, I’m a
Nisga’a, where our resource was just about completely
wiped out. The logging company moved in there
and decided to move their logs and the cheapest way
they could was to have the river dragged. And they
completely destroyed the habitat within that river.
We conserved that area for 32 years, we never went in
there and fished commercially for 32 years until that
resource came back. Now these are the things that we
don’t look at when we talk about the problems that
we have within the fishing industry. It’s still going on
today, but nobody would look at it. We talk about too
many boats chasing too few fish, but what about these
big industries that pollute our areas? Why aren’t they
being talked about? We had a group that volunteered
to revive one of the biggest coho habitats in the Nass,
and it ran through our reserve. We had five people
volunteer to sit on that committee. We worked for
seven years and last year was the biggest reward that
we had when we had 8,000 coho come back from that
creek, right down from 42 coho seven years ago. So if
you want a problem resolved, you have to work at it.
Now I don’t know if these people that make these big
reports ever come to these grassroots people that live
in the area. You would see it up the Nass area where
we have complete control of the Nass River stock. The
chinook salmon are coming back, but one thing we
don’t do is we don’t let the recreation fishing get too
heavy in the area. If you want to find out the solution
to the problem, go to the grassroot area, don’t just sit
in your office.
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11
Perspectives on the Canadian
East Coast Fishery Crisis
Dr. Richard Haedrich
I want to build on the excellent background that
Peter has provided by telling you a story. It is an
environmental, ecological saga, full of history and
rare characters the kind of which you might find in
The Lord of the Rings. I don’t have the time to tell
you about all that, but certainly I have often felt like
Frodo the Hobbit, never quite knowing where it
would lead but nonetheless swept along as the saga
unfolded. For I think I have lead a rather sheltered life.
My passion has been a passion for fishes—all 25,000
to 30,000 species—and I have devoted a lot of my life
to studying them, and most particularly oceanic and
deep-sea fishes.
A number of years ago I began the work that I
am going to tell you about today, but mainly from
the viewpoint of an ocean ecologist. I was interested
in how changing environmental conditions would
affect the structure of fish communities. From this
perspective, I saw the DFO fisheries survey data in
St. John’s as a remarkable, wonderful, and untouched
time series—20 years with over 5,000 stations and
100,000 records of fish catches.
To those data I brought an ecological question:
What happens to fish community structure when
a major predator is removed from it? In the
Newfoundland case, an enthusiastic fishery had
greatly reduced the predatory cod, and this fishery
ecosystem was the one I wanted to study. For a bit of
background I show you a figure (Figure 1A) depicting
the Sad Story of the Northern Cod Fishery. The big
peak in the 60s is the distant water fishery of foreign
fleets, and it overlays the relatively smaller, but by no
means inconsequential inshore Newfoundland fishery
that had extended at approximately the same rate back
to the 1700s. Canada declared an Exclusive Economic
Zone in 1976, removing much of the foreign fishing,
and a Canadian offshore fishery quickly built up. The
sampling period that we looked at spanned this time.
I should point out that all during this period
things looked very rosy in Newfoundland. The fishery
appeared to be managed properly, and there were all
kinds of good signs. Then suddenly it went “Bang!”
and just collapsed. I won’t dwell on that particularly
except to say that the period turned out to be one of
dramatic change. What we wanted to do was to see
FIGURE 1A
FIGURE 1B
12
Getting the Missing Fish Story Straight
FIGURE 2A
FIGURE 2B
what had happened to the fish community using
ecological theory to guide us. Instead of focusing
on a single species however, the way most fisheries
investigations do, we wanted to take a broader and
more holistic ecosystem approach, i.e. synecology as
opposed to autecology.
One thing that impressed us was the relative
stability in the survey data. When you looked at
everything, i.e. cods, flounders, redfish and all the
other species, all together, as in this figure (Figure 1B),
you would not have recognized that any dramatic
changes were taking place. The apparent stability
was intriguing, and began a study of how food webs
and the various relationships between species in the
community might have contributed to it.
But in the meantime the fishery collapsed. The
explanations that we heard were just the kind that you
always hear in such situations, the environment was
somehow to blame. You have heard such things here
in BC, I believe, in reference to the salmon stocks. In
our case, the blame was placed on particularly cold
sea temperatures, perhaps some climate change, and
maybe something to do with the seals. And here we
come to the point where Frodo the Hobbit leaves The
Shire and embarks on a quest to find out what was
going on. I’m going to present a case study of what
insights might arise from the ecological approach we
had adopted. And now, of course, we could make our
question a bit more precise: What impact do fisheries
have on fish communities? Not just on the fish of
commercial interest, but on the whole ecosystem?
The next figure (Figure 2A) gives an idea of just
how much of a collapse we are talking about. By any
measure, this has been a catastrophic decline, and even
to show you the data I must use a logarithmic scale. I
admire you here in BC, for you at least recognize fishes
as individuals and count them; in the East, we just
figure them as tubs of butter and report only biomass,
as in the figure. In the early 1960s, there was about 1.6
million tons of spawning biomass, but by the time the
fishing moratorium was declared in 1992, the stocks
were down to a mere 1% of that. But what is really
discouraging is to see that, even having stopped all
fishing, the stocks have continued to decline to the
point where there are only something like 2,500 tons
left. And that is just about nothing.
Ecological study involves first describing,
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FIGURE 3
13
classifying, and dissecting of available information,
and we think that looking for patterns in the data
is a good place to begin. Our approach was to ask
the fish how they recognized their environment. We
used some mathematical techniques to see how fish
communities might divide up the shelf environment,
and these showed that fish communities indeed
occupy different parts of that habitat. They have
carved it up amongst themselves into what might
be thought of as the “spatial niche” of each fish
community. We call the regions so-defined “natural
areas,” as opposed to the purely political areas defined
in the various management zones. The first map figure
(Figure 3) shows the relatively stable situation on the
Grand Banks before 1987.
The second map figure (Figure 4) shows the
situation on the Northeast Newfoundland shelf, the
area where the catastrophic collapse of the Northern
cod took place. We were able to identify four regions
there, a Coastal region, a Northern region, a Main
region out on the banks, and a deep region at the edge
of the continental shelf. Each region was identifiable
from year to year, and had its own idiosyncrasies,
i.e. species composition, food webs, particular
environment, and diversity, that persisted through
time. Our idea was to use retrospective monitoring to
ask: What happened to the fish community in each of
these areas?
The next figure (Figure 5A) shows what happened
over time. This is for the Coastal assemblage, the most
inshore group of the map. The trend over time shows
what we knew already, i.e. that the commercial stocks,
cods and flounders, were in general decline. The catch
per unit effort (CPUE) in the standard survey tows for
these two groups was about a 100 kilos per tow. If you
added all the other species on top, you would hardly
notice them at all. But these species, the ones that
nobody except ichthyologists like me care about, can
also be important members of the community, so we
FIGURE 4
FIGURE 5A
FIGURE 5B
14
Getting the Missing Fish Story Straight
FIGURE 6A
FIGURE 6B
separated them out and looked at them on their own.
The next figure (Figure 5B) shows what happened in
the less abundant species. First of all, notice that the
catch rates are quite small, no more than 10-20 kilos
per tow. But look at what has happened in the rays,
sharks, eelpouts, and wolffish, i.e. the other fish that
nobody pays any attention to. These groups suffered a
very sharp decline in the early 1980s and catches in the
survey have been down at a very low level ever since.
First seen in the more inshore Coastal region, the same
general pattern is found in all the other areas. So what
we can say is that whatever was going on, and even
when commercial fish species were rather stable, the
less abundant species were the ones that were feeling
the pinch. The synecological examination suggested
that something was happening to the ecosystem.
The period up until 1987 was one of relative
stability on the northeast Newfoundland shelf, just
as it had been on the Grand Banks. The patterns
shown in the map were about the same from year
to year. But after that, and especially as the fishery
collapsed, the patterns changed very much. There was
an erosion of certain regions and an intrusion to new
areas by others. The low diversity Coastal assemblage,
for example, expanded considerably offshore and
the Main assemblage retreated to a few enclaves at
the edge of the shelf. Now, of course, this does not
mean that entire fish assemblages just packed up
and moved. The overall change came about because
of shifts by individual species. The next few figures
(Figures 6 and 7) show how important it is, in order to
understand community dynamics, to be able to look
at what each species is doing. The winter flounder, for
example, shifted from the inshore to the offshore over
the period (Figure 6A). The cod appeared to move,
a little later, south and offshore (Figure 6B), and the
FIGURE 7A
FIGURE 7B
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15
FIGURE 8A
FIGURE 8B
Greenland halibut (the central player in our Turbot
War) shifted to the south but ultimately declined right
off (Figure 7A).
At the same time that this was going on, though,
there were other things that were happening at the
species level. There was another important warning
sign that had been pointed out by the fishermen; there
was a decline in the mean size of fish. Even when
survey catch rates showed little change, as in the
Greenland halibut, size had begun to decline by the
early 1980s (Figure 7B). Cod went from an average
size of about 2 kilos in the early 80s to less than 1 kilo
at the time of the moratorium, even though overall
survey catch rates were unchanged (Figure 8A). This
is not too surprising in these two commercial species,
although the magnitude of the change should have
been alarming, but what about the less abundant
species we’re looking at also? Why do we see a decline
in an inconsequential northern deepwater grenadier?
(Figure 9A) And why such a steep decline in a small
eelpout that nobody fishes for at all? (Figure 9B)
What seems to be going on here, and
unfortunately we only have cod data to illustrate
this, is that the larger and therefore older fish are
being removed from the population. What’s left is,
on average, smaller. The figure (Figure 8B) clearly
shows how the Northern cod population of today
has quite a different age structure than it did 15
or 30 years ago. So there is a change in the whole
population structure of this fish. By analogy, we think
that the average smaller size seen in so many species
suggests that they, too, are experiencing a change in
the age structure of their populations. Even though
they are not commercially fished, they are certainly
taken as bycatch and dumped, and suffer as well the
consequences of a dislocation of the various food
FIGURE 9A
FIGURE 9B
16
Getting the Missing Fish Story Straight
FIGURE 10A
FIGURE 10B
web relationships that link every member of the fish
community of which they are a part. What we are
seeing is a destruction of the population structure
of the community through elimination of the larger
older fishes, and we believe this is a very serious
impact with long-term implications for possible
recovery.
The looming presence of the moderator reminds
me that I only have a little time left and I’d like to take
just one minute to go back to question of what caused
all this. Was it a changing environment, outside our
control? The figure shows how temperatures in the
various assemblage areas varied over the years at the
time the fish were collected (Figure 10A). There are
no obvious trends. Or was predation by the fishery,
something we could address, more likely? (Figure
10B) The figure shows that the number of hours
spent trawling doubled over the period, from about
30,000 hours in 1979 to over 60,000 at the beginning
of the collapse. The increase in effort did not result in
increased catches. In fact, as the next figure (Figure
11A) shows, these were declining all the time. But
even so, the number of fish plants continued to go up.
Meanwhile, of course, the older fish were just being
eliminated (Figure 11B). The figure just reminds us of
the data shown in less detail by an earlier figure—the
older aged fish are just about gone.
Finally, I’d like to show you one last figure (Figure
12A) as a perspective on sustainability. It suggests
the relationship between the ecological matters I’ve
been addressing and management. The diagram
emphasises the importance of scale, and says that
the scale of management must be on the same scale
as the ecosystem under consideration. For us in
Newfoundland, that means in a spatial sense that we
had no chance of success without exercising some
control over the Nose and Tail of the Grand Banks.
FIGURE 11A
FIGURE 11B
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For your salmon here in BC it means, as we just heard
from the Minister, that the problem of Alaska, which is
a part of the salmon’s ecosystem, must be addressed.
In a temporal sense, I think it means a management
plan over decades for Newfoundland before the cod
are back. What is the appropriate time scale for the BC
salmon? Think about it and ponder this figure as my
time runs out.
Dr. Jake Rice, Respondent to Dr. Haedrich
It’s certainly a privilege to follow my old friend and
learned colleague Dr. Haedrich. On the other hand,
I’m not sure either one of us considers it a privilege
to be here to do a post-mortem on one of the great
fisheries of history. However, there’s nothing we can
say or do now to undo the tragedy of the East Coast.
What we’re here to do, is to prevent the tragedy from
becoming a crime. And the crime is when you don’t
learn from tragedies and go ahead and repeat them.
I think it’s quite clear that here in BC, we are
not now in the situation in 1995 that the East Coast
in Canada is in 1995. But, we might be in the future,
when you read the very lucid report that the Fraser
panel has put together, and the many other reports
coming out on BC fisheries. We might be where
Newfoundland was, in the mid-1980s, ten years ago.
Because if you remember all Dick’s slides, the stock
really had rebuilt, it really was larger in 1985, ’86, than
it had been for twenty years. It was larger every year
for a decade, up until that point. And the scientists,
for all the sins they’re guilty of (and I join them as one
of their members, in sharing the guilt), did catch the
change in trajectory of that stock, within two years
of it occurring. And that’s about the best one can
do, given the time lags in getting information and
so forth. What happened, though, like all pieces of
science, is that there is substantial uncertainty in the
science, and the reasons for it are clear from Dick’s
position. The ecosystem is not simple, the pieces are
not independent, the signals don’t all say the same
thing in the same way at the same time. So with all
that scientific uncertainty, between 1988, when the
advice began to be pessimistic, the reaction was to
use the room uncertainty allows, for all the different
participants, all the people who’d be affected by a
decision, to spend the time squabbling about their
innocence in the change. Squabbling about their right
to be spared the pain that should be inflicted on other
people, but not on them. And I think that’s where the
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real tragedy occurred. In the three years that were
lost to squabbling, before action was taken. By the
time a decision had to be made, the pain was enough
that there was plenty for everybody, and there will be
plenty for everyone for a long time to come. We’re not
in that situation in BC, and I think that Dick has really
sketched out for us the types of vision that are needed
to be sure we don’t make similar poor choices here.
Discussion
Randall Peterman: From the School of Resource
and Environmental Management at Simon Fraser
University. I was wondering, Dick, if you could just
comment on this idea that I think you were alluding
to, and that is when the older aged individuals in
the population of Northern Cod were removed, they
were the most productive ones, and did that set the
stage for them to be more vulnerable to the physical
oceanographic changes that occurred?
Dick Haedrich: That’s exactly what did happen,
and I think that we’re almost into a case of a selffulfilling prophecy. I think that we should look at
this very carefully in the salmon. What happened to
those stocks that had a broadly-based age structure,
is that they were down to just a few ages left. It had
evolved over 10 million years, (this age structure),
to take care of this wretched climate that we have in
Newfoundland, that you never can tell what’s going
to happen. And that got them through it, so that you
could have a catastrophe that harmed some of them
but didn’t harm the whole stock. But now we are
in a situation where we’re just down to a very few,
and if they get hammered, then it could have serious
repercussions. Yes, it’s the change in age structure
that I think is important. I see it happening in all these
Getting the Missing Fish Story Straight
other species too. We don’t have good age structure
there, but the whole eco-system is being affected there.
Billy Griffiths: A commercial fisherman. Two
questions for Mr. Haedrich. We’re all familiar with the
canaries and the goldmine, where they can sustain life
or not, I think. These fish like the Grenadier fish on the
east coast, have you got anything sorted out that you
could forecast the main fish changes from the lesser
fish problems. And if you have, are we working on
these canaries on the Pacific coast also?
Dick Haedrich: I read a wonderful book coming out
here, Mark Hume’s book The Run of the River, where
he mentions the fish as canaries. I think fish are fish,
but fish are canaries too. One of the points I would
have made with the witch flounder that I showed you,
was that changes in some of these species seemed to
preview ones that were going on that we saw later, in
the commercial fisheries. There was a change that was
going on, whatever caused it, and it could be seen in
other species. The question that we’re left with though,
now, is that all these things have gone, you see. We
have this huge void. Nature abhors a vacuum. What is
going to come in there? We have no idea. So we can’t
predict now, we can just sort of sit there and tremble
while this happens.
Jake Rice: In terms of looking for canaries in the West
Coast, certainly a lot of the salmon research programs
have, for a long period of time into the past, included
looking at a bunch of interrelated species. It’s been
a grudge of mine in the time since I first came out
here as the head of all the non-salmon research, that
not enough attention was being paid to some of the
marine species. But it’s certainly the case that we’re
looking at more than a few core species. Whether
we’re looking at the canaries or the house sparrows or
the house finches, you don’t know until it’s too late.
But we’re certainly looking at more than just one or
two.
Edgar Birch: I’m a commercial fisherman. I wonder
about the demise of the fishery on the East Coast after
400 years, and what part does predation play... or what
part do you think the predators play? The elimination
of the seal hunt in Newfoundland—what part did
that have to play, do you think, on the cod fishery?
Those seals have to eat something. And how have they
multiplied since the elimination of the seal hunt?
Dick Haedrich: What you pose is really one of the
big questions. My personal opinion, and there’s a
lot of scientific evidence now to back this up, is that
probably those predators had very, very little impact
on the decline of the cod. The predator was the fishing
industry, in the general sense.
Jake Rice: There are a hundred times more seals than
codfish, right now. They are living on something
else. What it is, that again, we don’t know. The sorts
of species that are recorded there now are not ones
which are normally found being eaten by seals at all.
I think that seals are also a part of the eco-system, and
what I actually think right now is that they’re holding
something in check; that if the seals were gone, we’d
be up to our eyeballs in sand eels or something like
that, something that nobody ever looks at. But what is
sustaining those seals. That’s a real big question!
A member of the audience from Sierra Club of BC:
My question is for Dr. Haedrich. When you speak
about the decline of the non-commercial species, what
about incidental by-catch, especially on the big factory
ships and the big trawlers? My understanding is that
these ships just literally suck up everything on its path
on the bottom of the sea and couldn’t that explain why
there was a dramatic decline in those non-commercial
species?
Dick Haedrich: That’s what I believe. We have an
expert on by-catch right here at the front row, Lee
Alverson, who may say something about that later.
But, these fish are caught in the survey nets, and there
is a difference between commercial and survey gear.
I think that by-catch has something to do with their
demise.
Jake Rice: Actually there has been for most of the
1980s, 100% observer coverage on the trawl fleet, and
they do have good records of what was and wasn’t
caught. Some of the species that have shown marked
declines, had distributions that overlapped very little
if at all with cod, and it could not possibly be bycatch that caused some of those declines. And that’s
extremely well-documented.
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19
Fraser River Sockeye 1994:
Problems and discrepancies
The Honourable John Fraser
You’ll allow me, I think, in the interests of absolute
abject honesty, to advise you of two things: one, I
was in Spain last week. Fortunately it was to attend
a conference on man and the biosphere, and most
of those attending were conservationists. But I want
you to know that I was very careful to make sure that
officials or otherwise, and certainly myself, never told
them that in 1985, having received reports that two
Spanish trawlers were inside our 200 mile limit and
heading out as fast as they could go, that on one of
the rare moments in which then-defense minister Eric
Neilson and I saw ‘eye to eye’, I got him to let me have
a destroyer, and we got those vessels outside the 200
mile limit and brought them back. Now, as I say, I got
into Spain safely and I got out of Spain safely, despite
all this. My point, I think, in telling you that, is that I
was criticized in at least two newspapers and other
places for what was considered, I suppose, a very
un-Canadian thing to do. My point now is that (Iona
has just given us the statistics on Canadian approval
for the Canadian government’s action, as led by
Minister Tobin) it is clear that the mood has changed
dramatically, not just in this country, but around the
world.
In discussion about the Northern Cod, let me tell
you something. While I was Minister of Fisheries, we
knew from anecdotal information that the size of the
cod was coming down steadily, and in September of
1985, having returned from Newfoundland, I called
some people together and said, “We have got some
kind of a problem here.” Some people said, “No, we
haven’t because the total tonnage of catch is constant.”
We also knew that we were getting cold water, and as
others have said this morning, we drifted badly, and
we were very late in doing something about it.
Now the situation with respect to our stand on
the turbot issue has got nothing to do with trying to
cover up for Canadian negligence. Mr. Tobin has made
it abundantly clear to Ms. Bonino, and everybody
else, that we probably feel as keenly about this as any
people in the world, because we have made some
terrible mistakes. And the issue is not the legalities of
it; it is fundamental common sense, and if I can put it
this way, perhaps the morality of it—of dithering and
20
talking legalities (international law is a vague thing; it
changes from time to time) while we lose what is one
of the last large biomass reserves in the Atlantic.
When I talk about a change in mood, that is
what we heard for many, many weeks, myself and
my colleagues, on the board of investigation into the
situation on the sockeye and the Fraser. And we heard
again and again and again that the public doesn’t
care at all about what interest group or which interest
group thinks what about another. They are concerned
about whether we are going to go the way of the
cod, go the way of the other fisheries that have been
described here at a world level, or whether we are
going to protect this resource. It is intensely important,
it seems to me (and I speak as a British Columbian,
somebody who grew up here) that everybody in the
fishery ought to recognize that the public sympathy
for squabbling among ourselves is over.
Now I have never said that we were in the same
situation that Newfoundland is in now, but the reason
I refer to my own experiences in observing things in
the Eastern fishery many years ago, is that there were
signs which we did not act upon. What this report
(which we’ve tried to give accurately to you) points
out is, there are signs, and they are serious signs. There
is no one simple answer, but those recommendations
are on the basis of what we heard, and we heard
a very great deal. There was some worry that the
report would come out pretty antiseptic, and pretty
protective of interests, and there was concern that
because it was not a judicial inquiry, we would not
hear enough. We had both open public meetings and
private consultations, and by the time it was all over,
there wasn’t very much we hadn’t heard. Although we
may not be able to prove it all, we don’t have many
illusions about what was going on. What we tried to
do was to come up with recommendations, not that
are going to change the whole world, but that will
help to change human conduct. Human nature is not
likely to change; we can change the way we act but
not the way we are. What we tried to do was come up
with something that Mr. Tobin could implement, and
that the Department of Fisheries and Oceans could do,
and that we can all join in supporting.
There are some key parts to our recommendations.
One point is risk aversion. I know that there are
Getting the Missing Fish Story Straight
people in this audience who are not very pleased
about our recommendation that harvesting must be
on a conservative, risk aversion basis. We mentioned
that in the stocks, there was at least an 80% take of
the returning fish. That is what we said because that
was the best figure that we could glean, that we could
guess at. It may have been higher than that. I know
that there are people in the fishing community saying
“Oh no no, Mr. Tobin, for goodness’ sakes, don’t get
caught up with these figures. There’s places where
it’s quite all right to take 80% and maybe more.”
That isn’t the point. The point is that what we have
recommended, on the basis of what all of you and a
lot of other people have said (some of it reluctantly
said to us), is that we don’t know enough and we are
not skilled enough, to be harvesting down to the last
couple of fish, on some kind of enthusiastic guess
work.
As you know, there were two episodes which we
were asked to consider. The first episode was that
there were so many million fish counted at Mission,
and a lot less than that got to the spawning beds.
Immediately, people started to look for reasons; “Well,
must’ve been hot water, or something else.” Whatever
it was, (we have some views) the fish did not get
there. The second episode was literally a case of, “We
thought there were a lot more fish out in the Gulf
than there were,” or, “Something happened to some
of them, but mainly they didn’t come in the river.” As
you know, you have heard, and it has been repeated
and repeated, that another twelve hour opening in
any one of three places could well have wiped out the
Adams River run. That isn’t something made up to
be dramatic. It is said because it is time we faced the
reality in the management of our fisheries, that it is not
an exact science. We are not omniscient, and we can
make mistakes.
The other thing we knew, which we weren’t
specifically invited to go out and find out about (but
which we heard plenty about) is that if you move
away from the several great runs, like the Fraser River
sockeye, and start looking at the rest of this coast,
there is very grave reason to be concerned. I went to
a meeting a couple of days ago with some industry
people, in which Dr. Brian Harvey put graphs on the
wall showing the terrible loss of genetic diversity
in the salmon stocks on the West Coast. There are a
number of places where streams are down to 100,
or less than 100, returning fish. Dr. Carl Walters, in
his report, has pointed out that the Gulf of Georgia,
which once got most of its population from at least
100 streams, is down to getting it from twenty. You
can have figures that show a consistently increasing
number of sockeye salmon in runs, and when you take
a look at total fish production and total fish catches in
the province of British Columbia on some kind of a
graph on the wall, you can think, “Oh, we don’t have
much of a problem.” You’ve got to break it down;
you’ve got to look at what is happening to all of our
stocks. It’s not just one. Now, I think that all of us on
the board, and many, many of the rest of us, know that
what we are trying to do is maintain a fishery, not get
rid of it. It is common in the teaching profession, that
sometimes if you’ve got very badly behaved children
(or as I once was accused of being, mischievous) the
way to solve the problem in the classroom is to get
rid of the children. There is a simplistic notion around
here that the way to solve the problem of the fishery
is to get rid of all the fishermen. I notice that Mr. Eby,
and others, are concerned that that might be the drift
of this conference. Nobody is saying that. We are
saying that if you don’t have the fish, there is no use in
having any fishermen at all.
We made a number of recommendations and we
tried to design them so that Mr. Tobin could put them
into effect and so the Department could put them into
effect. Another key part of our report was that we said
that the government of Canada, under the constitution
of Canada, has the constitutional responsibility for
the maintenance and protection of the stock, and also
the authority, and that that must not be diminished, it
must not be handed out, it must not be abrogated, it
must not be given away. One can do all kinds of things
by agreement, but you cannot abandon that authority
and expect that those who have their own special
interests are going to protect the whole resource for
the next generation.
Another most important point: we called for a
Conservation Council. If you look carefully at the
material that is in front of you, you will see that we
are not calling for the establishment of a regulatory,
administrative body. We are not asking for a
constitutional debate in changing the constitution.
(We are not suggesting for one minute that the
constitutional responsibility and authority ought to be
diminished in any way for the federal government).
What we are saying is this: we are saying that a
watchdog organization ought to be established,
appointed by both the provincial government and
the federal government, with a secretariat of enough
competence so that on an annual basis, or from time
to time, there can be a report to the public of British
Columbia and the people of Canada, as to what
exactly is happening, not just to the sockeye in the
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21
Fraser, but to all of the stocks on the West Coast;
not just the salmon. What we do not have today is
any easily ascertainable arrangement whereby the
public can get at the facts, and nor (because of a lot of
reasons), is anybody in the Department of Fisheries
and Oceans, and for that matter, a good many people
who are in the fishery but not in the Department of
Fisheries and Oceans, nor have they any particular
incentive or reason to push, to ensure, that the public
knows what the facts are. I’m not talking about
information. (In my lifetime there must have been
thousands and thousands of so-called information
offices opened all around the world, including in our
country, and much of what they have put out hasn’t
been facts at all; it’s been propaganda or the product of
spin doctors or other things). I’m talking about facts.
I notice that there are some people in this room
who do not want that watchdog, and some of you are
fishermen. I also know why you don’t want it. Because
if somebody completely independent is telling exactly
what is happening, it is going to affect everybody in
the fishery, not just the people in the Department of
Fisheries and Oceans. Now I hope that you can be
persuaded to change your mind. But I can tell you
this: the public wants it. And I can say something else,
and I’ll speak very personally. I do not believe for one
minute that you are going to have the administration
of this fishery that is needed, the cooperation and
collaboration of the people in the fishery that are
needed, unless on a regular basis, the public is told
exactly what is happening. So I hope that there will be
some discussion on this.
I notice that in the response that the Department
gave to this particular recommendation, that they
are going to hold a meeting with some of you in
September, and they say point blank, there is no way
it could be set up in 1995, and since I am not sitting
in the quasi-judicial position now (the board is over),
I can at least tell you what I think personally. I don’t
believe that for one minute. I do not think that there
is any reason in the world why this cannot be done
this year, and I also think that if this is put off and
discussed only by the stakeholders in the fishing
industry, a lot of reasons will be found why it should
not be done. I would hope that this does not happen. I
don’t think that that was the intention of the Minister
of Fisheries and Oceans.
The last thing I want to say, before we hear from
Lee Alverson (who in many respects knows a lot more
about the science of all of this than I do; I’m at best an
amateur naturalist), is as somebody who is not in the
same political party, but as somebody who has been a
22
personal friend of the Minister for many, many years,
across party lines. We at last have got a minister who
has cut through the quill pen diplomacy of fuzzyheaded people, locked in their ivory tower, and finally
stood up for this country and for a resource, and in my
opinion, for the world. Thank you very much.
Dr. Lee Alverson
When I got through listening to Iona speak this
morning, and then after John Fraser, I sort of feel like
sitting here and looking at my shoelaces, but I have
a job to do too, and I’ll do the best that I can. My
expectations are to provide a little more information
on the scientific character of the problem, and
particularly the problem of the Fraser River salmon
management.
Scientists basically, in my opinion, should
provide information that assists those responsible
for management, in the understanding of the
consequences of human activity in and on an
ecosystem or a biological system. This largely means,
in mundane terms, understanding the life history of
the creatures you’re involved with and understanding
their behaviour. In a more complex sense, it means
understanding the dynamics of the populations in
terms of inter- and intra-species interdependencies,
environmental changes, and exploitation. Separating
out those latter factors is always a difficult aspect of
the fisheries management process. I am going to skip
over most of those and assume that we’re gaining
the information on life history and behaviour (we
may need to know a little bit about behaviour in the
ocean environment at certain times) and look at the
dynamics of the process within the river itself. Before I
do that, let me assure you, I understand that the Fraser
hosts a complex of anadramous and non-anadramous
species, and really we ought to be looking at the
management of the whole system. I’m talking today,
however, largely with regard to the recent sockeye
salmon issue, and its management in 1994.
As you know, the process begins with an estimate
of spawning success, and ultimately then, a look in
general at the success of the downstream migrants.
We attempt to make some understanding of the ocean
environment, and we come up with an estimate (or
the process does) of the return, and then this process
originally sets some escapement goals. Subsequently
the fish come into the coast, and we change from
our forecast to what appears to have returned, and
we have a new estimate. This process is changing
Getting the Missing Fish Story Straight
Johnstone
Strait
Forum Proceedings
23
as you’re looking at different areas at different time
periods, and looking at different stocks, and thus
the process becomes very complex. Those numerical
estimates have to formulate the basis for generating
and characterizing the fisheries, which in themselves
have a great deal of complexity in terms of the
allocation process, different selectivity processes,
different by-catch rates, different fishing areas and
different times. But this must all be taken into account,
as the manager tries to assure that final goal of getting
an escapement of proper numbers, proper sex ratio,
and the proper stocks to their areas of origin.
We begin with an assessment in the oceans, and
as I say, it drops down. Once we’ve got the fish in the
river, we make some sort of count. We have to rely
on some sort of understanding of what’s coming into
the river and hope that estimation is good—largely
the Mission count, and Qualark, and other estimating
processes within the river. We have to know what’s
coming out of the river, in terms of the number of
animals that are taken out, either legally or illegally.
And we have to ultimately know what arrives on the
spawning ground. Each of these has an estimating
process, and has some variance around it, making
the task somewhat difficult, but not unlike what’s
going on in the management of many other stocks in
many other parts of the world. These are the types of
problems that the basic scientist has to deal with. It’s
when this normal history and process are perturbed by
some sort of change, either in the management process
or the behaviour of the fish, that we tend to get into
difficulties.
I’d like to briefly go over the history of ’94. The
scientists have put this story together and I’m really
just reflecting on what they’ve had to say. This is a
satellite downloading of the temperature field in
the North Pacific in August and September, the red
being the warm water, and you’ll see the very large
plume of warm water moving up the coast, with a
little narrow cool water in the upwelling areas along
the coast, coming up to Vancouver, pushing right up
to the north and to Vancouver Island, and going well
westward into the Pacific. The red is temperatures in
the range running up to about 18 degrees centigrade,
essentially cutting off a large part of the northeastern
Pacific. You may recall that this year we had the
significant migration moving inside, you can even
see some warm water in the southern inside area of
Vancouver Island and as you get down to the south,
the Georgia Strait and south of Johnstone Strait. One
of the environmental problems which essentially
occurred this year (and I’m not going to say ‘global
24
warming’) related to the series, off and on, of warm
years that appear to have influenced the behaviour.
In this particular year, a large proportion of the fish,
as you remember, moved inside Johnstone Strait, and
generated a large-scale fishery in the Johnstone Strait
area, moving to the south; a much smaller number
moved to the south and into the Strait of Juan de Fuca
(Figure A, Fraser River Sockeye 1994). The problem that
the scientists were faced with is 1) they didn’t have a
historical database (they had it for the more southern
areas), particularly as it related to CPUE, stock
density and stock size estimates; 2) the behaviour
of the animals themselves altered in such ways that
there were possibilities that the CPUE measures may
have been affected by behavioural aspects of the
populations and the various run components that
had not been seen in the traditional database and also
tended to give relatively high expectation levels in
terms of the total stock level.
There was also a problem in terms of the quality
of numbers. I’m not sure that it was any worse than
it was in previous years, but the numbers tended to
be upgraded throughout the season, and in looking
at those and comparing some data used in the
Pacific Northwest and up in Alaska, I think they can
be improved. I just don’t think the quality and the
timeliness of the data is of the nature that you would
like to have in terms of making good management
decisions in that area. So we can identify the statistics
as being a problem.
As the fish begin to move into the Fraser itself,
they get a count up at Mission, and there’s a feedback
and they begin to get some measure of how well
they’re estimating their population size, what’s
moving through, and can compare it with what they
thought was moving through (Figure B, Fraser River
Sockeye 1994). Unfortunately, the late-run aspect is not
understood until it’s really too late to do much about
that. Finishing up this story, we have the problems
that I mentioned in the marine environment; we have
a total set of problems which relates to the quality
of the estimates, the quality at Mission, the quality
at Qualark, the quality in terms of the number of
fish being taken out of the system (again, legally or
illegally), the quality of the estimates on the spawning
grounds, and the unknown factor this year, and
perhaps in other years, in terms of en-route mortality
(that perhaps needs more attention and more focus
to identify whether or not it is a significant cause
of some of the differential readings we see with the
counts at Mission and upstream) (Figure D, Fraser
River Sockeye 1994). Those are the prevailing problems
Getting the Missing Fish Story Straight
related to improving the management process. I’ve
put this figure up (Figure G, Fraser River Sockeye 1994)
just to remind you again that the significant problem
areas, probably come up in our point 5-9, in the north
end of the Strait of Johnstone, and the other areas
including the US catch, catch in the other areas, and
the river with a relatively small reported removal,
and estimates of removals in other areas. The quality
of the data there and the quality of the data in the
marine environment, certainly are arenas for, potential
improvement. The use of Mission and the reliance on
it, I think, has generally shown in a historical sense, up
until the last several years, that we’ve managed quite
well. What’s gone wrong since that time is discussed
in the report along with suggested improvements.
In conclusion, I would make the comment, yes, it’s
easy to make a lot of recommendations, particularly
in retrospect, and sometimes we’re criticized by those
saying “What would you have done if you were the
manager?.” Maybe not a great deal different, I don’t
know. But that wasn’t our job as a board, our job was
to look in retrospect, and decide where the problems
were, and where things might be improved in the
future.
I think that if I were putting my money on areas
where improvement might occur (I suspect a lot
of people in DFO and the Commission agree), that
understanding more of what’s happening when fish
come down the Northern area, how behaviour affects
the CPUE, how the big vessels operate in that area,
differences in terms of their catching capabilities, and
the general distribution of the animals in the water
and their rate of movement through that, may enhance
our ability to do a better job. I suspect that as we get
more history in that area, we’ll improve the quality
of management. I have heard the point, I’ll reiterate
the issue that John raised, because perhaps the point
is worth making again, and that is that people are
talking about the 80%. I don’t think that 80% is
necessarily an inappropriate management strategy, if
20% is what you’ve designed to get to the escapement
area, and if the fish get there. I think if you’re shooting
for 72%, and you essentially have an 80% fishery,
you’ve probably generated a problem. I think if you
shoot for 80%, and you have a wide variability in the
estimations of what is actually on the ground, what
was actually taken in the river, and what your actual
counts are at your various indicating sites, you have
enough uncertainty in the situtation that you can
generate a significant problem on some of the stocks
and result in a management process that could be
done better. And I think that was the issue that John
stressed, risk-aversion management. That does not
mean you cannot take the surplus in years when you
have traditional data sets, when the quality of your
data sets is good, and when you have a great deal of
confidence in the history. It does suggest to me that
when you begin to have questions or are concerned
about the quality of your data, and the history of
your data, that you want to take a stronger and more
conservative role in establishing the harvest rates. I
am a strong proponent of risk-aversion management,
particularly if you look globally, and listened to our
earlier talk, and note the fact that maybe 69-70% of
the stocks in the world are considered to be intensely
overfished and depleted.
I have a lot more confidence in the ability of the
scientific community to establish information, than I
necessarily have in the processing of that information
into the decisions, and ultimately the political will to
carry out the mandates or the goals of management.
I see everybody in the world raising their hand
in succession, to express their commitment to
conservation. I saw that in the Law of the Sea in 1970,
and we established new sets of zones, and everybody
was going to come out and create miracles out of the
disaster of distant-water fishing. Rather, we replicated
the history of distant-water fishing in our own water,
and we replicated the types of problems that were
confronting the distant-water fisheries themselves.
I see great commitment to conservation orally, but
not when it comes to putting up the kind of cost to
undertake the enforcement, or build enforcement
mechanisms, or find technology that will do the
enforcement job for you to build credibility that the
management system is working. How do we avoid the
extensive illegal fishing problems that now exist? We
essentially need to try to establish the true numbers
or impact of fishing other than that of just removal,
and here I don’t just mean by-catch. I also mean fish
that pass through the nets and are damaged (this
is referred to as underpreserved fishing mortality).
We need a gauge on a number of other mortality
coefficients that aren’t currently being measured. We
need to dedicate ourselves to these issues.
I would leave you with one last thought, my
grandchild brought to me, and sometimes they have
wisdom that’s worth thinking about. He told me a
joke, and it sort of reminded me of going around
British Columbia, looking at what the problems were
in salmon. The joke was: “What did one earthquake
say to the other? It’s not my fault.” I think I heard
that a large number of times, and the only answer
I can give is, it is our fault. It’s my fault, Jake said
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26
Getting the Missing Fish Story Straight
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28
Getting the Missing Fish Story Straight
it was his fault, it is the fault of the users, it’s the
fault of the managers. I don’t feel we’ve always
been honest; we tend to become territorial, we don’t
work in a cooperative way, we fight endlessly over
the allocation, and we don’t focus on the problem of
conservation. It is our fault.
Dr. Peter Pearse, Respondent
The Fraser Report has really given us a very good
review, I think, with what’s wrong with the way we
manage our salmon, on this coast. I would say that
it’s a blunt and trenchant critique of the way we
handle our salmon management. I’m sure that most
of us here are familiar with the general theme in that
report, as Mr. Fraser has explained. What I’d like
to say is that this report has been remarkably wellreceived by a wide range of interest groups within
the fishing community, which doesn’t really have a
very long tradition of harmony, and it’s been very
well received as well by the government and with
the Minister having endorsed most of the Board’s
recommendations.
This degree of support and endorsation is
really quite unusual, and it probably has a lot to do
with the growing feeling of concern, I would put
it more strongly– exasperation, probably, or even
desperation—about fisheries in general, both in the
public mind and within the fishing community. And
this is aggravated by growing news stories about
collapsing stocks on the Atlantic coast, or repeated
crises here over aboriginal fisheries, the ongoing gear
wars, the occasional imbroglio over missing fish, and
continuing and growing warnings, I must say, from
the environmental community and spokesmen like
Peter Weber.
All of this is having an impact on the general
public attitude towards fisheries, and the public is
now at a state of anxiety that I never recall previously.
And there’s a growing feeling that fish are not being
well-managed; they’re being badly managed, and
they’re being depleted, and there’s a feeling of a sortof public outrage spreading over letting this go on. But
in addition, the Board’s recommendations’ popularity
probably has alot to do as well with the fact that its
main target of criticism has been the Department
of Fisheries and Oceans. Now the DFO is sort of
considered fair game by almost everybody, and I have
in the past taken my kicks at the DFO, but I’d like to
focus and make a suggestion to you that strengthening
the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, beefing up
enforcement, beefing up the science, and all of those
other things, will help, undoubtedly, to prevent the
kind of difficulties we experienced in 1994 from
happening again. But I would like to suggest to you
also that there is a more fundamental problem here.
And that will not be solved by more resources, more
funding, more training, more reinforcement on the
part of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. I’d
like to suggest to you that we may be asking the DFO
to do an impossible task. And in the long run, maybe
we should be thinking about ways of asking the DFO
to do less. Let me explain. Consider the difficulties
within which the Department of Fisheries and Oceans
is charged to manage and regulate our fisheries on
the coast. We have extraordinary biological problems
for the DFO to deal with. There is a huge uncertainty
about the biological character of the fish which we
have just been hearing about from Lee Alverson and
others and there is a huge element of risk in managing
fish, especially salmon. As the pressure grows on
the salmon, the risk becomes more threatening. And
on top of all of this, because we don’t have all the
information about the salmon, at the same time, we
have a system that encourages our fishermen, our
fishers, to withhold information, rather than to share
information; there’s an incentive problem there.
Secondly, we have an over-expanded fleet,
and that becomes an increasing threat to sensitive
management of harvesting the fish. To make matters
worse, we not only have that problem, we have
an incentive on the part of vessel owners to keep
expanding their fishing powers even when the
fishing fleet is too large. And with technological
developments proceeding, the strength of the
fishing power of the fleet keeps growing very
substantially.
Third, we have jurisdictional confusion. We
put a management agency in place to deal with the
situation in which we’ve divided our responsibilities
between aligned departments of the Federal
Government and the government of another country
through the International Treaty. We have blurred
the division of responsibility and the accountability
of the administrative system. In addition, we have
set up special laws and institutions to deal with
the aboriginal fisheries, which is a whole separate
thing. And we have a constitutional division of
responsibilities between the Federal Government and
the Provincial Government; there is a very awkward
line of division between the two.
Finally, we have a common property in the fishery,
unlike almost any other significant industry in the
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29
country in which the rights to catch a fish, the shares
of the catch, are not defined, and they are simply
determined by competitive fishing. So that, to makes
matters worse, precludes incentives on the part of
individual fishermen to restrain the catches or indeed
to conserve or to invest and to do all the things that
we’re just told that we need to do.
So, all of these frustrations added together create
an almost impossible regulatory task in the long
run. I’d like to suggest to you that we have got the
Department on a kind of treadmill of increasing
reinforcement, of increasing enforcements and
regulations and scientific research, and trying to keep
up with these growing threats to the fish.
Therefore, while more resources and enforcements
will help to prevent the problems of 1994 from being
repeated, I think that we have a longer term problem,
and it’s time to think of alternatives. And what are
these alternatives? It’s very significant, I think, that
people are talking seriously about a “new approach.”
John Fraser has talked about it. Mr. Tobin’s now
talking about it. The Department’s talking about it.
And, we should talk about it. We have some models
that we should look at. We should build on experience
elsewhere. We should look to other parts of the
country and to other countries and learn what we can.
And I hope that we’re now at the point, that we
recognize that we have a problem. I do hope that we
won’t dissipate our energies again debating whether
we have a problem of excess capacities or whether
we have a problem of overfishing or whether we
have a problem of enforcement. We do. And let’s
talk about how we deal with these things. And then,
we have some basic directions that we know, I think
most of us at least know to some agreement, we
have to move in. In the long run, we have to pull
in the fishing fleet. There has to be less chasing of
the fish all up and down the coast with a huge and
powerful, and increasingly powerful, fishing fleet.
We have to move inshore where we can harvest
more discriminatingly and more carefully. We’ve
got to give more responsibilities to the users of the
resource, through home management systems and
other arrangements that we can see elsewhere. We
should look at situations as we see in Alaska. We
can learn from Alaska’s experience. We should look
at situations where they have much more localized
licensing arrangements. We should look at ways they
do it in Japan where they fish through cooperative
arrangements in individual rivers and tributaries.
And we should look at places like New Zealand and
elsewhere to develop more well-defined rights to fish.
30
And I think that if we can get to the point where we
can start thinking about alternatives, comparing them
and how we get from where we are to where we want
to be, that will be a very constructive discussion.
Discussion questions addressed to John Fraser,
Lee Alverson and Peter Pearse
Unknown member of the audience: I want to direct a
question to John Fraser. I couldn’t disagree more with
Peter Pearse on the issue of DFO doing less rather
than more. I was glad to see in John Fraser’s report
some very harsh words to the Federal Government
saying, it doesn’t matter about the whole issue of
federal budget cuts, conservation of the resource has
to be primary. The Department has to do whatever
is necessary to make sure that the fish be conserved.
There was an image that came out of the release of the
Fraser report though, that Tobin basically adopted all
the recommendations of the Fraser report. And that’s
not turning out to be the case. A prime example is that
Mr. Tobin has said that there will be 15 more fishery
officers assigned for enforcement here on the West
Coast. Well, in actual fact, that’s peanuts and if we
look at what’s happened in the last 5 or 6 years, we’ve
actually evened out that increase of enforcement,
and it’s a 30% cut over the last 5 years. There’s been
a major restructuring. We don’t have the kind of
enforcement that we need out there and we’re not just
talking about enforcing the commercial, aboriginal,
and sport’s fisheries, but the kind of enforcement
that will make sure that the major logging companies
are not breaking the law, make sure that the GVRD
is not breaking the law by being the biggest polluter
right now in the Fraser River. I don’t see the action
from Tobin in prosecuting the GVRD, for example.
As a matter of fact, a few environmental groups like
ourselves (I’m from the David Suzuki Environmental
Foundation), the Legal Defense and the Georgia Strait
Alliance had to launch a private prosecution of the
GVRD on the sewage issue. We don’t see that action
from Tobin. The kinds of things that we see in the
Fraser Report are recommendations and in particular,
a demand to the Federal Government do what is
needed under the Fisheries Act, to enforce what’s
needed in conservation of stocks, and I’d like to hear a
response from Mr. Fraser on what more is needed.
John Fraser: Well, I’m not taken by surprise about
anything that has just been said. But, remember that
Getting the Missing Fish Story Straight
the board was asked to make recommendations and
as I said earlier, we tried to make recommendations
that the Minister could act on fairly quickly. But
what we very carefully did not do was get into
recommendations which literally amount to the micromanagement of the Internal Affairs of the Department.
If we had started to do that, we could have written
pages on whether 15 new enforcement officers would
be enough, where should they be, where should the
coastal patrol people be, if you are going to link with
the Coast Guard, how do you do it? We could have
gone on and on. What we said is that we’ve got to
have an enforcement component that in itself will not
guarantee compliance, but without it you will not have
any compliance. And it’s now up to the Department
to act on that. How they do it, is a matter of course, in
which they may be publicly criticized or they may be
supported depending on what it is. But we were not, I
think, in a position where we were to give them all of
the details
Now, I want to deal with another matter that, I’m
not going to get into Kemano except to point out that
as we’ve observed in the Report, there is still a dam on
the river. I hope that’s sinking in to everybody.
The other thing that I want to say is that you
mentioned that you took umbrage with Dr. Pearse.
Well, I didn’t take it that Dr. Pearse was saying that the
Department of Fisheries and Oceans should throw up
its hands and abandon its responsibilities. I took it that
he was saying that there is a complex task out there
and that there may well be need to be partners. What
we tried to say was that the Department of Fisheries
and Oceans has got to be strengthened. And it has
got to accept, and be supported in, its constitutional
authority and responsibility.
Dennis Brown: United Fishermen and Allied Workers’
Union. I want to stand up and thank Mr. Fraser for
the excellent work that was done by the panel. I want
to thank you very sincerely for the fact that you’ve
come up with recommendations that make great sense
and will do a great deal to help us all. I’m thankful
that you’ve called for the restoration of the DFO
authority. I’m thankful that you’ve called for more
enforcement. I’m thankful that you’ve touched on
issues like habitat. I could quibble (but I will not) to
say that you could always go further in that field. I
would thank you also for recognizing that the issue
is a complex one. And I’d also like to thank you for
resisting thus far the tendency that some people
earlier fell into the trap of, of making reductionist and
somewhat scapegoating types of analyses about the
whole problem of overfishing—if we got rid of this
overcapitalized fleet or we got rid of this common
property rat race or a number of kind of assertions
like that. You’ve avoided that. You’ve acknowledged
that we need to get on with restructuring the fleet,
but I think that you’ve tended to avoid the political
partisanship on this issue. What I’ve like to hear from
you is some advice for those of us who feel somewhat
understaffed in our commercial fishery, on how we
can get across to the public, which we’ve agreed needs
to be more involved, to avoid simplistic solutions here,
to avoid that very trap I’m so painfully aware of that if
we just write it off as too much overfishing, everything
will be fine. And, how can we get across to the public
that it’s much more complex; it involves sovereignty,
it involves habitat, it involves an awful lot of things I
can’t do in a two minute clip. But I’d like some advice
from you, sir, on how we can try to bring the public in
but still not fall into simplistic solutions.
John Fraser: Well, first of all, Dennis, as you went
on thanking the Board for what it did, I kept waiting
for the next line which would be “now having said
that…” I expected the roof to fall in on us. I thank
you for the generosity. To come back to the very
difficult issue that you point to, and that is how do
you get across the complexity of these issues in an
age where you know it’s a ten second clip. When I
got into politics nearly a quarter of a century ago,
we thought we had a 30 second clip. It’s down to 10
now. I know how very difficult that all is. I have at
least a partial answer. We need an independent fact
finding council that reports to the public on what the
facts are, and that would be an excellent place to put
some of this material into, so that you’ll be sure it
comes out and you could be sure it comes out under
the aegis of independent council. I understand your
difficulties and I’ve got a lot of sympathy with them.
It is absolutely important that we don’t take simplistic
notions.
Response from Lee Alverson: Here is a little different
dimension to what was said. The question was a
very good one because the responsibilities of natural
resource management, whether they’re within
DFO, or within the Fishery Service of the Alaskan
Department of Fish and Game, are really exploding
in an exponential manner, because the managers are
no longer just looking at fish. They are looking at a
complex of fish. They are looking at an interaction of
fish with birds and marine mammals. They are looking
at water quality. They are looking at a variety of issues
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31
that are all becoming a part of the domain, and it is
much more complex. There are no simplistic answers.
I don’t think Peter Pearse implied that DFO should
not have a significant role, but it’s fair to say that
those who put up money, your citizens and citizens
elsewhere in the world, have a tremendous number
of high priority activities and the likelihood of getting
significant gains to undertake the job are probably not
very good. Which does suggest to me that we’ll have
to do better with less, and that’s where I’m convinced
that if we cannot build a better partnership between
the managing agencies, DFO and Pacific Salmon
Commission (PSC), the American component, the
other elements of management, the user groups, and
the First Nations people, in a more cohesive affordable
manner, it’s going to be much more difficult to do the
job. So, we have to get the public involved and that
should be more than a moral commitment, particularly
in terms of the industry and user groups. I think it
also means a commitment financially to assist in these
activities and the research, and investigations, and a
commitment to assist in the enforcement activities to
ensure that there is responsible citizen activity.
Skip McCarthy: I’ve had the opportunity over
the years to have some experience working as a
fisherman, living in a small coastal community and
working in the Department of Fisheries and Oceans
in Ottawa headquarters. At this point, having
returned to the coast, I find myself being a concerned
citizen, especially concerned about fisheries and the
environmental situations that we find ourselves in.
It seems to me that it is possible to move towards
a synthesis of some of these different forms of
experience and wisdom that we’ve already heard
speakers bringing here today. In the first presentation,
Mr. Weber showed us the relative forms of efficiencies,
the different kinds of fisheries and different techniques
brought to bear, and so that is almost a menu of
how to approach the Fisheries, this is a range of
possibilities. One end gives you higher economic
efficiencies. The other gives broader employment. It
seems that if there is an expressed will, and it seems
to be moving that way, it may be possible to move
beyond sectoral interests and the old-fashion system
of lobbying central agencies and attentive politicians.
Then there needs to be sincere effort to respect the
different forms of wisdom from economists and their
particular skills, and on the grounds,the wisdom
that people participating in the fisheries and people
living close by the sea have to offer. I’d be interested
in the perspective of the speakers as to the potential
32
advantage of starting to vest some of our trust and
expression in different forms of democratic institutions.
Response by Peter Pearse: Well, thank you for that
comment and question. I would like to preface my
answer by a putting the record straight in case I
didn’t make it clear before. I did not mean to suggest
that the Department of Fisheries and Oceans should
in any sense abandon its responsibilities under our
constitution. That is paramount, that’s an issue that
is emphasized in the Fraser Report, and I certainly
endorse it. The Department must accept responsibility
and indeed, and if its’ going to take more resources,
they’re going to have to have more resources. The
point that I have been trying to make, is that under
the present management system, under the present
institutional structure, it’s going to take increasing
resources as the pressure builds. And I think that it’s
time to start looking for alternatives because this is
not a very promising tack that we’re on and I think
that the answer is that something is going to have to
change. Mr. Tobin has already expressed a hope that
the fishing community itself will help with that. So, I
think that if constructive changes are going to be made,
it’s with the support of the fishing industry and others,
the Native community, the sports fishermen. I think
that we should start looking carefully at schemes that
have been successful elsewhere. I don’t know exactly
what the solution for our salmon fishery is here, but
I think that you, that is to say the fishing community,
has got to articulate something that you think will be
promising and figure out how to help the Government
get there. With respect to the kinds of schemes that
you’re speaking about, I think that there is indeed lots
of experience with co-management, self-regulatory
systems under which groups of fishermen can organize
to manage the fisheries in particular areas on the coast.
That is to say, a fisherman would cease to have licenses
simply to go fishing anywhere, and they would have
licenses to share the exclusive right to the catch in a
particular fishery which would be their responsibility
to manage under their surveillance of the Department
of Fisheries and Oceans, but to manage it, enhance
it, protect it, and catch the fish in ways that would
be much less conflicting than we have now. Now,
how that should be organized, I don’t know, but I’m
suggesting to you that that’s the way it’s done in some
other places and it seems to work a lot better.
John Lennic: I’m one of the fishers that ends up being
at fault, I suppose among others. I really felt good
about the Fraser Report, and I want to thank John and
Getting the Missing Fish Story Straight
Dr. Alverson, and the rest of the panel because it’s the
first time that I feel that there might a future for me in
this industry. It’s been pretty tough for the last four
years, and I sense that there’s a fundamental problem
that you didn’t address, (it wasn’t in your mandate),
and that is how it relates to the East Coast fishery. The
failure of the East Coast fishery was related to the fact
that there that were so many socio-economic demands
on it, and political demands, that we had the failure
of that fishery. Same as we had with the Monterey
sardine fishery. It was a million and one half tons
one year, and that was wiped out, because we built a
system up that was so big that nobody wanted to slow
it down.
We have a fishery out here and we have demands
from the commercial sector, the sports, the commercial
sports, and the coastal communities. Everybody has
a way of getting to the Minister, and everybody has
a way of putting more demands on the resource. The
question I have is whether this public review panel
will vet decisions, and whether that will take the
politics out of fishing.
John Fraser responds: John, I don’t know that you
take the politics out of any activity among us. I
remember a few years ago, a very irate fellow from
BC in a big conference in Toronto where I was cochairing, said “You should axe all politicians, all our
institutions, parliaments, etcetera,” and then he went
on (I gave him a bit of time because he was from BC,
might have been in my riding), “Well, what we want is
a constituent assembly and the first thing we’re going
to make sure about is that nobody who is a politician
can go to it.” I said, well, politics is going to come back
very quickly because you’re going have to select the
people that do go. So, it’s very hard to avoid what is
the politics or the human relations?
Now, the council that we have in mind is not
an advisory council to the Minister. It’s not another
one of them. It is not a representation from all the
stakeholders. It is an independent observation post
which will report annually on the state of the stocks
on the West Coast, the state of the saltwater fishery,
and from time to time, when required. It would be
appointed jointly by the province and the federal
Government, and it would be independent. It’s not
there to filter through the difficulties, the problems,
the grievances and other things for all of the members
of the fishing industry. When I said to Dennis, it is an
excellent place for the people in the fishery to make
sure that the facts are getting out to the public—that
is what I think. The problem you have, is that under
our democratic system, the Ministers and elected MPs
have of course, the authority of the Ministry. But,
anybody can go to a Minister. Now, there’s all kinds
of gatekeepers trying to keep everybody away, but
you can go to the Minister. And inevitably, an industry
(the fishing industry), any industry, does the very best
it can to co-opt the Minister and the gatekeeper. That
happens. And, what has to be kept in mind, when
you’re that industry, or that group of stakeholders,
is the degree to which you try to co-opt the Minister,
the degree to which you think that you should have
selective entree, that should take precedence over
anybody else getting across their point of view; you
break down the whole integrity of the Minister’s
position. Now, I can’t suggest a way in which you
can say, “Nobody can go and talk to the Minister.”
I think you’re going to always have that. I think the
question is that it doesn’t get abused and is, to some
degree, that you have got to work this out amongst
yourselves. A tough-minded Minister helps and a
good office helps.
Response by Dr. Peter Pearse: Just a quick comment
on John Lennic’s point. Since Mr. Fraser corrected a
misunderstanding about something I said, I would
like to correct a misunderstanding about something
that Lee Anderson said. John, it’s not your fault.
That’s not the point. I don’t think (at least as far as I
know), that you’re doing anything wrong, you’re just
a good fisherman, right? And, you didn’t design this
system, so we can’t blame you. But the point is, we’re
all part of this system. We’ve participated in it and it
will stay in place as long as we continue to support
it. And, I’m just suggesting to you that I think we
should start looking fundamentally at ways to avoid
this continuing and accelerating fighting amongst
ourselves. And seeing if there’s a way we can be
re-aligned, so we can be co-operating rather fighting
with each other.
Response by Lee Alverson: I would just add to
what Peter concluded with. I did make the comment
about who is at fault and I don’t back away from it. I
think we all have a tendency to look somewhere else.
And this is the first stage of resolving a problem. I
also think that we have a crisis in management, not
just here, but on a global scale, but I really think the
problems here are more solvable. The stocks are in
better condition, in general, than in many other areas.
But, the first thing is to look in the mirror and
say, do I have a by-catch problem? Do I have a mixed
species problem? Am I supporting policies that say,
Forum Proceedings
33
“Well, let’s take a few extras because if we don’t,
these guys are going to get them?” or “If we don’t,
the seiners are going to cork ‘em. If the seiners don’t
cork ‘em, somebody up the river is going to take ‘em.”
I think that when that attitude prevails, it generates
a level of public response that gets very clear to the
area of anarchy. I think you have to move back and
move together as an industry, and say, okay this isn’t
working out very well now. How do we generate some
co-management. I think that’s where DFO can play
a key role in bringing about co-management. I think
co-management is an important element. It is not a
panacea, let me tell you that. It’s important to structure
something that addresses the various viewpoints
and develops a sense of understanding and a
cross-fertilization, so that everybody understands
where we’re going, and has a commitment to the
conservation of the resource.
General Audience Commentary
Chris Campbell: I’m a consultant who has the dubious
distinction of also having made lots of mistakes on the
East Coast, as things went very wrong. That makes
me think back this morning, to where we had some
differences of opinion over whether we actually had
a problem we should be worrying about, and then we
had a question of where is the canary. I throw out to
Lee, and to John Fraser, perhaps we should work on
identifying the canary, so that we can concentrate on
the mine. The eleventh hour was a very interesting
process on the East Coast; all of those people who had
spent those years pointing fingers suddenly realized
they had to find the solution.
Lynn Hunter: I’m from the Wild Salmon Coalition, a
new structure that is trying to look at the problems
facing the West Coast wild salmon stock. I’m not
adverse to new structures, but I have a concern
and a very sincere question. Given the climate of
cynicism about structures, and about the ability to
function in those structures, how do you establish the
independence, and maintain the independence, of that
Conservation Council? That’s critical, if it’s going to
succeed.
Unidentified Member of the Audience: I’m from the
Burnaby Fish and Games Club, I’m a sports fisherman.
I would like to refer you to your Recommendations
Number 17 and 18, again dealing with enforcement. I
34
take exception to the DFO response, in that they say,
this recommendation has already been implemented,
and we heard today that 17 F.O.s have been added
to what is an inadequate enforcing group. You
specifically point out that they (DFO) have the
responsibility to protect our resource. And I would
wonder if this panel would be so kind as to go on
record, to support at least the 1993 status of F.O.’s,
which was 150 versus the 65 we have now, as being
the absolute minimum that all the stakeholders could
stand to keep this thing viable and sustainable.
Lorne Iverson: I belong to the Fisherman’s Union
and I am a fisherman. I might remind people here
that we do have a canary in the river, and that’s the
sturgeon. They’re dying in ever increasing numbers.
And secondly, we have a guru on the stage in Peter
Pearse. And we have somebody from our industry,
Don Cruickshank, who wrote an answer to everything
Peter said, and nothing, except for one little sentence
is mentioned in this book (The Fraser Sockeye 1994
Report) about Don Cruickshank, and it doesn’t refer
to anything that he said. There’s a page and a half
or two or three pages from Pearse, and not one from
Cruickshank, and we’re talking primarily about
industry, Madame Chairman. We really have nothing
from industry in this book.
Bruce Lansdowne: I am a commercial fisherman. I
didn’t expect to agree with Peter Pearse coming here,
because he said we have got too few fish being chased
by too many boats. This creates a lot of problems and
it has, but he didn’t do it—we did it, by taking that
statement and saying to him, “Well, if I keep my boat
and you get fewer boats then my share grows.” The
commercial sector has to be accountable for those
kinds of things. Right now, there’s a little illusion
about area fishing, alot of people are gearing up to
say “How can I use this new regulation to get more?.”
We have to be accountable, each and every one of us,
that’s what Dr. Alverson was saying. We can start
pointing fingers again, but that’s not what it’s about.
There has to be personal accountability by everyone,
in all user groups.
Brian Lake: I am a commercial fisher and also operator
of a small business, Canada Wild Salmon Products,
so I’ve directly tied my fate to that of this resource.
There has been a number of references this morning
to the public perception, and it’s been mentioned in
connection with this public watchdog group. The
majority of the people I know are not fishermen, and
Getting the Missing Fish Story Straight
so I’m frequently asked questions like this morning en
route here, “Is this resource going to be wiped out? Is
it that critical?.” And quickly on the heels of that, “Are
there just too many fishermen and too many boats?.”
I believe that the potential effect of overfishing
notwithstanding, you could halt fishing entirely, and
we could still lose this resource. The other contributing
factors—logging, pollution, pulp mills, sewage,
etcetera—all contribute to that effect. And I’m sure the
dark irony that we’re meeting in a room, which bears
the name of a multi-national in the logging industry,
is not lost on anybody here. So my question is this:
How would this public watchdog group address these
other contributing factors, in terms of risk aversion
management?
Unidentified Member of the Audience: I’m a sports
fisherman, by choice. I was a commercial fisherman
when I was young. What I want to ask John Fraser
is, if Brian Tobin is as wonderful as we all think he is,
why did he come down with only 15 new fisheries
officers; why wasn’t it 150 or 250 like they really
need? And why isn’t the public aware of this sort of
literature? What is your excuse, sir? Is there some
kind of a secret agenda to give the fishery away to one
certain user group? In 40 years I’ve seen it go from a
great abundance to nothing, and we’ve only had two
types of government in Ottawa.
Fred Fortier: I’m the chairman of the Shuswap Nation
Fisheries Commission. I wanted to mention to Peter,
with regard to your book that was published quite a
few years ago, ‘Turning of the Tide’, that I notice that
DFO’s followed that to a ‘t’ in the past couple years,
when you go over it. The issue is about how we’re
going to continue, and to support communities that
have a base of responsibility. When you take away fish,
and certain genetic stocks within any system, you take
away that responsibility within those communities.
How do we empower those communities and
those watersheds to take responsibility for all of the
problems that these people talk about, in forestry?
People from the coast here aren’t going to solve
problems in the inland. Those problems are going to be
solved around those roundtables in the communities,
and that’s how you’re going to empower the people.
The other comment I have, is that the buyout-program
that we are putting in place here, in the West Coast, is
the ‘industrial solution’ problem. We are going to go
to an industrial solution again, in the buyout program,
and everyone accepts that. And I want to know why
people would support a buyout program that is an
industrial solution. The same problem that got us into
this problem that we have right now.
Billy Griffiths: Commercial fisherman and salmon
enhancement volunteer. Two comments, one for Mr.
Fraser, first. You’re partially wrong. You said that
commercial fishermen are not going to like your
recommendations. Some of us commercial fishermen
have studied your report, we’ve studied your
recommendations, we endorse them, we hope to get
Brian Tobin and the Department of Fisheries to put
them into effect. You did a very good job and I thank
you for your report. The other [comment] is to Peter
Pearse. You’re a little bit out of date on your talking
about how efficient fleets are. We’re gradually going
down in our efficiency. I’m not a troller so I can’t
elaborate on the barbless hooks or the limitation on the
number of spools or girdies that trollers use; gillnetters
at least have agreed to not using monofilament
gillnets.
Edgar Birch: Mr. Pearse wrote a report in ’82 that the
government is still following, and that’s what got us
into the trouble we’re in today. The larger the vessel or
the catching facility is, the better it is for the province,
and so that we can downsize the government and get
rid of all those little guys, and we won’t need as many
fishery officers as we used to have, to police all those
little fishermen. What happened with that is that the
government followed that thing right through, and so
we did build a bigger fleet, and when the government
reduced the fisheries department, it couldn’t police all
those little fishermen that are around the coast, and
started up a native fishery, like you suggested in your
book, and now we’re into the mess of 1994. They were
unable to police it. Most of that was based on your
recommendations from 1982. You’re now telling me
here today that we should look around the world at
some other systems that are working. What is wrong
with our own system that’s working here? Look at
page 134 with the salmon catch statistics. It says we’re
doing very well in salmon in British Columbia. We’re
holding our own.
Ehor Boyanowsky: I don’t believe that we should be
fishing less in the commercial net fishery. I think we
should be fishing more; I think that there should be
more people employed, I think there should be longer
fishing hours, I think that we should be targeting
the 80% or whatever percentage is appropriate for
spawning as well as for survival of the fishermen
himself or herself. But we have to adjust the way we
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35
do this. If we’re using seines, we shouldn’t be using
drum rollers, we should use table seines, we should
be going to traps and other more discriminate ways
that do exist, that allow us to take more target fish, and
allow weaker and non-target species to go free. We
have that opportunity, the East Coast didn’t. I think
that’s what we should be striving for.
Vicki Husband: The Sierra Club. I’m a member of the
public and I would like to say that the public perceives
that there is a serious problem here; maybe we aren’t
saying the fishery’s in crisis, we’re not just saying
salmon, we’re looking at goeduck, we’re looking at the
ling cod, where are they in the Strait of Georgia? What
is happening to our rock fish? The whole system is in
trouble, and I’m just here to represent the public and
say, yes, we are concerned.
Final Response of Fraser/Alverson/Pearse
John Fraser: With respect to the canary, the sturgeon
is an example, so is the steelhead. All you have to
do is look at the number of streams where there are
hardly any fish going back, the discrete, the lesser
stocks, and those are the canaries. The other thing
is that people sometimes think that just because
you’ve got estimated millions of sockeye going up
the Fraser River, there couldn’t be anything wrong
with the sockeye runs. But we have a member of the
Shuswap Nation with us right here, and he could tell
you all about what has happened to discrete parts
of the sockeye species, the sub-races, the sub-stocks,
and in streams where they aren’t there anymore,
and they’re trying to bring them back, sometimes by
gene-banking. Those are the canaries. They’re all over
the place, unfortunately. So, while we are not in the
situation of the East Coast yet, we’ve got plenty of
canaries.
On the enforcement, I said that we did not
recommend, we didn’t get into the micro-enforcement.
The comment that the DFO had said that they had
implemented one aspect of this: they have brought in a
high level enforcement officer, a former RCMP officer,
and I think that’s what they’re referring to. When you
talk about the 150 enforcement officers in 1993, to 65
today, I’m not sure that your records are correct. I can’t
get into that. We have said clearly that there must be
enforcement.
With regard to Don Cruickshank, he very kindly
spent several days with us at a retreat before the
report was finished, and he was a very great help
36
to us. With respect to “there’s nothing here from
industry,” I’m not quite sure what that means, but let
me say that these hearings went on from November
right through to February, and if industry had some
point that they did not get in, I’m sorry. That was
not because we didn’t want to hear it, and it wasn’t
because there wasn’t a full opportunity to do it. Mr.
Lake said “People say, “Well how bad is it”?.” The
answer to that is that we’re at a point right now that
if we pay attention to what we know, the canaries and
other things, we don’t have to have a collapse of this
fishery. There was something we said in our report,
which I ask you to go back and consider. When we
were looking back at reports that have been made
by people, including Dr. Pearse, assigned to take
a look at problems, much of what we said reflects
what has been said before in terms of advice. There
is this fundamental question—Is anybody listening?
That’s why we’re having this conference. There was
another comment about enforcement “If Tobin’s so
wonderful, why doesn’t he have more enforcement
officers?.” I’ve dealt with that as much as I can. As far
as the ‘industrial solution’ with respect to the buyout
program, we didn’t go in to try to examine a buyout
program, and I don’t know that we had, at that time, a
mandate to do it. Billy Griffiths said I was wrong, but
in saying so, he was coming to my defense. I didn’t
mean that every fisherman in this room or every fisher
on the coast disagrees with everything in the report.
I just know some of you fairly well, I know that you
don’t agree with all of them with equal enthusiasm.
Now Mr. Birch took on Dr. Pearse, and that’s for
him to answer. I know Ehor Boyanowsky very well,
and we both fish for steelhead. I’m not as good a
steelhead fisherman as he is, and I’m not even as good
a spokesperson for the steelhead, but when he said
that they too are a canary, that is right. Vicki Husband
represents a lot of people. She is now trying to move
away from saving trees and watersheds, to saving
what swims up the watershed. Welcome Vicki.
Lee Alverson: I don’t have a lot to add, but I
would like to talk about canaries. The bird people
seem to be in today. I think there is important to
more closely examining the successes and failures
in world fisheries. Currently there are alot more
failures than there are successes, but I am convinced
they do provide some clues and some indicators
of what went wrong. I’m sure they’re not all going
to give you the same answers. I think you need to
look at these in terms of the scientific advice, the
management decisions and the institutional structure
Getting the Missing Fish Story Straight
and enforcement capability of the organization
involved. Are we looking at the resource and not the
environment? Are we looking at the right questions?
I think if we did that, we would find a sufficient
number of canaries that would give us clues that
would say we’re in trouble and we need to take action
earlier in the game than we do now.
As far as Mr. Tobin is concerned, he is not my
Minister, but I think he’s shown a great deal of
fortitude. I was particularly proud of the manner in
which he responded on the East Coast. Everyone is
saying Canada’s out of step, in terms of arresting a
vessel on the high seas. I remind everybody, that in the
1970s, the entire world was going to unilateral action
on their own because the system was not working.
What you’re seeing now is a further evolution of the
legal regime that ultimately the coastal state is going
to have to have the management responsibility to
ensure the conservation of the resource. There is no
doubt that the history of the roving elements of global
fleets that have now been cut out, are engaged (and
not just the people from Spain) in an activity that
involves significant illegal fishing activities, double
hulls, double logs, and it’s a widespread activity that
ultimately we have to come to grips with. I think the
first step is the type of action that your Minister took.
You have to go out and demonstrate to the public,
despite everything these guys are saying, that they
are lying, and they’re involved in an illegal fishing
activity.
Peter Pearse: Mr. Birch, I was amused when you
said that we’re in such a mess today because
the government has been following all my
recommendations all this time. I thought it was the
opposite, that we were in such a mess because they
hadn’t taken my recommendations in 1982. But there
is a little misunderstanding, which we needn’t go
into detail here now, but I certainly didn’t make any
recommendations that were intended, to aggravate the
issue of bigger and bigger boats. And in fact, I’m on
the record quite clearly as advocating the opposite.
But there is something else I would like to say
as we close this session, that we haven’t mentioned
before. As we sit here, and we talk about all the
problems that we’re in, and we do have serious
problems in the fishery, we also have a lot of
opportunity. All of the scientific evidence is that we
can have more salmon. Our rivers and lakes and
oceans are capable of producing much more salmon.
The great thing about the fishery is that everybody
can be made better off—taxpayers, governments,
bureaucrats, fishermen, the public at large—if we
manage this fishery well. To do it, I’m convinced
at least, that we’re going to have to think about
changing things. We’re going to have to realign
people’s incentives so they don’t keep fighting with
each other, and fighting the bureaucrats, and fighting
between governments, and all of that sort of thing.
That’s what’s frustrating our system. And as we
think about how to do it, and which way to move,
remember we’ve got enormous opportunities in this
huge province, to experiment. We don’t have to do
it all ‘holus bolus’ and make mistakes and regret
it and dislocate a lot of people. We can take small
experiments, try different techniques, see if they work,
and progress slowly. But as soon as we open our
minds to that, and start experimenting and thinking
about it, and looking at the evidence, I think we can
make some progress.
Forum Proceedings
37
fish stocks and habitat
panel discussion
Dr. Michael Healey
I want to focus on some of the more obvious aspects
of habitat that I think all of you are probably aware of
and some perhaps much more familiar with than I am.
I thought I’d talk a little bit about this issue of change,
and the fact that we are in a time of change. We’re in
a time of change not only with regard to how we’re
viewing the way we should relate to salmon, but we’re
also in a time of change globally in all sorts of ways.
We all know about the possibility of global warming,
climate change, that is predicted to raise temperatures
in the northern hemisphere by anywhere between
two and five degrees centigrade. That increase in
temperature is surely going to affect the ocean and
the fresh waters that are the habitat of our salmon.
What’s perhaps a little less well-publicized here, but
is certainly very much the case globally, is the change
in land use patterns. And although the change to the
landscape has not been nearly as dramatic in Canada
as it has been in some other countries, we’re also going
through a very dramatic process of landscape change.
It’s pretty obvious in the lower Fraser. We know that
a couple of hundred years ago the Fraser Valley was
a forest, a mixed forest of deciduous and coniferous
trees, with very extensive wetlands along the margins
of the Fraser. What we have now is a combination of
farm land, and urban areas with impervious surfaces.
We’ve lost quite a number of salmon streams to
urban expansion, and we’ve certainly lost a lot of
the character of the lower Fraser salmon streams to
the changing landscape character associated with
agriculture and other kinds of human activity on the
landscape. The same kinds of changes are happening,
to a lesser extent, throughout the Fraser watershed,
and elsewhere in British Columbia, with logging
impacts being the one that most of us think about,
I think, when we talk about landscape change. But
there are all sorts of other kinds of changes that we’re
imposing on the landscape. And all those things
are going to play out and have some important
consequences for salmon stocks and their productivity.
Recently, we’ve been doing a fair amount of
research on the possible implications of climate
change on sockeye salmon from the Fraser River, and
we’ve found out some things that I think are certainly
38
relevant to how we might conduct ourselves in the
future. In the first place, it appears from the work
we’ve been doing, and this would probably come as
no surprise if you just think about it logically, that
as the ocean warms up, it’s going to have an impact
on the well-being of salmon in the North Pacific
ocean. There are a number of possible consequences
of warming oceans. One is that the amount of what
we call “thermal habitat” for the salmon, is going to
change. When they’re in the ocean, the salmon are a
cold-loving organism but the amount of cold habitat
for salmon is going to be reduced by the warming
of the ocean. So we may be looking at a situation
where there’s actually less habitat for salmon in the
North Pacific in the future, than there has been in the
past. Some of the research we’ve done suggests that
when the ocean is warmer, the salmon come back at
a smaller size. All you fishermen know that ‘smaller
salmon’ does not bode well, both for the total amount
of weight of fish you’re going to catch and its value,
but it also doesn’t necessarily bode well for the fish
once they enter the rivers, because the smaller fish in
the larger, faster flowing rivers have more difficulty
getting upstream to the spawning grounds. The
smaller fish also lay fewer eggs. Out of every hundred
eggs, you get four going to sea. We’re going to have
hundreds of thousands fewer eggs being deposited
on the spawning grounds by smaller females, even
though we may have the same absolute number of
spawners arriving in the spawning grounds.
With all those changes, which may appear rather
subtle, a change of a few centimeters in the length of a
fish leads to changes that we can only begin to imagine
at the moment. I raise that because I think when we’re
talking about what we ought to do to restructure the
salmon industry, we often think that the future, as far
as the habitat of salmon is going to be, will be much
the same as it is now. But in fact we will have to think
about how we should change the way we administer
our use of the salmon, against an ever-changing
background of the salmon’s habitat. And we’ll have
to take those changes into consideration, as we try to
come up with this new order.
Iona Campagnolo: It has been said that what we
require is a new science, a “winter chinook run.” I
Getting the Missing Fish Story Straight
wonder if you’d like to comment on that.
Dr. Healey: I’m assuming that the statement may have
come out of some discussions we were having during
two workshops I attended in the US, in their struggle
to deal with their Endangered Species Act, and the
way to identify important components of salmon
populations in the context of their Endangered Species
Act. They talk about what they call “evolutionarily
significant units,” and they wanted to, at these
workshops, try to define what was an “evolutionarily
significant unit” so that that could be incorporated
into their deliberations under the Endangered Species
Act. We were talking about things like, Can we salvage
what is a critical population size for salmon? and What
are the components that would go into the definition
of this “evolutionarily significant unit”? And my
commentary at these workshops was framed around,
first of all, the need to define what it is that we want
to conserve, and there’s a lot of interest in genetic
conservation now.
But I think by and large, it’s not just the genes
we’re interested in, it’s the consequences of those
genes within the salmon, and the way they play out in
a particular habitat. So it’s all this wonderful variety
of salmon phenotypes that we have around; this is
really what people are concerned about. When we talk
about conservation, we are really talking about the
conservation of phenotype. When we talk about the
disaster of the loss of all of these small salmon stocks
that John Fraser has mentioned several times, we are
really talking about the preservation of particular
phenotypes, for the future benefit of our resource.
And so I think this issue of a new science comes out
of the need to come up with a definition of how we’re
going to deal with salmon management, not just at the
specific population level, not at the level of a particular
gene pool, because the evidence we have now suggests
that most of the genetic variation for our salmon
populations occurs within every population. It’s not
that each population is some totally unique bundle
of genes; all of the diversity is pretty much contained
within each population. It is how we’re going to
deal with preserving all these phenotypes, or at least
providing the opportunity for phenotypes, at what
you might think of at a landscape level. We need to get
away from just a focus on individual populations at a
particular location, and start understanding how we’re
going to develop our conservation of biodiversity,
from a community and landscape perspective. That’s
an area of science we haven’t developed yet.
Dr. Mike Henderson
What I’m trying to do here is to provide some context
to salmon production in British Columbia. I’m not
trying to minimize the concerns we have for selected
stocks along the coast of British Columbia, but rather
am trying to provide some overall context of where
we are now relative to where we used to be. And I
want to do that for each of the five species that I’ll
show you here. Each of these figures is identical; on
the left hand side, on the axis, is the number of fish
caught (Figures 1 and 2). You can add three zeros after
each number because they should read millions. On
the horizontal or lower axis, are the years from the
late 1800s through 1993. Again, this is the cumulative
catch, by species, in British Columbia. It’s not the total
run, it’s not escapement, it is catch. The upper figure
is for sockeye salmon. You can see that the sockeye
catches (Figure 1) were low in the ’40s and ’50s, but
since the early to mid-’70s, sockeye stocks throughout
British Columbia have been rebuilding. This is
particularly true in places like the Fraser River and
the Skeena River, and the runs of sockeye now are at
historical highs. This, as I said, is only catch data.
The other side of the picture is spawning
escapement. Spawning escapement for sockeye is
almost identical to this qualitatively. It’s been going
up since the early to mid-’70s. Over all, along the
coast of British Columbia, the sockeye stocks are
in good shape. Again, this is not to minimize some
problems that we do have. The return to Barkley
Sound this year will be less than we had wished.
The return to the center coast of British Columbia,
particularly in River’s in Smith’s Inlet, will be less
than we had hoped. I’m sure Fred Fortier can tell
you later that there are some sockeye stocks in the
Shuswap area that are not returning in the numbers
that they used to. But over all, the production of
sockeye has been rather good over the last couple of
decades. I should also add, this is in part related to
very good marine environmental conditions over that
period.
The second figure is chum salmon (Figure 1).
I won’t go into the same detail, but the pattern is
similar. You can see that the high chum catches
occurred in the early part of this century. They then
declined, and more recently they’ve begun to increase
again. Escapement follows a similar pattern.
For pink salmon, again, qualitatively, the picture
is the same (Figure 1); we see high catches here in
the early part of the century, somewhat of a decline,
Forum Proceedings
39
FIGURE 1
again, and from the early to mid ’70s there’s been
a rapid rebuilding. So for sockeye, pink and chum,
coastally, when you take all stocks as an aggregate,
things look rather good. There are problems with
individual stocks in various locations for each of these
species, but overall the production is good.
The last two I’m going to comment on are coho
and chinook. I’ll comment on chinook first, it’s the
middle figure (Figure 2). You can see that catches
for chinook were high, again in the early part of the
century, and then particularly high in the late ’60s and
early ’70s, and you can see since then that there’s been
a discontinuous or gradual decrease in chinook catch.
When you look at that figure you might think back
to some of the comments Jake Rice and others made
this morning about the East Coast stocks. Maybe this
is a disaster in the making. For chinook we think it
probably isn’t. If I were to show you a similar figure
40
for spawning escapement of chinook, you would see
that since the mid-’80s, spawning escapement has
increased dramatically, particularly to places like the
Fraser, and this is the result, in part, of the CanadaUS treaty, which limits chinook catch, and the
initiatives of the government of Canada to reduce the
harvest of chinook because the stock was in trouble
at that time. So although the stock’s declining, there
are programs in place, and in fact the spawning
escapement of these stocks is rebuilding, and we
would anticipate that several chinook generations
from now, the numbers will look rather good. Again,
I don’t want to minimize the problems that we do
have with chinook; many of you have probably
heard that the returns of chinook in 1995 and 1996, in
particular to the west coast of Vancouver Island, are
expected to be very poor. This is a macro-predation
problem, presumably related in part, at least, to El
Niño. But in the Fraser River, many of the chinook
Getting the Missing Fish Story Straight
FIGURE 2
stocks have shown quite a rapid increase in spawning
escapement in recent years.
The final figure is coho salmon (Figure 2). Again,
it’s set up the same way as before. If you were to look
at that, you would probably say “Well, not much has
changed since the 1950s.” This is a little misleading,
because if you look at the spawning escapement figure
for coho salmon, you will see that it has decreased
rather dramatically from the early ’70s—there’s been
a long, gradual decrease in the spawning escapement
of coho salmon. This causes us concern; there’s no
apparent problem associated with catch, but we
know eventually there will be a problem because the
escapement’s gone down. This is particularly true for
stocks on Vancouver Island, some of the Fraser stocks,
and other stocks in the Strait of Georgia area. There is
a plan that’s just been put in place, to try to limit the
harvest of coho and try to rebuild these stocks, to get
the spawning escapement back up. But these are the
stocks that are probably of greatest concern to us at the
moment in terms of harvest and conservation.
So over all, coastally, sockeye, pink, and
chum stocks are in reasonably good shape, with
isolated stocks in difficulty. Chinook stocks are still
experiencing problems, but we appear to be on the
road to recovery. For coho stocks, we’re just beginning
to deal with the problem of reduced stock size and
reduced spawning escapement.
Mr. Fred Fortier
As you know, we come from an area in the middle
of the Fraser River, tributaries, mid-Fraser area,
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41
Thompson, Shuswap—my territory. We’ve been
dealing with fisheries issues for quite awhile, and a
lot of them deal with every major stock grouping in
the Pacific coast. When you start looking at stocks,
I believe that from where we see things, because
we’re in an upper river community, we have to look
at getting away from the mega-stock management
problem that exists right now, and look at developing
many stocks, not mega-stocks. We’ve taken the
position also that we have to know what’s out there,
and I think we have to do more assessments. I think
we have to coordinate assessments that are happening
on all of the stocks. We’re right now in a process of
doing genetic mapping in the Fraser River, starting
with our area. In the area of protecting stocks, we’ve
been able to look at cryopreservation of stocks,
freezing of male sperm, and have that program in
place. We were instrumental in bringing the provincial
and federal governments and First Nations to the table
to resolve the policy issues in genetic preservation.
We were told “No, you can’t do this” and we said
“We’re not here to ask permission; we’re going to
go ahead and do it,” and that’s what we did. We’ve
already banked steelhead, coho, and chinook from our
territory.
I believe that a good start was a report from the
American Fisheries Society with a listing of all the
different stocks in the Pacific Northwest. I think that
what we have to look at and say is, “What stocks
aren’t you counting in your area?.” And it’s important
that the communities know what stocks are there, and
what has been missing. Because if you do not know,
I don’t know how you’re going to return them in the
future. A good example is the upper Adams stock,
which was equivalent to the lower Adams run, which
was a main food source for Shuswap people, as well
as the rest of the people downriver. Four years ago, or
three years ago, we had a chance to do something with
that stock, and we failed to do it. And unfortunately
only 7,000 came back in that year. The federal
government has been trying to rebuild that stock for
fifty years, and we haven’t succeeded. And I think
that’s where we have to know what’s out there and we
have to start now. It’s our responsibility, I don’t think
it’s a federal government responsibility. It’s a collective
responsibility that we all share.
When we deal with the watersheds, we don’t deal
with just one fish, or one stock of fish, we have to deal
with other wildlife areas. So we need to get to the
planning table issues that really reflect those biological
concerns and issues in watershed management. I think
that’s important, and that the community help be
42
involved in watershed management. You have impacts
on a habitat, you replace it with a spawning channel
somewhere. I don’t think we want to have spawning
channels all over British Columbia, in replacement
for some of the wrongs that somebody’s doing within
that watershed. You have to deal with the cut-off
lands. There’s a lot of areas out there that have been
cut-off for the area of rearing at certain times of the
year. There’s huge areas in the upper river that have
that. A lot of areas in Chilliwack area, and I believe
all over the province, have those specific cut-off areas
that we have to deal with. Part of our responsibility
is to protect that, so that the fry can live in that
environment, and I think we’ve failed to do that.
The habitat work has to be coordinated between
all sectors, because there’s a province and DFO, and
they don’t talk to each other at times. I think also that
the harvesting principles that we live by right now
need to be adjusted. I don’t believe that we can, in
fact, have an exploitation rate of certain coho stocks;
for example in the north Thompson, the exploitation
rate of the coho is at around 80%, and the cohos are
declining all over the West Coast at an alarming rate.
What we have to do is make sure that we protect those
specific stocks, because they’re never going to come
back, if we don’t do something now.
The last one point I’d like to make is that I think all
of us share a collective vision at some time, and I don’t
believe we’ve actually sat at the table and said “This is
my vision, and this is what I want for the fishery. This
is my goal for the Fraser River or any other system.”
And I think that has to happen in order to get this all
together. The biggest question that we have to face
ourselves, is not about management, it’s about how do
we communicate in this world. In discussions earlier
on, we talked about the communication needs, and I
think that’s one area where we have to come together,
hooking up to the Internet and bulletin boards, so that
we can in fact, have the same kind of information that
the governments have, because they say, whoever has
the data, has the control. I think that we have to share
that data, and I think we can come up with a strategy
to share all information, through some organization
that’s going to flush it out to all interested groups.
Dr. Craig Orr
There was a movie awhile back that had a theme, it
said “build it and they will come”—I think it was a
baseball movie. That’s probably not true in this day
Getting the Missing Fish Story Straight
and age of collective bargaining and lockouts, but it
still has applicability to salmon. I guess the corollary is
“destroy it and they won’t.”
On the habitat side of things, I’d like to commend
this province, and Minister Zirnhelt, who made very
short mention of the $70 million that the province
is spending on watershed restoration programs. I
think it’s well past time to get these programs going;
this province deserves some credit, and I’m not
cheerleading for them. I do think that if we don’t go
and repair this, mainly forestry damage, that we won’t
see fish back in alot of these watersheds for alot of
years, no matter what happens on the harvest side of
things. So I think that’s a really big program; it needs
to get the support of British Columbians, and get into
the psyche of British Columbians, because we have
a lot of damaged watersheds out there. If you don’t
believe me, read the last two trip reports of forests
audits that came out. I also commend that program
because it is restorative economy, and we don’t usually
have a lot of restorative economy kicking around in
British Columbia, and that’s economy that creates jobs
and fish, so it’s very unusual to see that. And I’m also
a little surprised that Minister Petter wasn’t invited
here today. This would be a great place for him to
announce the Forest Practices Code; I think that’s long
overdue to get ensconced and to protect our forests.
I’m hoping, with my fingers crossed, that what we’ve
been told will happen is going to come true and we’re
going to see much improved stream site protection for
salmon in this province. We need it, we desperately
need it. We can’t keep sacrificing our fish.
One of the big black holes in habitat now is
oceans, and the Strait of Georgia is a good example.
For years we’ve put millions and millions of coho
smolts, artificially-produced coho smolts, into the
Strait of Georgia, and at the same time, and probably
not coincidentally, we’ve seen a dramatic crash in
the survival of wild coho smolts and juvenile coho in
the Strait of Georgia. But we blindly pump in these
artificial fish, and at the same time, we see our wild
stocks, which are the stocks we should be preserving,
slip further towards oblivion. So we have to address
that as a major, major habitat issue.
The scariest one of all is the thing known as
human population growth. It goes on unchecked here
in British Columbia; we industrialize the east side of
Vancouver Island; “Push that island highway through,
boys, we gotta get ‘er up there, doesn’t matter if we
run across Rosewall Creek, destroy it, that’s okay, it’s
in the name of progress. We have got to keep going,
expand Vancouver, make those roads.” We have to
coordinate, we have to protect our urban streams, we
can’t let the onslaught of humans keep pushing back
the salmon habitat and destroying the salmon habitat,
or it doesn’t matter how we deal with those harvest
issues, we won’t have anything for the salmon to come
back to. So those are the areas I’d like to flag at this
time, and I’ll stop there.
Mr. Wayne Harling
I would like to restrict my comments to the Strait of
Georgia, because I think that’s the area of concern to
most of us, and is of the most immediate concern. And
I would start by saying that, contrary to the recent
reports you may have read, and what you’ve been told,
I suggest that we have a habitat crisis in the Strait of
Georgia, for both coho and chinook. We should not
delude ourselves into thinking that if only we can cut
back the exploitation or harvest rate of these fish, we
can rebuild the stocks. It’s not a simple problem, and a
simple solution like “cutting back.” That is not going to
give us our stocks back. That’s why our organization,
instead of supporting a reduction in the coho bag limit
(for example, the two fish a day across the board),
would far sooner see a selective mark fishery, where
you could continue to harvest the hatchery stocks at
a fairly high rate, but you could cease harvesting the
wild stocks completely on a ‘catch and release’ for
those fish.
Bring your attention to Vancouver city. Historically
there were 90 streams within the city of Vancouver that
produced fish. In the mid-’40s there was about half that
number, and I think there’s one left, the Musqueam,
and I’m told it just has cut-throat trout and there aren’t
any coho left. We are facing a metropolis, as Craig said,
extending from Sooke to Campbell River, along the east
coast of Vancouver Island, and I would suggest that
if we do not try and protect those small streams, once
we lose them to urban development, we will never get
them back, and we will lose that genetic diversity that
Fred’s talking about.
I have problems with alarmist statements by
academics that make a statement that we are catching
only twenty percent of the chinook in the Strait of
Georgia that we did in 1970. Well I should hope
so. We’ve implemented a number of management
restrictions, cutting back both the recreational and the
commercial catch of chinook in the Strait of Georgia,
and I would hope that we show a decline. It would
be scary if we didn’t. I suggest that there are habitat
problems for chinook as well, and I can think of, the
Forum Proceedings
43
Nanaimo, the Squamish; on the Nanaimo it’s water
temperature, it’s degraded estuarian habitat, it’s
in-river poaching. On the Squamish, it’s also inriver poaching, it’s an unstable river bed, and it’s a
great blinkety-blank dyke that they built with the
pipe dream of having a deep water port that never
materialized, that blocks access to the estuaries. So
those fish that come out of the river, that survive, they
squirt right out.
On the Puntledge, it’s a little different. In fact it’s
a combination of things. We have a situation now,
that we have to be cognizant of. There’s a role that the
natural predators are playing in the reduction of our
salmon stocks. On the Puntledge, the seal population
in that estuary and in the river itself, is eating more
than fifty percent of the total escapement of chinooks.
There are about 40 or 50 seals in the river itself, by
DFO’s observations, and they are eating 330 fish each
during the migration period. There’s another 750 in
the estuary, that are eating 30 fish apiece. That’s 22,000
fish. That’s all species, mind you, but we’re down to
15 steelhead in the Puntledge. No amount of change in
the harvest regime, by the sports fisherman, or staying
off those fish by the commercial sector in the open
ocean, is going to build that stock up if we don’t start
doing something about site-specific problems where
seals are decimating those stocks that get back.
Dr. Ehor Boyanowsky
If I can be forgiven for being an academic, there
have been studies of this lately, and originally, it
comes from values and religious values. The original
religions of the world were female religions about
stewardship of the earth, about the female character,
about nurturance, etcetera. Until men discovered that
women had –and this is no joke by the way, this is
true– had the mysteries of birth under control and they
panicked. So they created sky gods, and the sky gods,
and you can read it in the Old Testament, said that the
earth was a pile of resources, for Man (and I think they
meant it that way) to use. And as a result, what we’ve
been doing is using those resources, justifying it based
on religion, and the post-industrial values that accrued
from the Judeo-Protestant ethic, and what we’re left
with, is a bunch of rubble, and a bunch of hatcheries,
and a bunch of dams. For example, on the Columbia
today, the Bonneville Power Corporation is spending
(correct me if I’m wrong but I got this from one of the
directors) $150 million a year, American, and more,
without any success, in bringing back the salmon.
44
Now we, at least briefly, through spawning
channels and places like the Skeena, and down in the
Lower Mainland, in the Fraser and various places, are
maintaining that aggregate. But what is happening is
we are losing the idiosyncratic, rich, diverse strains of
fish, that fill every ecological niche. Mike Healey points
out that the genetic strains are all there in a few fish,
but what we don’t know is how those fish fill those
various ecological little niches. And to the extent that
we go for the main stand, we go for more fish and a
pure aggregate, we’ll be fooled into believing that our
stocks and our environment are doing okay until there
is a crash. Unless we start to respect those things we
don’t really have a good handle on it. That is: How
did those little creeks, and those big rivers, produce
so many different strains, of so many wonderful kinds
of fish, without, and in fact, notwithstanding, our
blandishments?
I think that the Kemano Project (because it’s fresh
in our minds), teaches us something that an economist
named Harold Innes suggested (and my colleague,
Parzival Copes, recently reminded me that he was a
Canadian) and that is the old cost-benefit analysis
about “What are the fish worth?” Versus the
hydroelectric power, this is really a bankrupt economy.
And the heritage that we leave for future generations is
a pile of rubble, while we glean short-term profits and
keep our engines going, whether they’re boat engines
or engines of industry, or dams and hydroelectric
power. We have to learn, and we all will anyway, to
adjust, so that we don’t disturb those kinds of values
and those ecosystems. We have to learn about the true
cost of a river when we’re evaluating whether we’re
going to dam it, turn it into hydro-electrical power, use
it in a uni-dimensional way instead of in a multiple-use
way. Just like when cutting an old growth forest, we
have to amortize, for example, a tree, over one hundred
years, an old big tree, over several hundred years,
versus the cost today. But if that tree’s growing for
several hundred years, and people come and use it in
many different ways, its value increases over that whole
span, and not just what it’s worth today at the sawmill.
So too a river shouldn’t be considered just in terms of
the number of fish it has, but in modern actuarial terms,
that habitat should be evaluated on replacement cost.
Iona Campagnolo: I was thinking about your statement
about the hunter-gatherers, and that we still have them.
But they’re also represented in our culture very deeply,
in all the sports, for example, where they chase the
birds, or the pigs, or the dogs, that are pucks or footballs
or whatever. You will remember that the end product of
all that is the cheerleader, so I’m grateful for you having
in that
context.
Getting the Missingput
FishitStory
Straight
Discussion
Michael Henderson: I think there are two issues
that come to mind, to me, but the first is just our
technical ability to successfully complete gene-banking
activities. I’m not overly optimistic about that, and it’s
also a rather expensive activity. But what concerns me
more were the comments made by several people on
the stage earlier, about the preservation of habitat. It
would be my sense that without the commitment to
preserve the habitat, there’s not much point in a lot
of the gene-banking activities. The focus should not
be so much on how can we save the genetic material
for another day that may or may not ever come, but
rather, how do we deal with the habitat issue so we
don’t have to become involved in the gene-banking
activities.
Iona Campagnolo: Fred, you’re talking about genebanking the male sperm and freezing it?
Fred Fortier: I guess the reason that we got into
genetic preservation is that we did a trip across
the line a few years ago, and we witnessed the last
sockeye back into the Snake River, and I think it
opened up our eyes about what responsibilities we
had as aboriginal people, from where we are from. The
amount of money that they have, as we mentioned,
down below the border, the recreational benefits, just
on the Columbia River, is in the billions of dollars.
What they’re saying is that, “We have all the money,
but we have no fish, we have no genetics left.” What
are they going to rebuild it with, hatchery fish? So
what we started to do was to find a friend in Brian
Harvey from the International Fisheries Gene Bank,
and he came on board, and we said we’d like to do
this. The position that we’re coming from is that it’s
an insurance policy. No one’s going to protect the
stocks, not the way it’s being managed right now, so
that’s why we’ve got into it—an insurance policy, and
it’s not an admission of guilt. And we’ve approached
some corporations in BC, one of them being Alcan,
saying “Let’s work together, let’s bank the genetics of
the Nechako stocks.”
Iona Campagnolo: On another subject, does anyone
on the panel have a comment to make on how to
rebuild confidence in the ability to manage the
resources—needing a way to share information more,
I think Fred mentioned that we should all be linked
by computer—and there were other suggestions
forthcoming. We heard Dan Edwards earlier this
morning talking about the community base. How are
we going to get the information around? Is the John
Fraser proposal for an independent council going to
be linked with small councils across the province at
the community, base level, and if so, how are they all
going to be playing on the same team?
Craig Orr: In the first place, I would like to see the
management of our resource get back to the West
Coast community. I’m tired of our West Coast fishery
resource being managed by faceless bureaucrats 3,000
miles away in Ottawa, and they are dictating what’s
going on. We have in DFO alone, five ADM’s, 22
director-generals, 41 directors, and 64 chiefs, sitting
in Ottawa. How many fish do you think there are
in the Rideau Canal? Who needs them? We have
directors and chiefs on this coast, and I have alot
more confidence in our West Coast staff, to be able to
manage a West Coast resource, than I do in the Ottawa
bureaucrats.
Ehor Boyanowsky: Something that I think, really
heartens me. There was a fellow named Pat Hearn in
the Steelhead Society who was very concerned about
a lot of things, and he said, “What can I do?.” And
some of us said, “Why don’t you pick out a project?
You like the Squamish River so much,” which has been
devastated by logging, etcetera. And be darned if he
didn’t. He went and he talked to Weldwood (I think
they’d like permission to log the west side, which is
still in its original, pristine condition) and they got
involved and brought out the heavy equipment. He
talked to DFO, they lent expertise. He talked to the
Ministry of the Environment, Lands and Parks. He
talked to the native people, and he created, along
with members of the Steelhead Society, and people
from Squamish, a task force, just about at every level,
totally involved, up front, which restored some of
the main spawning tributaries of the Squamish. Then
along came the provincial government, and kicked
in the amounts that Craig was referring to, and this
is now spreading right across the province. And I
think that kind of combination of planning, initiative,
government support, people operating at all levels, is
the model for the future, because that way, there’s a
vested interest in the restoration of that, of Shovelnose
Creek or something.
Mike Healey: I think there are a number of
community-based, watershed management initiatives
Forum Proceedings
45
underway in the province now, and they’re all
developing in slightly different ways. We’ve been
involved with one on the Salmon River in Langley,
that has salmonid focus. There are several in the
Lower Fraser, there’s quite an active one in Shuswap
on the Salmon River and the Shuswap Lake area.
There are a number getting together on Vancouver
Island, and there are ones in Squamish, as you
mentioned. Those are, I think, the new institutional
experiments as far as habitat management and habitat
restoration, that are going on around the province, and
so we should be watching those closely to see what
emerges from them in terms of new ways of doing
things that we can all really benefit from.
General Discussion
Dan Edwards: I live in Ucluelet, and I’ve been
involved personally in habitat restoration for the last
fifteen years. In 1973, in Ucluelet, there was a group
formed called Save our Salmon, and it was formed
because of incredibly poor logging practices that
happened on the flats between Tofino and Ucluelet.
This year, (it’s a little while since 1973), the Watershed
Renewal Project, through a community partnership
program, is going to put $2 million over four years
into rehabilitating that habitat. We flew over that area
with a helicopter last year and it has got worse since
1973. The shake cutters got in there and left debris
everywhere after the logging companies had logged
through it. There’s hundreds of miles of prime coho
habitat in that one small area, and that’s been ruined
for the last 25 years. When I look at the aggregate
figure that was put up there, about how great we’re
doing, I get very angry. Because on the west coast of
Vancouver Island, habitat is not doing well at all. And
don’t blame El Niño for the loss of fish on the west
coast; in 1964, 1965, there was a general disastrous
collapse of coho and chinook in the Clayquot Sound
area. Nobody knows all the reasons why it happened.
These sorts of things have been happening that way
for a long time.
Mike Henderson: I would respond, I guess, similar
to the way I did when I made the presentation, that
the aggregate picture does not present the picture
in particular locations. And certainly for stocks like
coho, there are many examples of environments in the
Lower Mainland, and on Vancouver Island, that have
been degraded to the detriment of coho production.
Some of the other stock groups, like sockeye, are
46
less susceptible, because so much of the production
is concentrated in a few large systems that are still
relatively undeveloped. But I agree with your point,
particularly about coho stocks on Vancouver Island
and the Lower Mainland.
Wayne Harling: I once made a comment that I would
far sooner see a clearcut than a K-Mart, and although
you have problems over there on the west coast with
logging practices, that will recover. You pave over a
stream, it’s gone for good. And that’s our problem on
the east coast of Vancouver Island.
Fred Fortier: I share the comments that the gentleman
just got up and talked about, because those are the
issues that we face all over British Columbia, and I
think that what we have to be able to do, especially
through the Watershed Restoration Program, is to
get the communities involved within those specific
watersheds, and get DFO and the province at the table
where those community people are, and direct them
to do things. And I think the first thing we have to
be able to do in that program is assess every major
watershed in BC That’s the first step. We have to know
what has to be done. If the province is going to live up
to that responsibility of managing the habitat, there’s
got to be some way of separating what responsibilities
DFO has, what responsibilities the province has,
and what responsibilities the communities are going
to have in that development, because I think that’s
important.
Nathan Spinks: I’m from Lytton. There’s about nine
bands on the Fraser and the Thompson River; we
never signed a watershed agreement, but we do put
some money towards management. Each band puts so
much money in so that we can go out and see what’s
happening to the rivers. The thing is, when you talk
about management and habitat, I put up a concern
to the forestry at Spuzzum a few years back, and the
federal fisheries to boot, and none of them would
come. They were putting dirt right in Spuzzum Creek.
I’ve got pictures of them, it’s muddier than all hell
but nobody would come. This is what you call, when
we didn’t want to sign any watershed agreement
with anybody; that we were going to go and be part
of them. If they want to start management , they’re
going to have to start management the way we do it.
If someone does something wrong, we’ll correct it. It
has been corrected on the Fraser River. You take the
CNR—they dump stuff right in the Thompson River,
Fraser River. You go and tell the federal fisheries that,
Getting the Missing Fish Story Straight
would they come? No, they wouldn’t come. This is
a problem we have. We’re concerned for the salmon.
We have lots of tributaries there; we have a couple of
tributaries that produce the salmon, and then we have
logging companies up there that don’t even honour
the bumper zone, they go right to the creek. And that’s
wrong. Gotta get slapped on the hand with a few
thousand dollars. It’ll never bring that salmon back if
we lose it. This is what’s wrong here.
Unidentified Member of the Audience: As I said
before, I’m a dedicated volunteer on the salmon
enhancement, so I’m well aware of the problems
and concerns around the Gulf, with the habitat
degradation. Kind of appalled by it even. But it’s not
just here in the Gulf; all up and down the coast, the
habitat is sometimes being spoiled. But in some places,
like Laredo Inlet, there’s been no logging ever, no
commercial fishing for the last twelve or fifteen years,
twenty years or more in the Inlet itself. No people
live there; no sports fishermen to blame. Where’s
our habitat? Out on the high seas? We may have to
look out there. Tom Siddon and his gang worked
some figures out for me here a few years ago; I think
that 1%, since around 1985, of the salmon earnings,
was around $5 million a year. Don Cruickshank
recommended a 1% assessment of our earnings to go
toward enhancement. If we were to adopt some of
the Cruickshank Report, we would have $5 million or
more a year to investigate what the habitat on the high
seas is like and why the cohos aren’t coming back to
Laredo Inlet and the Gulf of Georgia.
Mike Henderson: Just a very short comment—the
marine habitat is an active area of research of the
federal government right now, particularly the
coastal areas like the Strait of Georgia, the west coast
of Vancouver Island. We agree with you that the
marine habitat effects, in some instances, are at least
comparable to some of the fresh water habitat effects
that some people have talked about here today. So we
agree completely with that statement.
Unidentified Member of the Audience: I’m from the
Thompson. I’d just like to comment on that chart that
was up there. It’s just my feeling that it would have
been a little more honest if the chart had shown the
numbers of fish returning, rather than the number
of catch. We know the catch was large last year. My
eyesight wasn’t good enough to catch what that last
year was that was shown up there; I’d like an answer
on that. But I think that next time around, it would
be a little better if we could see the numbers of the
different types of salmon that are returning, because I
think that would be a little more alarming.
Mike Henderson: I’ll respond briefly to that, that
the last year was 1993. The reason that the charts
were presented in that format is that we have long
term escapement records for sockeye, pink and chum
salmon but we do not have long term aggregate
escapement records for chinook and coho in the
province of British Columbia, so it was difficult to do
the comparison. But as I pointed out, the catch trends
that you see for sockeye, pink and chum, reflect what
the escapement is and what the total run is. They’re
okay, in an aggregate. That’s not the case for coho
and chinook salmon. The catch records are not good
indications of the status of coho and chinook salmon
stocks, either in an aggregate, or on a stock by stock
basis.
Joan Leonards: I commercial fish for a living. I find it
very difficult to sit here and listen to discussions about
conservation and habitat protection, when we have
Pat Chamut and Brian Tobin coming out here, also
talking about conservation, and yet those two men
are doing absolutely nothing about rescinding the ’87
agreement with Alcan. Until that issue is resolved in
Ottawa, we have the most famous salmon producing
river in the world, threatened. The other issue, is that
right now in Ottawa, there is the deal, I believe it is
called Bill C-62, that is being pushed through Ottawa,
without the general public knowing anything about it,
and this bill exempts companies from going through
environmental reviews, so that the company can deal
straight with the Minister, exactly the way Alcan did
for a few years. This again, and I’m sorry, but it’s being
pushed through by men, and we have a Minister of
Fisheries that’s doing nothing about it, and a Minister
of Environment that we never hear from. So do any
of you on the panel know anything about this bill?
How should we be dealing with it? How should we be
stopping it, and how is Ottawa allowing such a thing
to happen in this country again?
Ehor Boyanowsky: I just want to say one thing,
that enforcement has to be the responsibility of the
countries of origin, or those that own the continental
shelves of the continent. We cannot rely on the
United Nations at this point, although ultimately
there might be an international body. I think in
terms of the East Coast, and the West Coast fisheries,
there should be an alliance formed, and a police
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47
force formed, among the United States, Canada,
Russia, and possibly Scandinavia which seems to be
interested as well. I think that’s a very high priority.
When it comes to environment, although no one
ever accused me of voting Conservative, I think we
have to be conservative in the best sense of the word.
These people who are trying to create the Kemano
Completion project or other projects, are trying to
radically alter the environment for one use, whereas
we are trying to maintain it for its multiplicity of uses,
and that’s where the cost comes in, with all of the
trees and the flowers and the various kinds of fish,
and what it costs to create that kind of environment,
that kind of eco-system that a river represents. And
that’s what I think we have to keep in the forefront,
whenever we face any project.
Iona Campagnolo: I don’t think that the traditional
ideologies hold, in the kind of question that
we’re trying to deal with. If you just consider the
environment, try to think of it in terms of left and
right, and the old-fashioned ideological partisan splits,
it doesn’t work. We have a new world to consider.
Michael Healey: In wrapping up, I would just try
to reaffirm some of the things that were said, this
morning, which I think are very important in the
context of habitat, also in the other areas we’re going
to talk about today. And that is, when we begin
discussing these things, we inevitably seem to come
down to pointing fingers at one group or another
as being the cause. We point at the loggers, we
point at the urban developers, we point at the dam
builders and say that it’s their fault. But I want to
say, categorically from my perspective, it’s not them,
it’s us. If the salmon disappear because we don’t
protect the habitat, it’s because we let it happen, and
not because somebody went and did it without our
permission.
1996 is going to be even more interesting, because in
1996 there’s going to be no fish around. And in this
province you’re going to see some hostile tempers
come out, and people come out from the woodwork,
and it’s going to start happening after this year. And
we all have to share some form of responsibility for
that, and I think in order to do that, we’re going to
have to work together. If we don’t work together, then
you’re going to see the livelihood of a lot of people in
this province, including First Nations, that won’t be
around to survive any economic benefit in fisheries. So
the main issue is , we’d better start working together,
because they’re not going to be around forever if we
keep doing what we’re doing now.
Craig Orr: Quick comment on the Kemano remark.
I would suggest that putting Kemano to bed would
probably give us all a lot of confidence in the
Minister’s stated commitment to the resource. The
second point I want to make: I don’t think there’s
any question that we need a greater amount of
enforcement. It keeps coming up time and time again.
I’d just like you to consider this: for every director
or chief we got rid of in Ottawa, we could fund for
salaries and expenses, two enforcement officers. For
every director-general and ADM we got rid of in
Ottawa, we could fund at least three enforcement
officers. Think about it.
Iona Campagnolo: We’ve heard about sockeye
equivalents, so those are bureaucratic equivalents, and
I like it. I think we heard a lot about habitat; habitat
and harvest go together, and I’m anxious to hear about
harvest issues, so let’s get on with it.
Fred Fortier: The last thing I have to say, is that
although 1995 is going to be an interesting year,
48
Getting the Missing Fish Story Straight
Harvesting
panel discussion
Mr. Richard Gregory (standing in
for Mr. Mike Hunter)
I’m the current chairman of the Fisheries Council of
British Columbia. We represent the majority of the
commercial processors in British Columbia. We want
to, on behalf of the Fisheries Council, compliment
Mr. Fraser and his team for an excellent report. We
support that report in its entirety. We also want to
compliment, even though I’m of Spanish/Basque
ancestry, Mr. Tobin on his action on the East Coast,
and also his response to the Fraser panel. Usually, as
it’s been said numerous times today, these reports
come out and they sit on the shelf for many years,
and some of them are never acted upon. Within an
hour of Mr. Fraser making his report public, Mr.
Tobin had a response, although some people may not
be pleased with the action he’s taken on some of these
issues, at least they had an immediate response to it,
and I compliment him on that.
On this whole issue here in British Columbia,
on the fisheries, it’s unfortunate that it’s just dealt
with the Fraser sockeye. The fisheries here in British
Columbia are coast-wide, they’re multi-species,
as a number of panelists and people have said
today. We’re concerned about the whole fishery
and all aspects of it. We as a council have made
representation to both the federal and provincial
government on numerous issues on the whole area,
and we have comments on almost everything that’s
been brought up here today.
Rather than go through those, I just want to raise
a couple of issues—in the previous panel, the whole
question of data and the use of information came
up, and one of the areas that we see ourselves, in the
fish-buying and fish-processing area, as fitting into
this whole maze and framework, is that if you can’t
measure, you can’t manage. And one of the things we
were finding is that the data collection and the data
computation and dissemination, is one area that we
in the processing sector, feel that we can be a big help
in the solving, or addressing some of these issues.
I would say also that the sports fishing, and the
native fishery, is another area where data collection is
extremely important.
Madame Chairman, I could go on for quite
awhile, but I think that really what we’re looking
forward to from our Council’s point of view, is
participating in this whole process. Minister Tobin
has said there will be a roundtable coming up the end
of this month, and over the next six to eight months,
there will be a series of dialogues between the various
participants and the general public, as to where this
fishery should go. I hope that coming out of this,
that we’re not looking for consensus. I think it’s very
important that the Minister hear from all interested
parties. If consensus is possible, that’s great, but if it
isn’t, I think that after having heard the information,
the Minister, who seems to be the type of person who
can take that and make a decision, get on with it, and
is the type of person we want to support. We have
been, everybody’s been, passing the buck recently, and
Mr. Fraser brought it to the forefront, that everybody
blames everybody else. We as the processors take our
share of the blame, but you can be assured, we’ll be
part of the solution.
Iona Campagnolo: I think what we’re looking for
is not so much consensus as common directions, in
which we can work towards eventual consensus. And
I would like to think that’s becoming clearer as we
discuss with each other these various points.
Mr. Dennis Brown
I think it’s a welcome thing to have this kind of a
public debate beginning. I think that we need to go
much deeper and develop it, but it’s a good start. I
did make some comments earlier when Mr. Fraser
was here, about my very sincere concern about the
tendency to oversimplify this issue, and I wasn’t
asking him that question rhetorically, I was very
sincere in hearing advice from people who can help us
avoid what I fear will be, all too often, the tendency to
arrive at slick solutions and the tendency to scapegoat
and oversimplify.
I’d just like to make the comment that harvesting
is integral to all the solutions we’re searching for, but
I’m not prepared to accept that harvesting is the first
place, nor is it necessarily the most important place, to
start. I would just point out that we have had the same
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49
fleet that we’re all quite concerned about, legitimately
so, in place for the last twenty or more years. I could
get into a long dissertation about the politics and
the history of that fleet—where it came from, I don’t
have the time—but it’s been there, and even though
we’ve had an overcapitalized fleet, it’s true, we’ve also
had some successes. I know there have been many
qualifications about what success is, but I’m glad to be
able to say that the earlier speakers that talked about
global disasters could not really say that BC is one of
those places where we’re having a global disaster. I’m
glad, and it’s because of people like you.
I also have to say that 1994 was not the disaster
that some people seem to have suggested, at least in
the popular mythology. We did have some missing
fish problems; we also had a very large return to
the Fraser River this year, third highest on this cycle
since 1913, when you really can start to really chart
the real habitat problems that have faced this fishery.
You did have a reasonable escapement at 3 million
and some odd. That’s not the best, and it’s lacking in
some areas, but even in the late timing run, where we
have had a real serious concern—the Adams has been
variously described by some media people as being
wrecked, that there’s been an absolute disaster—even
though we got less on the Adams component of the
run, certainly, we did see better than average returns
to other parts of the Shuswap system. We’ve got to
acknowledge that this year some good things have
happened there, and I have full faith, with other things
being done right, we’ll see those runs rebuilt and we’ll
be back on the proper track.
But before I talk about harvesting, I want to
talk about some structural questions, very briefly,
that I think have to be dealt with at the same time,
or perhaps in advance of the harvesting question.
Others have talked about habitat; I’ll just simply say,
no habitat, no fish. I’m grating very much under a
fashionable category that people use these days, don’t
know where it comes from, but it’s called denial. And
I’ve have had my share of denial laid at my feet, and I
will not deny that I’m very tense about this debate, but
I will not accept that I am in a state of denial per se,
because I and the people I represent, sweat blood over
this issue, and we’re looking for everything we can
do to make it better. I will just throw out rhetorically,
that there’s an awful lot of other kinds of denial
that we should also talk about when we talk about
denial, and I mean society’s overall denial, about an
overconsumptive society, a society that is enslaved
to the automobile, that is stripping our landscapes,
tearing out natural resources, polluting and on and on.
50
And I know this is not a rhetoric session, but let’s talk
about denial in a holistic way, habitat in a holistic way.
I can’t leave this room without mentioning
the issue of sovereignty, because if we don’t get
sovereignty over our fish, be it on the East Coast or the
West Coast, we’re not going to be able to conserve our
fish. Six million fish going to the US, more than they’re
equitably able to take, is a violation of the international
treaty, and it’s got to stop. The ways we get at that are
various, there’s a lot of political interpretation, but
don’t forget you have to have sovereignty over those
stocks, or you’re not going to get to where we all want
to go.
Enforcement and management has to be dealt
with as well. I will stand on any stage and say that I
compliment the DFO and the International Salmon
Commission, or the Pacific Salmon Commission, for
the excellent work that they try to do, and the extra
demands that have been put on them in recent years—
and I’m not saying that they aren’t legitimate, but they
are extra demands in terms of political resource use,
sophistication of allocation requirements, and all of the
other problems that are thrown their way in terms of
managing fisheries from the high seas right to the head
waters of the Fraser River. The fact that we’ve got any
fish left is a credit to those people. And I think that in
our austerity mania in this country, we have continued
downsizing governments and programs, and getting
rid of all the people that are doing all the good work.
We’ve really got to ask ourselves where we’re headed.
On the issue of fisheries, I just want to say
something that has to be said here in defense of the
commercial fishery. In 1994, everybody talked about
the 1.3 million fish; I’m no expert, but I’ve done a
little bit of an assessment. I see that we have 480,000
more summer run escapement than we first thought
in September. I see that we allegedly had 466,000 fish
die in river, due to some problem, whether it’s warm
water or whatever. I see that we had 136,000 more
native-caught fish, which is fine. And that accounts
for over 1 million fish right there. And there’s maybe
200,000 missing now. I also look at the Early Stuart
run that was estimated—and mind you, the Mission
sounding program needs to be reviewed—but it stood
the test in both the Pearse/Larkin and Fraser Reports.
That sounding program said that at least 127,000
fish didn’t make it from Mission to the Early Stuart
spawning grounds, and there was not a commercial
fishery on those stocks anywhere. I’d also like to
address the fact that on the late run, which is of great
concern to us, and I’ve heard a lot of talk about 12
hour doomsday scenarios, that there was a seine fleet
Getting the Missing Fish Story Straight
at Point Roberts that took 600,000–700,000 fish in one
day. If you want to talk about late-run disasters, and
the potential for a 12 hour disaster, we better start
looking at that.
I’ll get to the issue of what I’m supposed to be
talking about. Fisheries—what can we do? This is
the highly summarized version. There are interim
solutions, and there are long-term solutions. We’ve
got to slow our fishery down, we’ve got to pull in
some of our ocean-intercepting fisheries, we’ve
got to find ways to pulse our fisheries in a more
sophisticated way, we’ve got to review gear, and I
want to say, that we’ve done a lot of these things over
the last many years, and it’s not acknowledged. Long
term, we’ve got to look at cost recovery programs
from the industry, to build the fishermen’s bank
that can proactively reduce the fleet, so that the
owner/operator grassroots fisherman isn’t victimized
by a whole bunch of economic theories around
privatization and speculation. We’ve got to do more
on habitat and that sort of thing.
I’ll finish off by finally saying one thing: we
in the fishery accept risk-aversion, as Mr. Fraser’s
laid it out, as long as it means setting realizable and
realistic TAC’s. But we’re not going to sit back and
see unrealistic solutions, where you’re going to totally
redesign our fisheries, waste economic value, waste
quality, and disrupt what I think has been a reasonably
well-managed fishery in the past.
Dr. Parzival Copes
This morning we’ve talked about the disaster on the
East Coast, and possible disaster on the West Coast,
and came to the conclusion that we have at least a
good opportunity to avoid disaster here, because the
situation is not nearly as perilous on the West Coast
in fishery matters, as it is on the East Coast. And in
fact, what I would say, is that we have an opportunity
to improve the salmon fishery enormously here. All
of the scientific evidence that I have seen suggests
that the salmon stocks are not anywhere near their
maximum potential, and that historically speaking,
with much better habitat in the past (I’m talking over
the last several centuries) salmon production probably
was a good deal greater than it is now.
So what I’d like to talk about is the possibility,
not just of avoiding disaster, but more importantly, of
seeking opportunities to improve the salmon stocks
in British Columbia. I think there are two things
we want to look at here. In improving the stocks,
we have to look both at the issue of bio-diversity,
maintaining the bio-diversity, maintaining our
gene pool; and secondly, looking at the total size of
the stocks. Of course, in terms of maintaining and
improving our stocks, the environment and habitat
improvement, making up for past losses and so on, is
very important. But the particular points that I would
like to talk about are in another area, and that is in our
harvesting and management practices. Because I see
opportunities there in terms of changing our harvest
and management practices, of making great gains
in terms of the improvement of salmon stocks, and
particularly, the protection of the weaker portions of
our stocks. It will require most of our stakeholders
to face considerable potential changes in the way in
which they undertake their operations. And I’m not
naive enough to suggest that this is something I can
propose and we’re going to be doing tomorrow, but I
think we should start to face it, that if we want to have
major improvements, we have to face major changes,
some that will be somewhat wrenching, in terms of
our harvesting and management practices. What I’m
talking about in particular is, in the case of harvesting
practices, avoiding big losses, or not achieving some
potential large gains that we could have, with a
change in our practices.
First of all, there’s the question of non-catch
mortality. The kind of gear that we use results in the
losses of large numbers of fish, that are injured by
gear and that are lost to the fishery. These are fish
that will not escape and be part of the spawning
stock, and at the same time, they’re not part of the
catch either. I guess the worst example is one that
doesn’t apply very much, there are only a very few
examples of it, but that is gaffe fishing. The number
of fish that get lost, that get killed in gaffe fishing, is
just horrendous—the proportion I should say, not
the absolute number, because it’s a very small fishery
that’s involved in gaffe fishing. But even our net
fisheries have got very substantial losses in terms of
non-catch mortality and I think there are opportunities
for switching at least a good portion of our fishing
operations from net fisheries to alternative fisheries
and possibly improving our net fisheries in terms of
gear adjustments that will reduce the amount of noncatch mortality that we face.
Now what I’m suggesting is also necessary, is
moving a larger part of our catching facilities into
the river. Now I know there are a lot of objections to
that in terms of quality of the fish crop, and in terms
of reallocation amongst the stakeholder groups, and
I would like to emphasize that and I’m not talking
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51
about enormous proportions. But if we move more
fish into river fisheries where we can apply very
selective gears such as trap gears that can ‘live release’
the fish of the weaker stocks, and we could rebuild
the weaker stocks quite considerably. I don’t think
it’s a horrendous change that we are looking for there
but a larger share of the stock into the fishery initially
so that we get enough of the weaker stocks into the
river where they can be caught on a selective basis,
particularly through traps and other such devices,
and to an extent with terminal fisheries so that we
can get a much better return on the fish of the weaker
stocks, rebuild steelhead, coho, and chinook stocks,
and in fact improve on those. And I’m sure that the
recreational fishery will be very happy with that type
of solution because it’s particularly the type of species
that they are interested in that can be improved in that
way. What I’d like to emphasize is the process that I’m
thinking of could be explained in a great more detail
to satisfy everybody that it is indeed a viable solution,
that it not need be a zero sum game, and that we are
moving fish from stakeholder group to another. I think
that with the potential of a much larger total stock,
this can be a win-win solution for everybody. I think
that we are capable of producing a salmon stock in
this province that will be so much larger that every
stakeholder group will benefit, some perhaps more
than others, but I think they could all benefit.
Mr. Alvin Dixon
I guess the first thing I should say is to thank the
people who organized this event because I think it is
an example of the kind of community involvement
that needs to happen on a regular basis when DFO
and government are developing management plans
and fishing plans. I feel very strongly that getting
together a group of people of the kind that you
represent is really important to the survival and
future of our resource, and I feel that this kind of
event should happen on a regular basis and should
be part of a process of developing management style
and management program. Things don’t remain
the same from day to day and I think when we deal
with change, we usually react first by being a little
bit scared, and think about how it might negatively
impact us each before we think of what good it might
do for everybody, including us. We tend to deal with
change in a very negative way, first by trying to figure
out how we can get the most out of the change and not
allowing someone else to benefit from it.
52
So when we talk about harvest and harvest
plans, I think we need to think a lot about the kind
of attitudes we carry when people suggest new
approaches to us and I think very quickly we can get
an idea of what we mean by these kinds of attitudes
when we talk about things such as area management
or multiple licensing or area licensing and communitybased management. People start to think “How might
that affect me?,” negatively first, and “What is this
going to take away from me?” I think we need to
move away from that kind of attitude and try to deal
with harvest plans and arrangements in such a way
that we look at all of the benefits, mostly the benefits
for the resource. Everybody says good things about
conservation, but do we really act out those good
things we say and we think? I have heard a lot of good
things said today, but I see a lot of bad attitudes out on
the grounds, on the street, and on the docks, and very
little attention is paid to the things we hear and say
in a room like this where we talk about conservation.
We have a “me first” attitude out there, and I think
that it has to go before we can really seriously address
the question of conservation. We find it easy to sit
back in a room like this and say all these nice things,
yet all of us each has a constituency and we are no
better than the politicians and bureaucrats that we
blame for our problems in front of our constituents.
We say the things that they want to hear, and I think
we need to change that. All I can say is that when we
look at things like area licensing, multiple licensing,
gear restrictions, let’s look at them in a positive way,
because they are the kind of alternatives we will have
to look at if we are going to harvest our resources in a
way which will guarantee a future for our resources.
Iona Campagnolo: I also think that what we are
heading for is more and more community-based
operations in that regard to be the kind of selfwatchers, self-police, self-organization that will
undertake some of these tasks that the government
cannot continue to pay for at full rate.
Mr. Dick Carson
In preparing for coming in here this afternoon and
speaking to you, I thought about harvesting in the
context of all of the complexities that it becomes for
us in the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, the
issues related to allocations, the points raised by the
sockeye public review board about risk aversion
management, about regulation, including some of the
Getting the Missing Fish Story Straight
things that have already been mentioned here such as
area licensing, time restrictions, gear restrictions, bag
limits, and all of the other dimensions of regulation.
In listening to this morning’s discussion, one thing
that hit home with me quite hard, and I decided that I
would shift gears here and talk a bit about that, is the
word that has been mentioned here a few times, and
that is responsibility.
I think that it is probably worthwhile talking
a bit about DFO responsibility and what it means,
especially in light of 1994. During last fall and winter
when we had the earthquakes talking to one another,
we found ourselves internally within the department,
I think as Dennis Brown was talking about a few
moments ago, in a state of denial for a period of time
and having a lot of difficulty in coping with some
of the things that were coming across and being
expressed. Those things particularly relate to the
two major issues that have come to the forefront in
the review: harvest management and enforcement. I
think that what we have come to is that if we are to
deal with this, we have to move along and we have to
move on in a number of fronts. You have seen some
of that in DFO’s response to the Fraser Sockeye Public
Review Board. You have only seen part of it, and there
will be a lot more coming out in the next period of
time to come. I think the key point that I want to talk
about in terms of the responsibility question, is that it
is unquestioned that at the end of the day when you
talk about the fish getting to the spawning grounds,
DFO has the final accountability. If we are going to
have the final accountability, we have to have the
responsibility as well, which means that when it comes
to the final decision making, especially on the harvest
side, DFO has to shoulder that burden, that has to be
our load to carry.
At the same time, we are also struggling with
the other dimension, which I have seen come up in a
number of points in discussions that have been raised
here today, and that is public demand. There is an
increasing public demand for involvement, and more
input, more control, more part of the decision-making,
so we have to find where the ground lies between
those two things, between what is at the end of the
day DFO’s accountability and responsibility and also
what we also have to do in terms of bringing in the
public approach, public involvement. I think there
has been some talking about it earlier today, but right
now at this point of time probably most of where we
are looking towards in terms of our further dealing
with that public demand/involvement side of it, is the
community-based aspect, and maybe such things as a
Conservation Council helps to bring in some part the
public. But there is also a community involvement, a
distinct community involvement for the three major
user groups for the fishery, that have to be more part
of the decision making process. Partly because of the
fact that there has to be some sharing of understanding
about where the conservation issues stand at the end
of the day but partly also because of pure, straight
understanding of what the issues are that we are
struggling with and trying to deal with.
I think what I would like to close with a final
comment which is a reference to Iona’s opening
remarks to us here where she said that the question
that has been asked recently, or has actually been
asked for quite some time, is “Who speaks for the
fish?” What we are recognizing more and more now
is that everyone does. I think I agree with that, and I
agree that everyone should speak for the fish because
there should be a desire there to and it shouldn’t be
just the people in this room, people with a vested
interest in the fishery, it should be people from the
general public, people who recognize some of the
issues that Dennis Brown was talking about in terms
of habitat impact and other things. For most people,
involvement in speaking for the fish is because of their
vested interest in the fishery or because they want to
speak for it. I think the difference, and perhaps where
I come back to in terms of that responsibility question,
is that DFO speaks for the fish because it is our job.
Iona Campagnolo: I did mention earlier that I thought
we should have a talk about traps. Years and years
ago, I listened to a great person on fishery on the
Yukon River say there was only one way to fish, put
a weir at the opening of the river and divide the fish
accordingly. Therefore, Dennis Brown, I think we
should give you the first shot for Parzival Copes due
on the issue of fish traps.
Discussion
Mr. Dennis Brown: First of all, I want to say that I
don’t think that I would like to shoot down every
good idea that comes along or any other good
alternative, but I want to say let’s get real here, you
don’t want to fix what isn’t broken. Maybe we have
some problems here, but I think on the whole the
industry is not terribly broken, certainly not in the East
Coast type context, and you don’t want to create more
problems than you set out to solve. I would prefer
to take the approach that says let’s make remedial
change to the existing fishery, let’s work around it
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53
because it has some integrity, it has some history, it
has some results, rather than flying into what I think
is at the very least superficial and perhaps misleading
panaceas that “oh well if we went to traps” or “oh well
if we did this” or “if we had quotas,” there’s a whole
bunch of recipes.
On the issue of traps, maybe some traps would
work in some small, confined, and controllable zones
or what have you. But we’re talking about managing
millions and millions of salmon, and we’re talking
about managing them on vast river systems. Anybody
that has been around the mouth of the Fraser River,
which is where I would presume the trap would
go, knows about the treacherous and dangerous
territory that we are dealing with, the vast and quickly
transient nature of the stocks of fish. I don’t know
how you will ever resolve the issue of who owns the
trap, is it going to be Mr. Gregory, is it going to be my
members, is it going to be some other group in society.
Other things come into it as well: how will you coordinate the management of the trap at the mouth of
the Fraser River with all the other users of the river
who want to run freighters and boats and everything
else up the river? I’m beginning to wonder whether or
not we’ve really grappled with the thing in a realistic
way. A trap, in some contexts, may be appropriate,
in a controlled way—maybe we could do some
experimenting with it. But please don’t lead the public
to believe that traps replacing the commercial fishery
have solved very much. Tell the public that you keep
the commercial fishery, and you make it do better, and
I think they’d be much better served.
Iona Campagnolo: Each time in society when futurists
have looked ahead, they have mistaken what the
future is by not counting on the technological changes
and the alterations that happen that no one can
predict. One of the ones we hear on the horizon these
days, is some group of engineers and scientists who
are thought to be quite mad—no one really believes
them; but they believe that they can make power out
of ocean water, and that we don’t have to have dams
on rivers. What if that were true? What if we could
take down the dams? You know we’d have politicians
lined up for taking down dams, and with their names
on the dam that’s taken down.
Parzival Copes: I guess that calls for a response from
me. I had some very good discussions with Dennis
last night, but we have our first falling-out here. Let
me say, to start off with, the reason that I’d like to see
some traps—and I’m not talking about converting the
54
whole fishery from boats to traps, I’m talking about
some traps—is precisely because there is something
that is broken, that needs to be fixed. Look at the
state of the weaker stocks in the Fraser River system.
Look at the number of breeding stocks that we’ve
already lost. Enormous numbers. Do we want to
lose many more? One of the ways of fixing that, is to
have a selective fishery. To get enough fish into the
river, where we can use a selective fishery, and it’s
not a big trap at the mouth of the Fraser River, where
it’s going to be run over by boats and so on. It’s a
number of smaller traps, at selected spots along the
Fraser River, where we’re facing, at the present time,
an increase in the allocation of salmon to the First
Nations, and the courts. Whether you agree with it
or not, the courts have mandated that, and that’s a
fact of life. I have been talking to aboriginal groups,
and many of them are very supportive of going back
to trap systems, which they have used in the past,
extremely successfully. So if we combine the allocation
of somewhat larger catches to aboriginal groups on
the Fraser River system, with a requirement or an
agreement that the catching be done in traps, the weak
stocks will be released from those traps and we are
fixing a problem.
General Discussion
Richard Gregory: I think you ought to be careful that
the cure is not worse than the problem you’re trying to
solve. The second point is, the traps don’t necessarily
have to be in the river. Some people who have been
in the industry for awhile remember at Sooke, a great
part of the catch was taken in traps, but I think again,
we’ve got to make sure that the problem we’re dealing
with, is solvable, without creating more problems
by putting traps in. There’s a whole economic series
of questions to answer; somebody mentioned seals
chasing steelhead and there’s only fifteen left. There’s
all kinds of reasons to address different problems
in the river, but make sure traps don’t create more
problems than they solve.
Mr. Straight: I’d like to thank Dr. Parzival Copes.
I’ve been studying his writings for about thirty years,
and he’s the second person I’ve ever heard of who
was in favour of selective terminal fishing. He’s
never been very obtrusive about it or pushy, but it’s
absolutely logical, everything he proposes. I’d like to
not congratulate Dennis Brown, because he’s worried
about the industry and is afraid of any disturbance,
Getting the Missing Fish Story Straight
is positively paranoid, not about the traps, but about
trying the traps. And I submit, as Dr. Copes says, that
we should at least try it on some streams. But every
time the issue of experimenting under research and
development, with the trapping and water fish-wheel
system is raised, the chainsaws emerge, we’ll burn it
all down, and so on. I think the industry is absolutely
terrified that their way of life is going to be modified
so badly, the way sports fishermen don’t want their
methods modified, and are arbitrarily opposed to any
experiments.
Dennis Brown: With respect, Mr. Straight, that’s not
fair. I didn’t say that we would not try it. I indeed said,
in a controlled context, maybe it should be looked
at. I simply said that it’s not a realistic option when
we’re dealing with major, major fisheries, major, major
management problems. And nobody said anything
about chainsaws or anything; I think you’re going a
little too far there. If we’re going to solve the problems,
not only of the Fraser River sockeye, but up and
down the coast, I think we have to be open-minded to
everything. All we’re saying is be cautious, that when
you try something, it doesn’t add more to the problem
than it does to the solution.
Mae Burrows: I work with the T. Buck Suzuki
Environmental Association, which does fish habitats
with the fishing community. And when I talk about the
fishing community, I’m talking about a real cultural
identity. It’s not a geographical place, it’s a spiritual
and cultural and historical identity, and it doesn’t
have geographical boundaries, in the same way that
the fish, and the fishing community fish don’t just
stay in one place. They cover a vast, vast area. So
when I hear about community-based management,
I’ve got a lot of questions about it, I don’t know how
it’s going to work. Peter Pearse this morning talked
about co-management, self-regulatory systems, it’s
also called area licensing. Mr. Pearse this morning
was talking about fishermen who would have
licenses only to fish in one particular spot, and the
consequences would be that they would manage
and conserve the stocks for that one particular little
area. One of the really profound things that I think
happened with the Kemano coalitions that emerged
in the fishing community, is that people in Prince
Rupert, and people in Steveston, all became stewards
for the Nechako-bound salmon. They don’t live
anywhere near Stewart, the Stewart system where the
Nechako salmon live, but they care deeply about the
conservation of that stock, and about the migratory
route that that stock was going to be going on. So I
would like Dennis to comment, but I’d be interested
in other panelists opinions as well; first of all, what
about this migratory nature of the salmon, and is sort
of the community—it sounds very democratic and
so on—but who’s the community that’s going to be
conserving and managing this? I mean, the fish go
vastly inland. There’s a logging community there. Are
they the people that should be in charge of deciding
how to manage and conserve that stock? It’s the same
kind of issue that really does come up in conversations
about land-use and logging. Who is the community
that’s supposed to be looking after a geographically
remote logging area? So I’d like you to comment on
some of those problems with co-management.
Also, I’d like the people here to hear about what
it means economically when you talk about having
an area license for fishing. What is the cost related to
that? And down the road, what’s the consequence of
that in terms of working-class fishing people, that may
have to buy two or three licenses to make it through a
season? I think the term capitalization was used, and
we’re talking about consolidation. So let’s hear about
the economics of area licensing.
Dennis Brown: I think ‘community’ has to be based on
more of a sectoral approach rather than a geographic
one, and I think you start with the community of the
commercial fishery. We do have a concern to husband
the resource, we do have a commitment to habitat.
I believe, contrary to the wisdom that comes out of
some of academic institutions, that the reason why
we still have fish in BC is because it was common
property. That means common to natives, recreational
fishers, the public at large, but especially ourselves, in
the commercial fishery. On the issue of area licensing,
and these other kinds of tools, to reduce the fleet, I’d
simply warn you, as Mr. Gregory and myself said
earlier, let’s not create more problems in our attempts
to solve things, than we started out with. We have
done area licensing on the herring, and it has created
an easier job for herring managers to control the fleet
size, but have we solved many of the other ancillary
questions? We now have most of the people trying
to catch herring making no money, because they, and
the companies that are trying to sell the product, are
paying all of their hard-earned income, in paying
people to stay home and lease out, and contract out,
what originally belonged to the people of Canada. It
has incurred a whole new form of debt. And when
you say, we’re going to get rid of people, or we’re
going to reduce pressure, or we’re going to make
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55
the fishery more manageable through these types of
devices—when they’re put on a free-market, laissezfaire, an uncritical model like that—what you often
do is introduce new inputs into the fishery, and this
drives the intensity of the fishery even greater because
people have to pay off this new form of debt (I’ve been
bothered with this since the day the Davis Plan came
in, 25 years ago). I’d also point out the fact that you
don’t necessarily reduce your effort; you’re still going
to have the people out on the grounds, you’re still
going to have the people chasing the fish, and you’re
not necessarily getting at the people who have been
the big problem. There are members of ours, sitting
in this audience right now, who didn’t over-capitalize
and build multi-million dollar boats, who have
relatively small boats, who have taken relatively small
incomes home from the fishery, if any at times, and if
we shake them out, we’ve not necessarily solving the
resource problems.
Dick Carson: On the point of community-based
management, it immediately conjures up an image
of geographic, and that’s the position that you’d
put on it. I don’t think it necessarily has to be that
way, but one thing that from a DFO perspective,
we clearly recognize now, is that we deal with
habitat and environmental interests, we deal with
recreational fishery interests, aboriginal fishery
interests, commercial fishery interests, and so often,
we’re expected to be dealing with those on almost
an exclusive basis. When you’re dealing with the
commercial fishery, you sit down with the commercial
fishermen, and you talk about allocation in that
fishery. And then you go to the aboriginal, and then
you go to the recreational fishery, and when you’ve
got the habitat groups you’re dealing with. Why aren’t
we pushing harder to put everyone in the room?
Does it matter whether you’re doing more of that on
a regional footing, or whether you’re doing it on a
local footing? It doesn’t necessarily have to lead to
area licensing. Or it doesn’t necessarily have to lead
on to the full context of what some people see as
co-management. Because as I said in my comments
earlier, I’m concerned about what an image of comanagement really is, when at the end of the day,
DFO has to wear the shirt. We have to carry the
accountability for what goes on in the spawning
grounds, so co-management only goes so far, and
then it ends. What I see with getting more communitybased involvement, is that we’ve got to have more
processes where all of the people who have a
stake or vested interest, are there together at the
56
same time.
Richard Gregory: Just one other issue on this whole
question of licensing. One thing that has changed
over the last few years, is in the old days, people used
to fish twelve months of the year. It was multiple
licensing, you dragged for awhile, you fished halibut,
you fished herring, you fished salmon. And you
were a fully employed fisherman. One of the things
that’s really complicated the issue now, is that you
own the seine boat, you might get six or seven or
ten openings that you fish in, a couple of days at
a time. A troller might get 60 days fishing, a gillnetter might get 18 days fishing. You can’t support a
boat, a license, and a family, on a couple of months’
work. And that’s another whole area that we have to
address. Ourselves, the Fisheries Council of BC, and
the union—and we don’t hold hands very often—but
we have gone to the government, it’s part of this
roundtable, that Mr. Tobin has announced and one of
the areas we have to look at is employing fishermen on
a more permanent basis year-round. I’ve got a teenage
daughter, and there’s no way I can say to her, “Look,
you can work two months of the year and expect
twelve months income.” We have to provide the same
kind of stable employment base for fishermen and
shoreworkers in this province, or there’s no industry,
from that point of view.
Iona Campagnolo: We have to make sure that that
roundtable is action-oriented though, and that it is not
a delaying tactic.
Peter Wilson: I am a retired fishmonger. The subject
had been brought up very briefly once by Richard,
and earlier this morning by Mr. Fraser, referring to
the accountability of the Fisheries Department, who I
might say, in my estimation, over the last forty years in
the industry, have done a marvellous job, a first class
job. But they can only do a good job if the input they
get is accurate and up to date. And one of the things
that I firmly believe has happened in the last couple
of years, if not prior to that, is the lack of accurate
information they’re getting. A number of years ago,
we devised a plan of tracking fish, a paper-trail as John
Fraser’s report called it, to try to afford the department
better and more accurate up to date figures. What
I’d like to know, from Dick or anybody else from
the panel, is what happened to that report? Where it
stands now, and why was it never implemented, other
than the fact that the provincial government wasn’t
very enthusiastic about it.
Getting the Missing Fish Story Straight
Clay Young: I’m a commercial fisherman; I’ve been
one for 35 years. I’ve got a few comments I’d like
to make. Number one is on area licensing. Dennis
touched on it there awhile back, and what he said
is very true. We have to be very careful where we’re
going here. We see an example of it in the herring
fishery; they’re calling for double licenses within the
herring fishery. If we have it come into the salmon
fishery, it’s not going to be very far away, it’ll be
double licenses there too. We’ll be putting a lot more
people out of work again. I think this is something
that we really have to think about before we move
on. The other is, with the DFO management in 1994, I
would like to commend them for the job that they did
with the resources and the edicts that were coming
down from Ottawa. I think they did a hell of a job.
Rivermouth fishing? As a fisherman of 35 years,
there’s no way. It won’t fly, as far as I’m concerned.
Our markets are based on bright fish, not on black fish,
or red fish, whatever you want to call it. We have to
stay away from that as far as I’m concerned. The other
thing—I think one thing we can be positive about,
it’s like going to east Vancouver Island, the trees are
starting to come back now after MacBlo logged them
many years ago. I think that we can find room there
to do some work in those streams, providing there’s
some funding set aside, that’s made available for
us. We have to have help to do it, we can’t do it on
our own. In our local, we have people that are very
aware of it right now, they’re trying to get involved, in
enhancement work in those streams, and I think that’s
the proper way to go.
Unidentified Member of Audience: We’ve been
talking about stocks and harvesting, and there seems
to be three basis pieces of information that nobody
has presented, either in a graph, or on a slide. The
closest we’ve come is charts showing how many fish
have been caught over the last 100 years in British
Columbia, for the five species, as aggregates. But there
are three questions I’d like to have answered. One,
let’s go beyond just total catch rates, and let’s look
at total mortality. What is the impact of the high seas
drift-net fishery? then, let’s look at total commercial,
sports and aboriginal fisheries, as well as the mortality
from that. For example, if you put your net out,
and you kill two fish for every one you catch, let’s
include those figures. That’s just an example of what a
percentage would be. Secondly, inventory. How many
fish are there out there? I don’t think we have any
realistic sense of how many fish there really are. And
then thirdly, what is the sustainable level of catch?
If there’s X number of fish, then what is the rate of
harvest, the rate of catch?
Grant Snell: I’ve been a commercial fisherman for 24
years now, I’d just like to make a comment on the fish
trap issue. We had fish traps on this coast; they were
the primary means of harvesting the Fraser River
run back in the ’20s. They were in for several cycles;
they produced all the fish that were required. They
kept canneries going in Puget Sound, Point Roberts,
and the Fraser River. And after several cycles, the
biologists noted with some dismay, that there was
one week’s worth of fish showing up at the Fraser
River, whereas it used to be six to eight weeks’ worth
of fish going up the river. And they suddenly realized
that the only fish showing up were the ones that were
spilling around the fish traps, all down that line of
the passage of the fish. They backpedaled wildly,
they started rescinding licenses, they had to negotiate
with the United States to get those traps in Puget
Sound taken out. And as Mr. Gregory has suggested,
the last four traps that were on this coast were at
Sooke, and they were privately-owned. And a battle
ensued—those people wanted to keep those in
there—and it went right to Ottawa. They published
daily records of what were caught in those traps.
The by-catch was unbelievable. It included fish I’ve
never heard of, every animal that you can conceive
of in the water swam into those traps, followed by
seals and sea lions and predators of all kinds, which
ate them, and in turn stayed in there and died in the
traps themselves. It was absolutely unbelievable.
Those traps were replaced, by necessity, with the
fishery we have today, because the gear that’s used
in the fishery is more selective now than the traps
were. A gill-net, if you will, is a mobile fish trap, that
can be taken to the area of the coast where there’s
an identifiable surplus of fish to be caught. It can be
put into the water for the period of time that it takes
to catch those fish, it’s then removed from the water
and taken away, and the habitat is left the way it was
before they arrived, for the rest of the run to continue.
So we didn’t do away with traps and end up where
we are, for any reason other than to improve the
problem that was caused by the traps. So the talk
about going back to them, I find rather interesting.
If we want to study them, reading the history books
would be an excellent place to start.
Unidentified Member of Audience: I think Dr.
Copes has given us sort of hint of where he’s coming
from when he says that traps would be a wonderful
thing, because the fish coming out the other end of 57
Forum Proceedings
them, could be used for the enjoyment of the sport
fishermen. This would create a lot more sport fish.
We hear this every so often, people coming up with
“Why don’t we just go and replace all the coastal
communities, shut them all down? Why don’t we go
and put in a fish wheel, or a trap, or some wonderful
machine that an academic designs at S.F.U.? We don’t
need people anymore out here to catch fish, or all
the rest. But, we do need people all over the coast,
to catch sport-caught fish, to hook fish, catch and
release them, all over the water, that’s all right, that’s
what we’re building the fish for.” I really, really take
great exception. I would like to ask Dr. Copes, is he
suggesting that the sport fishery, all over the coast,
whether it be commercial sport fishery, or hook and
line public fishery, be replaced with traps in the river?
Because we have a real problem with chinooks and
coho, coast-wide, and it makes this sockeye situation
look thin. And we’re working like hell, out in our
communities, to work with all the groups—sports
fishermen, commercial fishermen—to come with ways
to get around this problem, to get through to rebuild
our chinook and coho stocks, so that everyone can use
them, everywhere on the coast, not in some little tiny
corner where someone is running an automatic fish
trap. So don’t tell us that we have to go and replace all
our communities, all our fishing vessels, all over the
coast. It just makes no sense at all, but this is the kind
of drivel we hear coming out of academics.
Unidentified member of the audience: We didn’t
get a treaty last time because Canada didn’t take a
tough enough stand. And we need the public support,
of every single person, to do something about that.
When the issue came up last year, there was one
good federal initiative, where American fishermen
who were traveling the coast going up to Alaska to
fish our fish, were charged money to go through the
Canadian waters. Well, it was a good initiative, but
how is dealt with in the media? A lot of poor American
fishermen were asked the question “Well, isn’t this
tough on you?” This is our fish, and we’ve got to take
a stand as Canadians and say that we need measures
like that, before the fishing season. Something that’s
going to force the Americans to treat us properly at the
negotiating table. We need Tobin to take the stand that
he’s done with the Spanish fleet; he needs to be talking
tough with Bill Clinton the same way, and this is a
very immediate issue that needs to be dealt with in the
next month.
Chief Byron Spinks: I’m from the Lytton First
58
Nation. It all boils down to excuses, when you talk
about habitat, when you talk about harvesting,
when you talk about management. It all boils down
to accountability and responsibility. Our people are
accountable to the resource; they’re responsible to
the resource and have some very high principles
when it comes to managing and harvesting, and
protecting the habitats for that resource. I just have
one word of advice for DFO: we’ve tried to work
with that organization, as a government, for the
past 100 years, and we’re very frustrated with that.
The word of advice that I have for DFO, not for the
enforcement officers down at the river, but for the
upper management people is: Stay out of the politics
of fish! Be responsible for the management, and be
accountable to the people for making the resources
viable.
Bruce Logan: I work with United Fishermen and
Allied Workers Union. Prior to that, I was a salmon
seiner for approximately 14 years. I have one question
for Mr. Copes. I’d like you to tell me if you could
conceive of a weir-type actually better adapted and
better suited to the activity on the coast of BC Those
nets were designed to catch large fish, that swim
very close to the surface of the water, and in fact they
are a highly selective weir-type. In fact, the seiner
net becomes more and more selective as you move
it away from the outside waters, where in fact they
never have fish, and you move it closer to the terminal
areas. I have a concern that the public kind of looks at
seine-boats as if they were Spanish trawlers, and not
understanding that these can actually be small boats.
For two years I worked on a seiner that was smaller
than 45 feet in length. We didn’t catch a lot of fish, and
what we caught was all salmon, and in fact, lately, the
types of salmon that seiners are catching and do not
want to catch, such as steelhead, coho, springs—they
are quite capable of releasing into the waters, where
they survive. I have another concern, and maybe this
question is directed more at the entire panel: How are
we going to educate a public, over the next year or
so, with a view to understanding (as those of us here
who know something about fish stocks), when no fish
return in 1996. That it will not be perceived by the
public, and pumped out by the media, as some kind of
horrible disaster, that was just waiting to happen.
Ken Erickson: President, Pacific Coast Fishing Vessel
Owner’s Guild. I’d like to ask Mr. Trapman, how he
intends to identify species in the traps, how he intends
to list them out and take a scale sample and then put
Getting the Missing Fish Story Straight
that one in the river and so on? And also to identify
the tributaries they’re coming from?
Bruce Landsdowne: Will Durant, one of the great
historians, said that he’d switched to history because
of philosophy, he realized that true philosophy is
where we’ve come from. So I’d like to go back to some
history things. History shows us, without enforcement,
that myself and everyone else out there in the user
sector will take as much as he can. That’s history.
History shows us that traps decimated this coast, they
decimated Alaska. I remember when my father got
up to speak when the first people came around to talk
about enhancement, and what he said about when he
was a child living on the banks of Nimkish River and
every summer the men went out to fish (they were
fishing commercially then), but all the women, the
old people, the children, worked all summer long in
that river rolling rocks into place, moving gravel, and
making spawning beds. Consequently, they couldn’t
drink the water for eight months of the year. It’s
ludicrous that I, as a commercial fisherman, that all of
us user-groups, should think that we can just take, and
not give. It’s no accident that every major spawning
river on this coast had villages at the mouth of it, and
those people were not there just to take, they were
there to give, too
Ehor Boyanowsky: We’ve been listening to the
commercial fishermen, and I admire them and
sympathize with them. But I think some of the points
that have to be made relate to the comment that we
need a ‘wakeup call’. The fishery is closed down on
the Atlantic, they’ve closed a net fishery in Florida and
they’ve closed a lot of the net fisheries on the West
Coast of the United States. What we are discussing
now are ways of keeping the fishery going in British
Columbia. We’re discussing ways of keeping the
commercial net fishery going in an environmentally
friendly way, that does not destroy the non-target
species. That should be the point of discussion for
harvesting. There are successful traps, from the
Prechora River in Russia (I was there), in Ireland
and in various other places. Seine boats can be very
environmentally friendly if they don’t have to roll
10,000 fish in 15 minutes up over the drums, over the
back and if they’re allowed to brail. There are traps
with electrical impulses, where you can pick and
choose and brail fish out. They exist, the technology
is there. All we need is the commercial will and the
public will, and we’re just asking, “Let’s start looking
at different ways where we can employ people, for
longer periods, and more people.” I think they’re not
antithetical to the solutions.
Response from the Panel
Richard Gregory: Going back to the comment I made
in my opening remarks, Pete Wilson made a comment
on data collection, and there was another gentleman at
the back, who made a comment on the total mortality
of the fishery, the inventory of fisheries and the
sustainable rate of harvesting. This all goes back to the
question of data collection and the reliability of it. And
I think that whole area, whether you’re a commercial
fisherman, a processor, a sports fisherman, or
whatever you may be, if decisions that rest ultimately
with fisheries are to be made, the data collection—and
that’s the users, us, the fishermen and the processors
and the rest of us—have to make sure we supply the
decision makers, ultimately, with the proper data.
Dennis Brown: Lack of accurate information? You
can’t get information if nobody’s out there looking,
and they can’t do it very well if their hands are tied
with things like what happened in 1992, when we
had directives from Ottawa, as Clay Young said,
to observe, record, report, but not enforce the law.
Area licensing, I’ve already said it, another round
of capitalization doesn’t help. You have huge job
loss. Sustainable levels? I think that’s a good idea,
the suggestion that came up, that we need a true
assessment of what we can potentially produce here,
but Dr. Alverson said it very well earlier, “Don’t knock
harvest rates; if you’ve identified meaningful and
sustainable harvest levels, why not harvest them?”
You don’t want to throw away money; this country
isn’t exactly expanding in its economic opportunities.
Why throw away opportunities to create jobs and feed
people. On the question of US interceptions– here is
a little fact, 5.7 million coho (the species that’s in the
biggest trouble), were caught in south-east Alaska
last year, the thirty year average is 1.5 million. 40% of
those coho were Canadian-bound. I think something’s
got to be done about that. Food fish? We support,
absolutely, unequivocally, the right of aboriginal
people to fish. It’s a constitutionally-protected right,
but I daresay that the Aboriginal Fisheries Strategy
(A.F.S.) didn’t help when it allowed the commercial
pilot sales projects to take food fish away from native
people, because it was commercialized. And I’ll finally
finish off by saying, don’t visit the problems of the
world upon us, Ehor, let’s deal with the problems
Forum Proceedings
59
here. If they’re having troubles in Florida or whatever,
and they had trouble with a commercial fishery, that’s
one thing. We don’t have those kinds of problems
here. I know that it’s in the spirit of helpfulness
that you’re doing it, but let’s not confuse the public.
And finally, don’t allow the very, very good effort
at seeking solutions for conservation, become an
ideological smoke screen for downsizing the DFO and
restructuring the fishery.
Alvin Dixon: A comment first on food fishing. The
Brotherhood is a strong proponent of the right to fish
for food, and will continue to be so. In terms of public
education, I think this kind of a forum shows that we
need to, as an industry, reach out and communicate
our thoughts and our concerns to other people. People
in municipalities, people in social organizations, other
industries. We need to talk to loggers, we need to talk
to forest people, farmers, miners, all of those people,
and engage them in a debate, to talk about what
they do to us. And they probably think we do alot to
them too. I guess that would be my priority in terms
of trying to get across our concerns, and try to reach
some solutions for our problems.
Parzival Copes: First of all, let me say that I’m
accustomed to being the butt of a bit of academic
bashing, but I’d like to say that I don’t need to have
any lectures from people in the industry, on what the
industry’s about. I’m a former fisherman myself. I’m a
consultant. I work in the fishery; I’m out on the boats.
I know what the fishery’s about—you don’t have to
tell me that. In terms of accusing me of drivel, about
trying to translate what I’ve said into saying that I’m
suggesting that every fishing community along this
coast has to be abandoned and has to be turned into a
trap. Nonsense! So let’s talk a bit realistically. What I’m
suggesting is not a massive reform and restructuring
of the industry. I’m suggesting, and I said so clearly,
that we need to get enough fish into the river, where
we can have river traps. It’s a red-herring to come up
with the sea traps, although that’s a different question
I’d like to discuss sometime too. But as far as the river
traps are concerned, you can have, in selected places,
very effective traps. If you want to have a lesson in
history, as was suggested to me, read something about
the First Nations traps, 100 years ago. Extremely
effective devices. We can improve on that because
we can have a very selective use of traps these days.
First of all, on-site, you can recognize and release the
three species that are most endangered—that is, the
steelhead, the coho, and the chinook. And with electro60
testing, you can find out which of the weak stocks of
sockeye and pinks and chum, are passing through
your traps. You don’t want to test every individual
fish, but you can test them on a sample basis, and you
can release a lot of the weak stocks there too. That is
what we’re talking about. There’s no substitute, with
the seining, for a selective fishery. A seine fishery is
selective in that it takes salmon, but it is not selective
in which species it takes, and in which unique
breeding stocks it targets. It targets on a mixed-stock
fishery, and one can argue about how much mortality
there is on fish that have been released from the same
fishery, but I don’t think what I’ve seen is a very
optimistic report on that score. So I don’t think you
can get the selectivity, using a seine fishery, that you
can get in using traps on the river.
The question of product quality. Again, I’m
talking about a modest move of additional fish into
the river, which will be more than offset by increased
productivity, so that the outside catch need not be
reduced at all, and, in fact, may in time be increased.
When we’re talking about product quality, we should
take into account the fact that we don’t produce just
one product from salmon in this province; we have
frozen salmon, we have fresh salmon, we have canned
salmon, we have smoked salmon. And for some
products, in fact, the fish in the river, is better suited.
Indian smoked fish is much better if it does not have
too much of an oil content. So you’re talking about
a modest catch in the river, and it can be directed
towards those product uses for which it is best suited.
So there’s not a question of all or nothing, as seems
to be suggested, in terms of the response to what I
have said. I’m saying that we should face the need for
change, we should face the need, for the sake of biodiversity, for getting enough of the weaker stocks into
the river, that we have a full spawning complement in
the river that can be saved. And we’re not getting that
now.
Dick Carson: I want to comment briefly on the catch
data point that was raised. There’s no question of the
critical importance that that particular issue brings.
We’ve got some sources of information, chiefly in
salmon, chiefly in the Fraser River, where we’ve got
alternate sources that we can turn to—things like
a Mission echo-sounder, and test fishery data that
we can rely on. Otherwise, for the majority of other
fisheries on the coast, whether we’re talking nonsalmon or salmon fisheries, catch data is the only real
source of data and information that we’ve got, that
gives us a clear picture on what’s there in terms of the
Getting the Missing Fish Story Straight
way of stock. So, in that particular area, there’s got
to be no question that it’s a priority. I think, from my
own standpoint and looking back on why haven’t we
acted on this sooner, I think it’s really encouraging to
hear now, more and more, that it’s coming from the
industry itself. Moving ahead on this important issue,
and what we’ve got to do with it. I can say, from the
Minister, through the Deputy Minister, right through
to our Regional Director General, there is a high
priority placed on moving that particular item ahead
this year. I’d like to speak briefly to Chief Spinks
regarding the in-river food fishery. I appreciate your
comment, your admonition to us to try and keep the
politics out of the fishery, and I think it’s very critical,
in your area of the river, if for no other reason, for
us to work together collaboratively on getting catch
information for your area. We want to do whatever
we can do to bring your band and others into the
fisheries agreement this year, and to see what we can
bring together there.
On the questions about mortality that were
asked, on the high seas fishery, it’s not well known
that Canada has done a tremendous amount of
work, mainly with the assistance of our Canadian
military, to do high seas overflights. And we’ve
collaboratively worked with the United States and
Russia on doing a lot of things to attack and deal
with the problems that were associated with stealing
of high seas fish. So we do have some appreciation
now of what total mortality is on the high seas, and
it isn’t great anymore. On other fisheries, the noncatch mortality you were speaking of, on what might
be dropping out of nets and other things—that’s an
extremely difficult figure to come up with. We never
will have a good handle on it. We can turn, to some
extent to the people who catch the fish themselves as
sources of information, but it’s not ever going to be an
area that we will know a tremendous amount about.
Historically, from what we have been able to tell about
it, it’s not been a significant factor in the fishery.
The final thing I’d like to pick up on, is the point
about total stock abundance, and what we can know
about that. That has to break down into salmon
and non-salmon. Last year, we put together a new
stock-assessment division in the region here, that is
a combination of all of the people that work on stock
assessment on our science side, on our operations
side, and from every dimension. Those people now
are setting priorities in terms of more effective and
better ways of stock assessment. Dr. Rice, who spoke
earlier today, is in charge of the non-salmon elements
of stock assessment, and he could tell you a great
deal about what we need to know more about, but
also about what we are doing to try to improve our
information in stock abundances, in non-salmon. In
salmon, it’s a lot more difficult issue. You can give
some reasonable prediction of what you sent out of
the river, but what’s going to come back is subject to
a whole range of variables, and the best we’re ever
going to do on that is to rely on those kinds of things
that we get as indicators. And that goes back again to
the importance of catch data and where that fits into
the equation, as well as test fisheries and other things.
Our improvements are pretty significant, though, even
on the salmon side, on what we’ve got in the way of
stock assessment information and they’ll be getting
better over the coming years.
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61
Management
panel discussion
Dr. Richard Routledge
The conclusion from the Fraser Review Board, with
respect to the estimates in general, was that there
is scope for considerable improvement in every
aspect of the management program. I’m particularly
encouraged to see that this is actually happening now.
I’m encouraged to see that the Mission program is
being revised and improved. I’m not going to argue
that it was a disaster, as some people have in the press.
It was a good program. It worked well. It needed
some improvement and it is getting it. I’m also pleased
to see that the Qualark facility is being improved.
The opportunity to have several passage monitoring
stations up the river, I think, can really help manage
the Fraser River sockeye. I’m also glad to see that there
are some much needed improvements coming to the
spawning escapement program. But I want everyone
to make sure that they understand that there are very
strict limits as to how much improvement can be
brought to these programs. It is not possible to get
exact counts at any stage.
Here are a couple of examples. The Mission
program. In season stock assessment is a major part
of that program. There are perhaps some technical
improvements that the Pacific Salmon Commission
could make, but there is a very strong bottom line as
to how good that program can become. In order to
do good stock identification, you absolutely have to
have a good information base, and the only way to get
a good information base in season is to have a large
number of jacks returning the year before. If you get
a small number of jacks, you get a poor information
base, and you can’t get really reliable estimates.
I could also make some very lengthy comments
about the spawning ground estimation program,
but I won’t. That is a very difficult path. There are
100 different spawning areas that they try to survey
every single year. Last year on the Eagle River, most
of the spawning population on the early summer run
decided for reasons nobody really understands, as far
as I can determine, to spawn below the counting fence.
Those are the unforeseen difficulties that can’t be
overcome and it is really unfortunate that people have
come to expect more from those estimates than they
62
can possibly achieve. That is all I want to say about the
Fraser River run. But I want to make a quick comment
about other runs. Other stocks of fish are even harder
to estimate, and we’ve had lots of comments about
those today. Dick Carson has pointed out that the
only reliable data you can get on some stocks is catch
data. So we have to keep in mind when we construct
management strategies that there are inevitable errors
in the estimates and take account of it in some way or
another.
Dr. Randall M. Peterman
Listening to what’s gone on here today, I think that
we can pretty well all agree that one common goal we
all have is to maintain the long run sustainability of
the salmon stocks. What I am basically going to say is
that in order to do this, we must make management
decisions that explicitly take into account the
uncertainty that Rick Routledge just alluded to, in an
appropriate fashion rather than using uncertainties
to further our own special interest groups. Let me
explain. There are a variety of approaches that people
have taken around the world in fisheries to the
existence of uncertainties. The first is to ignore them:
use the best estimates that you have, assume that the
state of the stock is as the best estimate states that it
is, and forget about the other possibilities. Clearly, if
we were talking about a salmon run that has a best
estimate coming in at 1.9 million when in fact it could
be as low as 0.5 million or as high as 2 million, if you
assume that it is 1 million and it turns out to be 0.5
million, then your harvesting strategy will obviously
lead to some serious problems. So that is not an
appropriate approach.
The second approach is to actually explicitly
admit that there are uncertainties and to take them
into account in some way. One way in which this is
often done, is to try to argue that we maintain the
status quo, that is to keep harvesting as we have done
because we cannot detect that there is any problem.
There is just so much uncertainty though, that you
just cannot be expected to detect it until it is possibly
too late. There have been many cases where this has
happened. The North Sea herring stocks are a prime
Getting the Missing Fish Story Straight
example where that sort of approach of maintaining
the status quo in face of large uncertainties led to the
demise of many major productive stocks. Similarly,
management agencies should not use the presence of
large uncertainties to be pushed into listening to the
demands of commercial harvesters. In the analogy
that I gave, assuming that the run was coming in at
2 million, rather than 1 million, that may or may not
be true. The Peruvian Anchovies case demonstrates
the fallacy of this approach. This used to the most
productive fish population in the world, as a single
stock it produced 10 million metric tons, that’s over
100 times what the total salmon production is here
on the Canadian West Coast. In the early 1970s, the
commercial harvesting industry and processing
industry pushed very hard on the managers to assume
that the optimistic scenario was the right one and that
led to a major reduction in the stock.
The problem with the status quo approach and
the aggressive approach in the face of uncertainty is
that there is too little chance to detect what is really
happening out there. A third approach which has
evolved recently, particularly in Europe starting in
the mid-1980s, is called the precautionary approach.
Here you use the uncertainty to justify an extremely
cautious avenue of action, of possibly reducing the
harvest dramatically. We see some of this even on the
West Coast groundfish fisheries. However, the harvest
rates are reduced by rather arbitrary amounts. What I
would like to suggest in closing, is that there is a rather
rigourous and systematic approach that we could use
in taking into account uncertainties explicitly and that
is the formal methodology of risk assessment. This
area of methodology has been around in business for
decades; in fact many of you with MBA’s will have
been taught the methods of decision analysis which
formally take into account the uncertainty to the extent
to which it exists and helps you to identify what the
best decisions are in the face of that uncertainty. This
does not guarantee success, but at least it improves the
process by which decisions are made.
Mr. Ian Todd
First of all, my comments will be restricted to
Fraser sockeye because that is the area where I am
involved, as a representative of the Pacific Salmon
Commission of the two countries here today. Fraser
sockeye, is the single most intensely managed stock
of fish/salmon in the world. Over the history of the
combined International Commissions, our predecessor
Commission along with the domestic agencies of the 2
countries, the sockeye story on the Fraser is really one
of success. Over the last 8 years, as Mike Henderson
mentioned earlier today, sockeye production in the
Fraser has been at near maximum historic levels and
certainly in the Northeast Pacific in total, sockeye
production has never been higher. Now that’s not
all due to the focused efforts of the management
agencies. What the management agencies have done
and have been able to do for the Fraser, is to put for
the most part, sufficient numbers of fish up the river
so that the stocks have been strategically positioned to
take advantage of strong, favourable environmental
conditions. That is the combination of events that have
happened over the last 8 or 10 years.
One of the outcomes of that set of circumstances
is that we are now faced with an unprecedented, and,
in my view, non-sustainable dependency by British
Columbia fishers, ranging from the Queen Charlotte
Islands to Fort St. James, on Fraser River sockeye.
These demands by so many sectors are now beginning
to outstrip our ability to do what we’ve done very
well in the past. The analogy that I would like to use
is that you are now asking us to drive a fleet of Mac
trucks through the eye of a needle. We have been
quite successful. The record speaks for itself over the
last 8-10 years in gaining very close to the allocations
demanded by the 2 countries, as well as the primary
function which we perform, which is to get fish to
Mission-bound for the upper spawning areas.
In the growth of these allocation demands, there is
a minor point worthy of note. It is included as a chart
prepared by our staff in your briefing books, so you
may want to refer to it later. Very briefly, as recently
as 1985 the allocation demands were essentially
international: get some fish to the US, get some to
Canada. Now, in a short space of 10 years, within the
US fishery, there is a 50/50 division between Indian
and non-Indian fisheries, within the Indian fishery
there is a division between the outside Indian and
the inside Indian, within the non-Indian fishery there
is a division between the reef netters, the gill netters
and the seiners. And that’s the simple one. In Canada,
there is now the desire to have fish taken by seiners
in Reynold’s Sound, there are inside seiners, there
are outside seiners, there are inside trollers, there are
outside trollers, there are Fraser River gill netters,
there are Juan De Fuca gill netters, there are Johnstone
Strait gill netters. In addition, there are our First
Nations people who have first call on any surplus and
also included are the various demands of something
like 108 bands on the Fraser. So while I say that we
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63
have been successful, and we have, I think that we
are now starting to reap some of the dangers of those
successes in which we are been asked to go beyond
our capabilities and into areas where it is unlikely that
we will ever be able to make the sorts of estimates
that will be precise and accurate enough to fit all those
trucks through all those needles.
What needs to happen? In my opinion, our
estimates, or estimation procedures, are not bad. What
needs to happen is that the unrealistic demands and
the very, very structured allocation system that is in
place now, has to be provided with more flexibility
and there has to be a general rollback of this very
dangerous move towards increasing exploitation
farther away from the mouth of the Fraser River. For
our purposes, that means that all or almost all, the
major exploitation of the Fraser River sockeye should
be restricted to an area lying south of Cape Caution,
but that is my personal opinion.
Mr. Roy Alexander
I want to deal with an area of management that was
mentioned lightly earlier, but that I don’t think should
be touched on lightly. We have a good report here,
people have really embraced it, the DFO responses are
good. But in some people’s opinions, those responses
are based on the existing system, they are the best
available responses to those situations in the existing
system and maybe we have to have a look at more
radical changes. We have had people in the room
earlier commenting that 15 fishery officers are not
enough, that the public is not involved at any stage of
the consultation process, and there have been other
criticisms as well. We have looked at how we can
design systems to involve the public at every stage
instead of looking at the scorecard at the end of the
year. I support a Conservation Council, but I also think
that there is a need now to move on to some more
radical reforms, and I think this forum could be the
catalyst for those types of reforms.
I think it is the right of the public to look at these
reforms. I think that the first time we were able to look
at these reforms, was in Peter Pearse’s report, to have
a look inside the budgets of DFO and to examine them
and to have a look at where our monies are going.
Are people out here are doing their best with the job
that they are given, and how can we get more funds
out here? Well, to put it simply, Wayne Harling hit it
right on the head. I would advocate that we ask the
government to not only amalgamate the Navy and
64
the Coast Guard into fisheries functions out here, but
also to make the common sense step of moving all
Pacific region functions to the Pacific region and have
a complete Pacific Region Department of Fisheries to
deal with Pacific problems, here. Certainly in the maze
of deputy ministers and support staff, there must be
enough money to hire 80 or 100 fishery officers that we
need for this coast.
On the same vein, I was really pleased to hear
John Lennic’s remarks about removing lobbying from
the department. That is an encouraging sign. To that
end, I would advocate that the department’s functions
here on the Pacific Coast be distributed throughout the
regions more, both to make their resources available
to the outlying areas, and also to connect them
directly to the user groups so that they get a feeling
of what’s going on out in the communities and so
that the communities are not in the position of always
putting out fires or always coming in and begging to
be heard. That would eliminate a lot of the sectoral
lobbying which makes management difficult under
the current system. I don’t think we have to go to New
Zealand or Zambia or any other place to design the
simple systems we need here; a rocket scientist can see
that people in these outlying areas want direct input
into conservation and management of the fish both
offshore and on. These changes are needed now, and
not years down the road and we’ve got to move on.
The only other area that I want to touch on
here, is the problem of sorting out the headaches of
overlapping jurisdictions of provincial and federal
governments. Areas such as water management,
tidal fresh water sanctuaries, enforcement and data
collection are all still a mess. There are still lots of
areas of great difficulty and there are lots of simple
solutions that have been put forward, but they really
haven’t been acted on. The two governments have to
get their heads together or we will still have a mess.
We have areas where salmon mingle, where they have
no sanctuary because ‘which jurisdiction is it?’, etc. We
need a hard, hard look at the overlapping jurisdictions.
Mr. Charles Bellis
I come from one of the richest areas of BC We have
about 80,000 chinook caught there by the troll fleet
of BC, about 20,000 chinook are caught by the sport
fishing industry, about 70% of halibut are caught on
the North and East coasts of the Charlottes, the black
cod is basically the same along the deep edge off the
Charlottes, about three million pounds of groundfish
Getting the Missing Fish Story Straight
and Dungeness crabs are harvested in upper Hecate
Straits, so you are looking at a very rich area. I was
on an Off-shore Oil Panel for the waters north of
Vancouver Island to the Charlottes. DFO fed us
information showing that about one billion salmon fry
migrate up our coast each spring. One of my concerns
is that we do not protect those fish, we do not have
systems in place to do away with predation, cod fish,
black cod, other different types of cod. In fact we put
in their way farms, and I have been assured that these
mariculture fish do not eat the fry, but I’m sure that the
predators around them eat the fry.
My other concern in dealing with the fisheries on
the Islands, is that we used to have about 265 stream
systems on the Charlottes. In a symposium at UBC
about 10 years ago, they showed that in 29 years of
history keeping, we had lost 39 systems, so we lose
about four systems a year. That was about 10 years
ago, so we have lost another 40 systems, basically. To
me, this depicts the fact that the Fishery Act does not
work.
While the Honourable John Fraser’s book is a
super book because it initiates symposiums such as
this, I have to say (I am not an academic and I am not
a good reader) I found very little in the book expect
motherhood statements. People have to learn and be
aware that the Department of Fisheries and Oceans
has a Fishery Act that virtually does not work. In 1979,
my wife and I, through the Island’s Protection Society,
laid charges at Riley Creek. We certainly lost that
battle, but we did awaken in a lot of people awareness
of some of the issues that are happening in forestry
and logging and road building and habitat. There
are good people in DFO. Kip Slater was the head
superintendent on the Island, Jim Hart was the
habitat man, and they took preventative measures in
Riley Creek two years prior to that. But two years
later there were several slides in Riley Creek that
destroyed the fish habitat, and we laid charges. I can
tell you, that when you get into the Supreme Court
of BC, you have very knowledgeable people, but
lawyers make a mockery out of the Fishery Act. So
I have to say that the stewardship of habitat has to
be the same length as the Timber Freehold Licenses;
if a TFL is 25 years in length, then the habitat and
stewardship should be 27 years in length, and if there
is development then the stewardship has to have the
same length of time. Otherwise we will lose all our
fisheries, literally.
Another thing I would like to touch on is that
the Charlottes is the first Canadian landfall that fish
meet coming back to BC In 1990, the seine fleet had a
fishery on Reynolds Sound, as referred to earlier, which
consisted of about $10 million worth of fish for the
fleet. I’m certainly not knocking that, but what I am
knocking, is that it was a mixed stock fishery. The other
thing about it was that they instituted a voluntary nonretention of chinook, but from my estimates it looked
like they destroyed about 100,000 chinook. I think that
that is really bad management. When you start to think
about it, it is the non-retention of fisheries that destroys
fisheries, through improper handling. We have it in our
black cod systems, we have it in our halibut fishery.
Up on the North Coast there used to be a halibut
sanctuary, during all the years I grew up, and in
somebody’s wisdom they thought if they made the
halibut bigger by increasing the minimum legal size,
they would not have to worry about protecting a
sanctuary. So now we have draggers working in a
halibut ‘chicken’ bank. But we made a deal with them,
we compromised, so that they will only do it 6 months
of the year.
I think that there are many things about fisheries,
and certainly about the Fishery Act that have to change.
I was an observer at the treaty process last year, one of
the Native people to go and observe, and I found the
process very wanting, in the sense that we brought in a
negotiator, a top negotiator from Ottawa and we
played with paper fish. You do not get what you
deserve, you get what you negotiate, and if that’s the
rules of the game, we were not very happy with it when
it fell through. I wasn’t happy with the
Minister’s aggressive fishing. The Minister sent his
Aide to meet with the Aboriginal people to talk about
it. And I knew then, that we took about 80% in our
commercial fisheries so there was no room left for an
aggressive fishery. The charging of commercial boats
going up to Alaska was, I felt, sort of putting Canada
out on a limb. If one of the boats had gone up on the
outside and was lost, Canada would have looked
really bad and would have been very embarrassed.
The only thing about it is, if you are going to charge
people for the privilege, then you have to put it across
the board because we had Lear jets coming in to the
Charlottes and they should have had $1,500 landing
fees to bring their support fishermen in. I certainly
agree with that. All those commercial charter boats in
Oregon and Washington that come up to BC, perhaps
they should have $10,000 license fees charged against
them. I mean we have a good product to sell, and we
should sell it.
Mr. Ron MacLeod
I just want to continue on Charlie Bellis’ theme in that65
Forum Proceedings
there is life beyond the Fraser, at least there used to
be. I know many of our coastal salmon populations
have fallen into the category of endangered stocks and
unfortunately the extent and magnitude of the losses
are not known. We have anecdotal information only
and when one considers the problems identified in the
Fraser Review, you can only cry out in anguish for the
1200 or so salmon populations that inhabit these small
streams. We just don’t know, we’re not covering them
anymore.
I want to say a few things that may not be all that
politic, but I believe they need saying. I think there
is any emerging philosophy in fisheries resource
management that is best described as selective
stewardship. And what the term selective stewardship
infers is that an agency’s efforts and resources will be
dedicated to high profile sectors of responsibility. It
indicates budget driven decisions about which high
profile stocks will be preserved or enhanced. It infers
that surveillance, monitoring, and enforcement will be
limited to high profile situations. It suggests that the
role of the steward will be a limited role. And it begs
to question, Who speaks for the fish? Who will step
in to fill the vacuum created by selective stewardship?
Should the future of this precious heritage be left
to the whims of chance? Selective stewardship
overlooks the economic importance of maintaining
a vast network of small streams’ populations which
provide a buffer in those times when major stocks fail.
Selective stewardship ignores the biological relevance
of maintaining the bio-diveristy, the pool of genetic
diversity.
I think it will lead to a situation in BC where you
wind up with basically two stocks, two populations;
on the Fraser and on the Skeena. Perhaps the Nisga’a
might salvage the Nass, but I do not know, it is going
to be a tough situation. I would like to look at the
situation in River’s Inlet as a kind of classic case of the
problem and the consequences of selective application
of the DFO constitutional duty to conserve and protect
fisheries. River’s Inlet once vied for number 2 spot
with the Skeena. It had an average catch over a period
of 100 years of about 1 million sockeye a year, just a
little over, or just a little under. It was also the home
of a prized chinook salmon stock. Today the survival
of several cycles of sockeye and chinook populations
is in question. In 1994, the sockeye escapement was
down to 91,000, and there was a catch of 37,000. Recent
survival rates are less than 1:1, and have been below
0.5:1. The fundamental question is why a commercial
sockeye fishery was ever authorized in 1994, or for
that matter, in 1995, if there will be one. It’s also
66
puzzling to me that in this situation, DFO refused to
fund the spawning ground survey last year. It had to
be funded by the local Indian band or else there would
have been no spawning ground survey. Without data,
I don’t know how you come to understand what
is happening to a fish population. Of even greater
significance, is the fact that only once in the past 20
years has that stock ever come close to its average total
abundance. If that isn’t a trend, then trends in fisheries
simply don’t exist. I think the situation raises several
questions about DFO’s approach to fulfilling its
resource management responsibilities and one of them
is, are they intending to abandon River’s Inlet? You
would think curiousity would at least drive people
to try and determine what is happening to that stock,
why is it going this way? We are confronted with a
situation in River’s Inlet where there is a policy, stated
policy, of not funding spawning surveys for stocks
where hard information is not generated. We have
been managing over 100 years on soft information and
soft information is better than no information, it gives
you trends, some understanding along with the catch
data about what is happening to those populations.
We are giving that up.
I think that the recommendation of the Fraser
Review Board concerning the creation of an
independent watchdog on the conservation of fish
and habitat, is long overdue. We need it, and we need
it now. I know there is concern that this watchdog
would dilute the influence of stakeholder advisors.
There’s also concern that government officials would
be exposed to accountability. But in my view, these
are very small prices to pay to get a voice that would
speak out for the fish. Somebody has to speak for
the fish. When you consider what is happening in
the fishery, the strong push to public participation,
the prospect of 30 or more treaties with aboriginals
over the next 20 years or so, the complexities that
are added to the DFO responsibilities are enormous
and are going to put terrible pressure upon that
management system. I think that the Council would
provide an unbiased source of facts about what is
happening in the fisheries, and that would be available
to everybody. A counterweight is needed, and that
counterweight would be the council.
The Review Board also recommended a policy
of risk-aversion in respect to the management of fish
harvesting. Given the uncertain status of so many
fish stocks and the current financial restraint that
DFO finds itself under, this strategy is about the
only rational approach to take. It is a strategy that is
certainly applicable coastwide. River’s Inlet would
Getting the Missing Fish Story Straight
be a good starting point. It’s a strategy that would
impose serious restraints upon those who depend on
the fish or who harvest the fish. It is either pay now,
or risk losing many of our fish resources forever, not
just salmon. I think a quid pro quo for the sacrifices
by those who fish the resource, is that DFO exercise
full stewardship, not selective stewardship, but full
stewardship. Without that commitment, the attitude
of “I had better get mine now before it’s all gone” will
prevail, and the price will be very, very high.
Both of these recommendations by the Review
Board are important because of their long term
consequences. Of all the Board’s recommendations, in
my view, it is these two that have the greatest potential
for securing the future for fish resources. Ironically, it
is these two recommendations which will experience
the greatest resistance, and that fact alone states the
difficulty of resolving the problems that beset our
fishing industry.
Discussion
John Lennic: Re. Charlie Bellis’ comment. I do not
doubt your sincerity, but you are wrong. It was not
Skeena fish and it was not that many chinook. What
I take umbrage with, I suppose, is the management
of the fishery, and this includes policy that comes
from DFO in Ottawa. Mr. MacLoed tried to explain
to me way back in 1978/79 what socio-economic
management meant. He used the example of the Bella
Bella Indian Band. They had a poor season, and we
had to maybe have an opening in the Nekis where
there was a small surplus. We are going to take a the
risk because we have to look after the community.
That is socio-economic management of the resource.
I was told that in 1978, I believe it was in a policy
paper that came out in 1976. I am sure this policy
had a lot to do with the failure of the East Coast cod
fishery. It’s these kind of policies that do more for
overfishing than some fishermen saying there’s more
fish here than what DFO is counting. That pressure is
not really there, there is no pressure on the managers
to have an opening. I do not know where people get
this perception. I am part of an organization and we
have never lobbied for an opening. I am sure the
fisheries council itself has not. I do not remember
the union doing it, but we get nailed for not taking
care of the resource. I want to say that when we talk
about management of the fishing, it’s comprehensive
and it includes DFO policy that is detrimental to our
resource.
Ron MacLeod’s Response: I certainly agree that any
approach has to be comprehensive. The first priority
is getting back to protecting fish, I think we are losing
them too fast. The policy that you referred to is a ’76
paper that was published by the Department based
on the ‘best use’ concept. Certainly any approach to
the renewal of the resource has to be comprehensive,
and I think comprehensive in the sense of including
everyone in that process. Ultimately though, someone
has to make a decision. I was encouraged by the
Minister when he announced his Roundtable Process
and said “If you cannot reach a concensus, I will take
the decision.” I think that what has been the missing
factor in the process is that somewhere, someone has
to make a decision and live or die by it, if it is wrong,
change it and if it is right, push it. One of the factors
that we have not done a good job with (and I certainly
take my share of the blame, I am not trying to avoid
my complicity in this thing in any shape, way, or
form) is that we very often take short-term decisions
without thinking about the long-term consequences;
thinking through what those long-term consequences
might be. I think that has been one of the missing
elements in this thing. You wait until you have a crisis,
you deal with it, then you go on to the next crisis, so
that you go into the next century fighting the battles
that you didn’t solve in the ’80s and ’90s, and you go
leapfrogging blindly along. But what is happening as
that goes on, is that we are losing the fish.
Ian Todd’s Response: Re: John Lennic’s comments
on lobbying for openings, I would like to say that my
experience was that on the contrary, they and other
fishermen groups always argued strongly against the
need for closures of fishing and I have the grey hairs to
prove it.
Unidentified Member of the Audience: I have
3 recommendations. One is to do with collecting
statistics. In the Rupert area, the Zodiaks come by
every 12 hours and get the exact counts of every fish
we’ve caught and if we’re getting anything that we
released, the numbers of fish we’ve released, either
tagged and released or straight released. We turn those
figures in regularily. In Johnstone Strait when I offered
these exact figures, they sort of said “What for?’ I
would like to recommend that the fisheries in the
southern areas use the same method of enumeration
as they do in the Skeena and Nass Rivers. Second
recommendation is to do with the depth of the nets.
I have consistently recommended for many years to
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67
the Department of Fisheries, and to the Minister, that
the maximum depth of our seiners be 20 fathoms,
stretched, measured, webbed. The reason I recommend
this is that if we are a little less efficient, and it might
take us 2 days to catch the fish instead of 1 day or
4, 5, 6 hours, with a little longer time the fisheries
could actually access what we are doing. Sometimes
they would close us down a little soon, other times
they would be able to give us more fishing times by
recognizing what we are harvesting. The Johnstone
Strait chum fishery last year was only 41 or 42 hours.
If you had less efficient nets there would be more time
to measure what we were catching. We could have
had more fishing time when the fish, chum salmon to
Qualicum were coming by for example, where they
had strong hatchery returns. So I recommend the
shallower 20 fathoms maximum stretched measure for
our seine. My third recommendation is a little more
expensive. The Cruickshank report that I mentioned
previously suggested a nominal license fee, $20, $50,
maybe $200 or $500 plus a 1% management fee, 1%
of our gross stock, and 1% enhancement fee. I would
still recommend that this Cruickshank Report be
considered and maybe that part of it be adopted,
subject only to DFO resuming complete control over
the management of our fishery.
Charlie Bellis’ Response: I would certainly agree
with you. I was on the advisory board ten years ago or
more, and we had a big meeting in Rupert. One of the
concerns was that the chinook are deeper swimming
fish, and they can be targeted at Langara, area two
West, and St. John’s Harbour. So they put a 5,000
ceiling on those areas, and like I said, they’ve gone
into a voluntary non-retention now. There’s a great
deal of peer pressure by the seine boats to throw them
overboard.
Craig Orr: We have heard it from the Fraser Report,
we have heard it from Carl Walter’s Report, we
have heard it from Randall Peterman who is an
international expert about the risk management, about
risk assesment, and risk aversion. Are we going to see
this from the Minister in how we manage our fish? Are
we going to see a major change? Does anybody have
any confidence in this?
Response by Ron MacLeod: Well, I cannot really
speak for the Minister, but I would strongly
recommend that he push for the recommendation that
was in the Fraser Panel Report, that they carry out
68
risk assessment and that they manage the fisheries
with these uncertainties explicitly taken into account. I
think that would be a big step forward, and it sounds
like this Minister has the guts to push for that sort of
change.
Unidentified Member of the Audience: Listening to
everyone here today, makes me wonder why more
emphasis hasn’t been put on the gillnet fish getting
up to the spawning grounds. I found when I was
gillnetting that you can lose so many fish out of a
gillnet. I was fortunate enough to fish on the West
Coast when there was no blue line and the gillnet I
was using was 750 fathoms long. Now, when we get
into rougher water, we would have to patrol our nets
every 1/2 hour to see if there is going to be too much
dogfish. I’ve turned around and counted 150 coho
in the net at say 9:00 in the evening, and 1 hour later
there might be 50. I am wondering what’s happening,
it started in 1992, when they turned around and gave
Aboriginal fisheries authority, those complete rights to
gillnet with monofilament nets, finer than the ones the
rest of us can use out there on the Fraser or anywhere
else in British Columbia. The salmon are travelling
up the Fraser River against the strong tides, below
Hell’s Gate, and they have to get to these resting areas.
Then you turn around and put those monfilament gill
nets in there. I’ve seen movies of what’s taking place,
and those fish are just solid in those nets. I asked Dr.
Pearse about the fish that are escaping to the spawning
grounds, and he said in 1992 that in some cases, 9 out
of 10 fish were net marked. In the old days, we used
linen gill nets, and the percentage was roughly 1 to 5%
net-marked fish reaching the spawning grounds. Then,
we got into nylon gillnets and it increased up to 26%;
in 1992 it was 56%. I also asked him about the ratio
between male and female? And he told me that about
80% are female. I’m no biologist, but somewhere along
the line, like Mr. Fortier said from the Shuswap Band,
we’re going to have repercussions here in 1996.
Response by Charles Bellis: I certainly appreciate
your question. You talked about the surf line; I have
to say that the surf line was brought in in the late
’50s. It was basically the most progressive thinking
on the two countries’ part, to save Pacific salmon. At
that time, as you know, John, we were building milelong gillnets. The seine-boat fleet had 40 fathoms of
web. The herring stocks had collapsed; the big seiners
were going into the salmon fishery and going way
offshore, and the two countries put the surf lines in.
I have to say that the Americans, again, put one over
Getting the Missing Fish Story Straight
on us. They went from outside point to outside point,
and we went from point to point. Unfortunately, our
Department of Fisheries are just moving out the surf
line to accomodate a seine fleet. I really think that’s
the wrong way. The reason they put in those surf lines,
like I say, was to save Pacific salmon, and I thought
it did an excellent job; although, the thing has been
a monkey on my back ever since I started fishing
about 35 years ago, in gill netting. So, I still have to
acknowledge it as being one of the saviours of Pacific
salmon. I’d like to see the Americans move their line to
“point to point.” It would be a good thing to negotiate.
On your monofilament nets, it was my
understanding that in the Supreme Court of Canada
said they could catch their food fish by any means
they want; they were not frozen in time and they could
use any modern thing they wanted to. So I suspect
monofilament would be legal.
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69
wrap-up
Mr. Peter Weber
I think that a number of important issues have been
identified as well as some conflicts, and those are some
of the things that we need to start to focus on. We need
to go beyond this forum and perhaps look at methods
for pulling out particular issues that have come up and
having some sort of follow-up on this. This can only
be a start. I think that it has come out fairly clearly that
the important issues include habitat, US and Canada
conflict, and bio-diversity. In addition, there have been
a number of conflicts over gear and whether or not
regulation is currently working as it is put in place.
We have heard opinions on both ends of the spectrum.
I think that is where the focus of future thought and
discussion should perhaps start.
Dr. Richard Haedrich
It’s been quite a learning day for me. For a good part
of the day, I felt that I was back in some of the debates
that we heard where we were talking about codfish,
and the different sectors and the gear and this sort of
thing.
Because of my particular bent, I was always
looking for where the eco-system things came in. We
really just heard that towards the end of the day. I
was very taken with what Charlie Bellis had to say,
because for the first time, we started to hear about an
area. True, we heard about the salmon, but it was the
chinook this time, and there were the halibut and the
rock fish, and there were other species, and there was
some implied relationship between them that was
very interesting. Also, we heard something from him,
which is something which we in the Atlantic have
been debating about with respect to very large marine
areas, that is, the idea of marine protected areas. There
had been a sanctuary at one time in that particular
region which was important for the preservation of
halibut and it seems to me the concept of areas is an
important thing to consider. I was also very taken with
Ron MacLeod’s statement that when you’re thinking
about this area, it should be the whole system, it
70
shouldn’t be these little selective bits of it, and in fact
we heard that a number of times with respect to the
particular watersheds and rivers.
Another thing which interested me was to hear
about the salmon and the people outside of that. What
we have started to think about, and promote actually,
in Newfoundland, is recognition that when you are
talking about an eco-system, that that eco-system
includes the people within it. Then the idea of historic
rights and all these sorts of ideas tend to vanish, and
people become predators within the system, exploiting
it, and taking a certain share of it.
Mr. Ian Waddell
I want to thank SFU and the SFU people for putting
on this effort, I think that it is a great effort at an
important and strategic time. I also want to thank
my old friend John Fraser even though he did once,
after I inadvertently touched the Mace in the House
of Commons, drag me before the House and scold me
a little bit. I want to thank him, he and the rest of his
commission, for a really good report; short, snappy,
with solid recommendations, in the way a commission
should be done, unlike other government commissions
that seem to go on and on and on. This had a time
limit and it had some solid recommendations.
When I came this morning, I was a bit negative in
the sense of “here we go, we hear the apologies, we
hear about the East Coast,” and I think “wow, we are
going to trust to the same guys who managed the East
Coast, the management of the West Coast and here we
go again. What company or organization would do
that?” However, there are no other choices, I think. But
I got more and more positive as the day went along,
and here are some of the reasons why, and I just want
to summarize them.
The big one was an attitudinal change; it was
brought up by I think Alvin Dixon who said, “We all
say good things about conservation but I see a ‘me
first’ attitude on the grounds. This has to go before
we’re really serious about conservation.” I think
that people are recognizing that there has to be an
Getting the Missing Fish Story Straight
attitudinal change; enforcement yes, but enforcement
is limited. There has to be a change in attitude, and
you can do it. We have done it with the whales (our
attitude worldwide towards whales), our change in
getting the American tuna fishing changed, in the
nature of their nets and drift-netting and so on. There’s
a mood in the public too and it’s been mentioned
over and over again about sustainability. So I see
some change, some attitudinal change that I see as
identifying a big problem and facing it, maybe for the
first time. I think the role of the public is recognized
too as that was brought up again and again.
I also think that we should recognize, to be fair, the
already significant efforts made towards a sustainable
fishery. Dennis Brown was right to point this out
and point out the efforts made by a lot of fishers in
the past. I don’t think we should forget that, and I
speak as an environmentalist, not as a fisher. And this
should also include some of the DFO people who have
worked very hard on some of these efforts.
We should also note, and DFO people should note,
that we are moving into new initiatives. For example,
Dr. Michael Healey and Fred Fortier talked about the
community-based watersheds, and I want to quote
Dr. Healey on that, he talked about “these are the new
institutional experiments and we should look at them
and see new ways of doing things.” We’re seeing this
in some of the pilot projects that we are involved in up
in Salmon Arm in the salmon river, in Langley in the
salmon river, and in other places. You should look at
this because it brings in the community, and this is the
key I think.
I wanted to just touch on Kemano. The provincial
and federal governments let us down in the past and
they’re still letting us down. They have got to get
together. John Fraser said that there is a dam there.
What are we going to do about the proposed cold
water facility? It’s crying out for some action there,
and the obvious one is a watershed management
agency or group of local people to at least start the
process. I hope that we will push that, and I hope we
will get some of your support to do that.
I wish we had had time to do more with
Aboriginal matters. We mentioned the role of all the
groups getting together in the watershed agreement.
We are trying to give more resources to aboriginals to
help in that area. Mr. Zirnhelt, the Minister, mentioned
the watershed restoration. I have met with Roger
Stanier of the forest renewal group and I think that
this is really positive in the role of the province. Maybe
we’ll get some fishermen working in the rivers and the
streams there. It’s a big project and it will provide lots
of jobs, and I think that it will be good.
To end, there are 35 recommendations in the Fraser
Report. DFO responded to them, but I think other
people should respond to them in a more systematic
way or else we’re going to lose it. John Fraser is going
to go to, well it won’t be Spain next week, but it will
be Africa or something, and Lee Alverson will be off
in Alaska and we don’t want this Fraser River Sockeye
Report to go on the shelf of some assistant deputy
minister in Ottawa, and remain there. So I think that
we have got to continue with this. I would like to
offer the Fraser Basin Management Board, which is a
neutral body with federal, provincial, and municipal,
First Nations, and members of the public to carry this
on, if we can, and to get those people mentioned in
the Fraser Report, like the GVRD and so on, to come
together again in another meeting to do 2 things. The
first thing would be to offer people an opportunity
to respond to recommendations that involve them,
in detail, much like DFO has done. The second idea
would be that they would offer their recipes for
collective action to address all 35 recommendations;
that is, having answered what they could do in their
own particular area, they address what others can
do. Now, what our Board could do is to monitor this
and to release a report one year later and say here’s
what happened to the 35 recommendations and here’s
what’s going on. Part of our function is to audit things,
and I think this is what we could do.
I want to finish by pointing out that we should
specifically look at Recommendation 10. This refers
to the conservation council. This is not a job for our
Board, this should be a separate council. I might say,
with respect, that I don’t think this should be DFOdriven. Dick Carson said we should all have our
responsibility now, and we should all drive this, so we
should have this council happening, as John Fraser
said, happening soon. It can report to the public on the
status of the West Coast fish stocks.
Let me just end with, if I might, a sports analogy.
You, Madame Chairman, were the Minister of Sports,
right? You know when they say at the beginning of the
Olympics “Let the games begin”; well perhaps we can
end by saying, “let our cooperation begin here.” John
Fraser mentioned earlier the symbol of the salmon; it
is almost a religious item/icon in British Columbia. It
cuts across Native and non-Native, it’s part of all of
us, and we are the generation that has the chance to
sustain this. What a challenge this is. So let’s get
going on it, but let’s be practical and follow up
systematically on these 35 recommendations. We have
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71
the expertise here and we’ve got the ability to do it,
and it can be done. That’s why I feel so positive after
today, so let’s let the cooperation begin now.
Mr. Ron MacLeod
Well, what can be done? I take the view that people
can do whatever they set their minds to do. I believe
the resource can be preserved and sustained and that
full benefits can be generated. I think fair sharing
can be achieved in that process, and I think there are
two overriding strategies that we need to pursue
to achieve those ends. I think that we have to bring
the facts about the present and potential economic,
social, cultural and intrinsic values of fisheries to the
attention of the public and to all of the users of the
resource. I think that we have to do that in a sustained
way. These things usually go in on a ‘hit and miss’
fashion; you have a publicity campaign, then you’re
off to something else. We need to do it in a sustained
way. Concurrently, I think we have to empower and
support those who have an interest in fish and who are
willing to try new approaches, to conflict resolution
particularly, who will work together, and even work
with their hands to restore fish and fish habitat.
There’s a kind of a collegiality there that builds and
builds; the salmon spirit takes over.
I think a quantum change in attitudes is needed
if people are to accept and meet the stewardship
obligation. The obligation after all, isn’t solely DFOs,
it’s all of us, and I think that’s a point that was made
over and over again here. Government attitudes,
public attitudes, interest group attitudes, all need
modification and drastic improvement. I think the fish
resource is just too fragile to withstand much more
abuse.
To foster and promote appropriate attitudinal and
behavioural changes, I think we need an instrument
that would pursue the following strategies, and I
just want to list 3 or 4 here. Develop clear statements
of facts on BC’s fisheries issues; identify real costs
and benefits in BC fisheries, including an objective
analysis of the cost of properly managing fisheries;
assess the long-term flow of economic, social, cultural
and intrinsic benefits generated by fisheries; identify
means for bridging fisheries management budgetary
shortfalls (that’s something we can look forward to
over the next decade), shortfalls not only at the federal
level, but also at the provincial level; conduct a long
term public information program based on facts about
fish and fisheries.
72
I think that I’ve pretty well covered the rest except
for one very important strategy, and that is to promote
sustainable fisheries through the education system.
We have a wonderful opportunity of building from
the community up, of getting our children involved in
conservation activities, of promoting the conservation
ethic and coming to understand what the ecological
system is, in its totality. As those children grow up and
get to an employable age, summer employment of 16
or so, instead of governments scattering their student
money, they should focus it to create an opportunity
for these young people to work at fisheries, forestry,
water management, urban development, whatever it
might be, and as they progress through high school
into university, come to understand what goes
into relationships and interactions and what their
obligations are as individuals in our society. I think
this is the way which we have available to promote
the conservation ethic and make that ethic a system of
value in British Columbia.
Dr. Lee Alverson
First, I think I heard Charlie say that the report,
as he read it, was too much motherhood, and I
thought at first that I should take some offense to
that and then I thought about that. Charlie, I would
say that motherhood is the most classic example of
stewardship, it reflects protection, sensitivity, love of a
resource, and I hope that’s what the recommendations
of the report do. So if it’s motherhood, then I’m quite
satisfied with that. Second, I think that maybe I’m
the one who ought to make a few comments about
US—Canada, someone earlier made the suggestion
of ‘let’s get Tobin to walk across the border and talk
to the people down in Washington’. I think that’s
exactly what you have to do. We have to get it out
of the hands, certainly in the United States, of the
local people which are a strong group of special
interests that are not going to back away from those
interests. We are going to be at loggerheads with their
counterparts on the other side of the border from here
to eternity. Somehow, at a higher level of government,
a higher level of decision making, with people who
are looking at the broader issues, they have to say
this is the arrangement and it’s going to go ahead.
There’s a dream down there, that we’re going to put
the Columbia together. You have a dream that you are
going to maintain the Fraser. I have this gut feeling
that we are not going to resurrect the Columbia as
Getting the Missing Fish Story Straight
a major salmon producing system. Unfortunately,
when you have a hundred dams on the river and
its mainstem, it is no longer the environment or the
river that it was 50 years ago, and we are not going to
produce the salmon. So we are going to continue to
have to compromise in this trade and we better find a
solution and I’m hopeful that that will be done at the
government level.
Getting to the basic issue here, I tend to be a
little bit of a cynic, maybe I’ve lived too long, but I’m
looking at world population trends and I recognize
that they are going to put more stress, not less, on
resources. There is going to be more demand for your
water resources, there’s going to be more multiple
news conflicts, there’s going to be more people
moving up your valleys wanting to move unto your
watersheds, and they’re all going to take a piece of
that environment unless there is a different ethic and a
different set of standards that we’ve put in place.
World fish stocks are stabilizing or going down.
Aquaculture will not, despite its growth, present the
amount of food that is necessary on a global basis to
take up the shortfall and there are going to be a lot
of difficulties, particularly in some of the developing
countries of the world. These will all put greater
demands on waterfront, urbanization, more food,
more people telling you go after more food, ignore the
risk aversion of things because we have to feed people.
You’ll have these two forces coming together, and I
think it will be a long time before the growing world
populations and their demands and what they think
they need, are going to come in reconciliation with
society’s general need to maintain the planet. That’s
unfortunately a little bit of a cynical outlook and it
comes with my age.
There are some bright spots, and I think I have
to hone in on those a little bit. What Ian said about
management is correct, and what DFO said about
management in general is correct. With the help of
nature, salmon stocks in the Pacific North have been
increasing, and there are more of them around. We’ve
probably missed some of the elements that lead to the
questions about bio-diversity. But in general, we’re
all a lot better off than we were 20 or 25 years ago.
We’ve run into some problems in the short run since
1990, and the problems have been defined in terms of
increasingly complex fisheries. There has been some
deterioration of the statistics and perhaps some lack of
some enforcement capabilities to keep the population
in tune with the regulations. But these are all things
that we can address, and it seems to me that Tobin is
attempting to deal with it, in part. But we do need the
holistic support of everybody here, in all the groups. I
am tickled to death to hear people that are starting to
talk, but it has to be more than talk, it has to get down
to that area of commitment, I heard that comment
earlier.
I want to refer to some of the positive things
I saw today. A comment was made by industry
about improving, and they are going to make a
commitment to help with the statistics. I think that’s a
very significant thing. It needs to be done also in the
river. We need an improvement in the quality of the
statistics. The managers need good data to make good
management decisions and statistics are extremely
important. I think that somehow BC sooner or later
has to come to the decision as to whether they like
I.T.Q.’s or limited entry. They do need some sort of
controlled effort access and the best people to address
that are the people of the industry. How they do that, I
don’t know. But I think that if you don’t, it will lead to
further confusion and further conflicts.
I would end my comment by referring to the
importance of what everybody else has said. That
is, that overfishing can cause a loss or a decline or
a depletion of stocks. Loss of your environment is
loss of everything and there is a commitment in this
working document that says we ought to get busy
and watch the habitat of the Fraser and of course
of the rest of the world. I think that commitment to
your environment is extremely important in terms of
your long term opportunity. I would close by saying
that I support risk aversion management, but I have
a little different view than I think than some of the
others have. I think that a lot of that has to be vested
in the manager and he has to understand the quality
of data and the risk that occur in different times and
different management decisions. And when there
are risks, I think the message is out there that you
had better be more cautious in this activity. When
his data is good, he ought to manage in the manner
in which he has traditionally managed. I would not
like to confuse the precautionary principle with risk
aversion management. It has a very different legal
interpretation. Under these terms, you will go out
and prove that you are not doing anything wrong
in an ecological sense before you start anything.
I can see times when one is dealing with certain
toxic substances or other real threats to society, that
that is desirable. But in simple day to day fishery
management, I don’t think that is a principle you’d
want to use.
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73
The Honourable John Fraser
Let me go back a bit. We got an awful shock last
summer and we got a shock in 1992, and we’ve had
moments of anguish and concern and all of us in
this room can trace some of the history of the fishery
back quite a long time. Some of us farther back than
others. But it probably ought to be remembered, and
this doesn’t take us back too far, that by the autumn
of 1993, and maybe even earlier, but certainly by
the spring of 1994, a number of people in this room
were beginning to hear stories from other people
up and down the coast and on the rivers and in the
Department of Fisheries and Oceans that gave cause
for concern, anxiety, and perhaps even alarm. It also
should be remembered that some of this information
was taken directly to Minister Tobin after he became
Minister. This is no particular secret; in July of last
year, I went to see the Minister in Ottawa and said
“Look, here is a summary of very disquieting reports
in the fishery on the West Coast, and it all leads to a
conclusion that we’re going to make some mistakes
and we’re going to have difficulties.” We didn’t know
then that we were going to have two episodes of
missing fish that were going to catch the attention
of the world. My point is, that most of us who were
paying some attention and who cared about this place
and this fishery, knew that things were not as they
should be. And so, maybe if we look upon the missing
fish as something that happened (it’s there and it’s not
going to go away), from the point of view of: What can
we learn from it and what can we do with respect to
the future that we might not even be discussing today
if it hadn’t been for those missing fish?
Let’s just consider for a moment that, if with
a little bit of luck, we’d managed to find our way
through the difficulties without the figures, without
the large amounts of missing fish, just by the skin of
our teeth and by good luck. I suggest to you that the
problems would still be there; we would not have
had the inquiry, we would not have gone through a
process by which hundreds and hundreds of people
came in front of an Independent Board and said a
great deal about this fishery from a great many points
of view. Even though some of us knew that something
was wrong, there isn’t one of us on the Board that
didn’t benefit from all of what we heard. I made
reference to the fact that what the public clearly was
telling us was that it was the fish that mattered, that
74
the arguments between/among all of the different
interest groups within the fishery, didn’t matter any
longer against the backdrop of what happened to the
cod. The great worry was: Do we have enough sense
to put a stop to what’s going wrong and pull together
and save the fish? That’s what the Report was all
about, and that’s what all of those lengthy discussions
for several months were all about.
I’m just going to deal with a couple of things that I
think that we’ve got to keep in mind, but they’ve been
dealt with so well by my colleagues and by others this
afternoon, I won’t go into detail. I do want to say this, I
have been involved one way or another in what could
be called environmental matters but I would also say
natural resource matters, fishery, forestry, land use for
almost my whole life. I remember making speeches
many years ago in this city about the problems of
pollution and the problems of environment at a time
when many people could not even spell ecology
or perhaps had never even heard of it. A lot has
happened since then; we now have acid rain, we have
ozone depletion, we have the awful consequences of
the potential of global warming, we have toxic waste
in the Arctic and Antarctic, on all the oceans, and we
have many, many serious problems. We have within
the fishery a whole series of things which we’ve
heard about today which give us concern. But, it isn’t
enough to just dwell on a litany of woes. Because if
you do, you send your audience out, they go home
and curl up in bed, and they’re so dismayed that they
don’t want to get up in the morning. Right now, at the
end of a long day, we’ve got to concentrate when we
go out of this room on what we’re going to do about
it. And I say that because I’m certain that we can do
something about it.
The history of the fishery on this coast has
not been all bad, we have done some good things,
there are people in this room who know that, just
as they’re the same people who know that we have
made mistakes. But it would be a terrible error to
finish a meeting like this and go away and say we
have seen and heard terrible things. Well, that’s not
good enough, nor by the way, is it acceptable. We are
after all, probably the most adaptable of creatures.
We have intelligence, we could reach back now into
memory, we could recall facts, figures, information;
we have an extraordinary capacity to do things. If we
have the will to do it, and if we have the wisdom, to
realize that these things must be done. One could say
that there is a socio-economic reason why we need
to maintain a fishery, of course there is. And there’s a
Getting the Missing Fish Story Straight
legal reason, and a constitutional reason and a narrow
financial reason, but there is another reason, and that
is that we as this generation don’t have the moral
right to squander a resource that the good Lord put on
this earth and doesn’t belong in a propriety sense to
anybody in this room or anybody in this province or
anybody in the country or any country. That is what
we have to understand and it is that almost spiritual
aspect of this whole thing that must give us the
strength to say all right, there is a litany of woes, but
we can do something about it and we will.
I’m not going to get into a lot of specifics because
they’ve been dealt with very well, but just let me say
this, you can’t take your harvest down to the last fish
when we don’t know enough to be absolutely sure
it’s safe to do so. Somebody has to be in charge, there
has to be a recognition that there is a constitutional
responsibility and it has to have authority and that’s
why we said that the Department of Fisheries and
Oceans must be strengthened and must be recognized
as the agency in charge, whatever arrangements are
made. We have to know what the facts are. One of the
first sets of facts we have to know is how many fish
are caught each year, and where they are. If you don’t
do that, how can anybody manage it? Lastly, when
we talk collectively as a community resolving these
problems, we have got to know again what the overall
facts are, and those facts have got to be delivered to
us by people who are independent, not tied to either
departmental problems, or gear type problems, or
interest group problems, but that can put out to the
public the true state of the fishery on a recurrent basis.
With those things, we can do our duty, we know what
it is. Some people say it was Chief Seattle over 100
years ago who said “We do not own this earth, we
hold it in trust for our children.” That concept is not a
new concept, it’s the concept of good stewardship, and
that’s what we have to bring to bear. I am absolutely
confident we can do it.
Final comments from the audience
John Secord: Seiner and long line fisherman. Earlier
on today, I heard someone say that they were going
to modify the fishery of one commercial user group
and reallocate some fish to another user group in the
river with different gear, and that would maybe put
some more fish on the grounds for a third user group.
Now that to me is not conservation, that’s reallocation.
There are 3 user groups here in the province that
remove fish on the way to the spawning grounds: the
commercial fishery, the recreational fishery, and the
aboriginal fishery. Unless all 3 of those groups come to
the table and admit how many fish they are removing,
and what the mortality of their by catch is, and agree
to limit the growth of their fisheries and to take steps
to reduce the amount of fish that they are removing
from the ocean, the resource is going to be destroyed
anyway by one user group eating up the savings that
another user group makes. So, I just wanted to say that
it is the responsibility of all the user groups to come
into some kind of agreement to put more fish on the
grounds and to rebuild our fishery.
Cody Canelly: There has been a lot of discussion about
salmon, but there has not been enough discussion
about ling cod and its relation of the rockfish. It’s
been my observation over the past 3 years that we’ve
got major problems with our rockfish, in particular.
A number of people formed a sanctuary society 4 or
5 years ago, and the thrust of that organization is to
try to persuade the government to establish marine
protected areas where not only rockfish and ling cod
would be protected, but also goeducks and other
shellfish. We have those fisheries, but what I’m looking
for, is that there should be a series of these marine
protected areas on the coast. There is some urgency in
this, because the rockfish fisheries is moving off.
Bob Gould: Fisherman. I have long been involved
in the academics of the fisheries along with a lot of
other people for 25 years. I was involved in the Pacific
Salmon Treaties which went on for a long time and
never got anywhere, I gather, because we aren’t doing
anything at the moment. We haven’t talked about the
relationship between this mythical enforcement that
we keep talking about and the legal system. A $500
fine is no longer any good or a $5,000 fine. I asked
my tiny daughter about what was the real problem,
and she said “poaching should be a capital offense,”
and what she meant, of course, was that every dollar
you have in every corner of this earth should be
confiscated if you are a poacher, but we haven’t talked
about that here. What is the relationship between
this enforcement procedure that you keep talking
about and the courts? Will the courts in fact enforce
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75
the regulations? I think that’s missing, and I think we
should do that in the future.
Alan Campbell: Past president North Shore Fish &
Game; Member of BC Wildlife Federation. I have been
on many committees throughout the last 10 years
and I have brought many suggestions forward for
recommendation and a lot of good ideas have come
from these discussion panels, but they seem to go so
far, then it is dead weight and you never hear about
it anymore. Today we sit here and talk about salmon,
but it is actually all our marine life that is in jeopardy.
I have been on a board that is currently looking at
shellfish. We put together many recommendations to
the federal fisheries and none of those have yet come
about and no changes have been made. The way
they deal with it is to cut back on more enforcement;
instead of having for instance in the Lower Mainland,
3 or 4 enforcement officers, now we only have 1.
You have to have the proper enforcement here, or
otherwise we’ll lose it all. They’re still taking 200 crab
a night off Cate’s Park dock, and nobody’s going to do
anything about it. It’s ridiculous. I like John Fraser’s
comment there with this panel, that maybe this is a
beginning, because it seems that every other panel
that I’ve been on has been doom and gloom, and still
continues to be doom and gloom. If we can sit back
here now and put everything aside and forget about
the selfishness, then I think we’ve come along ways.
John: Greenpeace. Earlier in the day, someone
mentioned the spectra of Bill 62, and it was flagged for
later discussion.
Iona Campagnolo: I was going to say this later in
the wrap up, but unless someone strongly opposes
this, there are two ways in which this conference
will be forwarded. One is that Simon Fraser will
make available videos and a report of it available to
everyone who has been here and further action can
then be amalgamated out of what has come out of
this. Personally, as your facilitator, unless anyone tells
me otherwise, it would be my intention to write to
the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans and put what
this undertaking was brought forward as a result
of an earlier discussion in the day. This group calls
on the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans to rescind
the 1987 Letter on Kemano completion; this group
calls on the federal government to continue to
require environmental assessment on all projects that
substantially affect aquatic habitat; this group favours
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administration of Pacific fisheries by senior DFO
management located on the Pacific Coast; this group
endorses the formation of a conservation council as
recommended by the Fraser Panel; and also endorses
risk aversion management, a recommendation from
the Fraser Panel. It would be my plan to write that
to the Minister, sign it by me, on your say so, unless
someone rises up to tell me not to do it, that is what I
intend to do.
Unidentified member of the audience:: About
the only thing that I see missing, unless I missed
something this morning—and I’m afraid I wasn’t here,
I was at the Treaty negiotations—is the fact, and it was
Craig Orr that reminded me of it, that if we don’t have
legal water for fish. This also made me think of the fact
that maybe the federal and provincial governments
better finally get together and take some kind of stand
on dams, diversions, and export by tanker. We have
a temporary moratorium on water by tanker; both of
these things will seriously affect, inland, the salmon,
and on the foreshores, all of the other fish and aquatic
species. We can’t seem to get either from the provincial
or the federal government, some kind of positive stand
on this. I think the only person that touched on it was
our American gentleman here. I think we’d better
realize, up here, that this is a serious problem. The
Americans are seriously looking at our water. We’re
not going to have fish if we don’t have water for them.
Dan Edwards: I’d like to thank Patricia Gallaugher
and the people at SFU for putting this on, and as
well, Iona. I think this type of communication is very
valuable. I’d like to suggest one possibility for further
action. Although this was a ‘Missing Fish Story’ and
was specifically centered on the sockeye in the Fraser,
what we heard today is that there are missing fish
everywhere, in every region, and of all species. What
I would like to see happen, perhaps, is a motion, or
some sort of possibility of going region to region with
a similar sort of forum. The Skeena River Committee
is up and running. Ron mentioned the problems in
River’s Inlet, which is in the Central Area. There are
problems in Area 12, there are problems on the west
coast of Vancouver Island. I would like to see the
Continuing Studies part of SFU coordinate something
like that, and then bring the information together at
some point in these other communities.
Ian Waddell: I was just telling Iona that this is part of
the watershed management approach and that’s been
Getting the Missing Fish Story Straight
raised a number of times. I’d originally thought it was
just some of the areas in the Fraser, and I’m realizing
it’s in other areas. There’s people on Vancouver Island,
there’s people in the North. This is a means of getting
the local people involved in the management of the
water, of the fisheries, of the forest even, and the land
that affects the river where the fish are. So I think this
is happening, and I suggest you tell your colleagues,
your friends, to support that watershed management
approach, and get it moving on a local level.
I’m talking about a little more interrelatedness here,
specifically on fisheries issues, through the Continuing
Studies of SFU. Something more comprehensive than
just leaving it.
Unidentified member of the audience: All day long,
I’ve been listening to all these panels, and no-one has
ever brought up fish farming. What impact has fish
farming got on wild stocks world-wide?
Dan Edwards: We are already working at the
watershed renewal level quite extensively and have
been for the last two years. Since it’s been started up
and running, there have been alot of problems. At
first it was captured by large forest companies, and
we’re just now bringing it back into communities.
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77
closing remarks
Mr. Louis Tousignant
This is T.G.I.F. time; the day and the hour when
the people all over Vancouver are thanking God
it’s Friday, but I’m not really sure it applies to this
occasion. I wanted to abbreviate my concluding
remarks, but I think I won’t. I will give you the fullblown situation. It’s been an extraordinarily useful and
educational day, and this event has brought together
a distinguished group of experts from different
disciplines and backgrounds, all of which share a
common interest, which is basically, the conservation
of Pacific salmon. We have discussed the problems
identified by the Fraser River Sockeye Review Board,
and at this point I guess the issue on the minds of
most people is “Where’s the beef? Where do we go
from here?.” “We” meaning all of us, governments and
non-government organizations, the fisheries sectors
involved; I believe we all agree that what this task
requires is a cooperative effort, based on a common
interest.
Having said that, the responsibility for doing
much of the work to be done, lies with the federal
government, and specifically with my department,
Fisheries and Oceans. The report urged the federal
government to live up to its responsibilities for
fisheries conservation, and our minister, Mr. Tobin, has
made it quite clear that he will do that.
I come to the podium here today as the
representative of DFO to do three things. First, to
summarize the departmental plan of action that has
been drawn up to respond to the Fraser Board report.
Second, to report on where we are in the execution of
that plan. And three, to make some observation about
the role of other groups, including those represented
here, in achieving common goals.
I will start the account on March 7th. Twenty-odd
days ago, Mr. Tobin announced a series of actions that
DFO will take to respond to the recommendations
of the Fraser Board. This action plan was unveiled
the same day the report was tabled. There is a
considerable amount of detail in that plan, but broadly
speaking, it can be categorized in five main headings:
conservation, enforcement and compliance, integration
of science and management priorities, aboriginal
fisheries strategy, and industry renewal. The Minister
78
announced the action plan on March 7th; we’re now
on March 31st, and some of you may be wondering, it
might be a bit early for a progress report, but in fact,
it isn’t. First, because the meter did not start ticking
on March 7th; the nature of many of these problems
had begun to emerge as the board went about its
work, and some responses had begun. Furthermore,
the announcement of March 7th did give the DFO the
green light for action on several fronts. Over the past
three weeks, we’ve been moving forward rapidly,
and we need to do that, because time and the salmon
season wait for no one. We’re three months away from
the ’95 season, and we have to set priorities.
I will give you a highly condensed report
of current activity under the five headings I’ve
mentioned, excluding some aspects which have been
covered earlier by previous speakers, notably from
DFO. First I’d like to say that for the Department,
conservation is at the top of the list, which is where it
belongs. It’s the essence of the exercise, it’s the essence
of our mandate, it’s at the root of what everybody in
this room feels very strongly about. There are many
diverging views in this room of what should be done,
that’s for sure. There’s certainly something which we
all share, and that’s the need to have a sustainable
salmon fishery. I’m sure nobody in this room goes
against that. The Fraser Board report said the DFO and
the Pacific Salmon Commission have been managing
too close to the margin. It said in effect that we do
not have the understanding either of the fish, or its
behaviour or biology, or the impact of fishing activity,
to justify managing so close to the edge. And in that
situation, if we want to avoid falling off the cliff,
we’d better stay a healthy distance from the edge.
Well, we’re taking that advice, and from here on in,
DFO will adopt a more conservative approach to
conservation. And if we err, we will err on the side of
caution.
Now, our practical definition of risk-aversion,
because risk-aversion is a slogan or an expression
that may mean many things to many people, but our
practical definition of that is first, we will develop
conservative estimates of returning salmon, and
fishing plans will be based on those estimates and
will be consistent with them. Therefore, we will have
smaller numbers; we issued last week the numbers on
Getting the Missing Fish Story Straight
returns of sockeye, pinks, and other species, that are
conservative numbers, and our management plans
will be tailored to those numbers. This year, we will
adjust our spawning escapement targets as the season
proceeds, to match environmental conditions. In other
words, if the conditions deteriorate, we will let more
salmon spawn. And that includes looking at what’s
happening on the river.
Third, if we’re not sure about the size of the
given run, because we don’t have good data—and
I’ll come back to that at the end—we will reduce
the harvesting rates, and face the consequences of
that. Where necessary, if it comes to that, although I
doubt very much we will have to come to that end,
we will close it. I’m very clear about that. This is our
definition of risk-aversion; this is the response to the
recommendation that the Minister gave, and that is
what we will do.
We are moving also to reduce pressure on two
highly vulnerable fisheries. We have just released the
grim forecast for west coast Vancouver Island chinook,
and we will shortly consult with stakeholder groups
on a conservative fishing plan for this year. And that
is the priority for the next little while. We will also
work with the industry on measures to reduce fishing
effort this year in Johnstone Strait. As well, we will
implement the coho rebuilding program, which will
reduce the effort by both commercial and recreational
fishermen. This has already been announced; I’m only
telling you today, we will implement it.
There is a more general aspect to our response that
I want to touch on here, and in his statement of March
7th, Minister Tobin talked about the requirements of
what he called “the fishery of the future.” He said
that the management of that fishery would have to be
based on, and I quote, “partnerships and reciprocal
accountability with respect to management and
enforcement.” We intend to move in that direction,
to a working partnership between DFO, harvesters,
processors and other stakeholders, and in this mode,
the partners would collaborate in the development of
fishing plans, and in measures to achieve compliance
with regulations. The partners would also accept
their share of the responsibility for making these
measures work. We’ve started a little thing in prawns
this year, with trap limits, and industry paying a little
bit of the cost for observers; to get a handle on what
that resource is, really, because we didn’t. And these
kinds of measures—partnerships with fishermen—to
manage the fishery cooperatively, so that what they
do helps our science and vice versa, is something we
will start, and something we will amplify on. We’ve
already done some things in some other species—
halibut, sable fish—but I think that the prawn
example, recently implemented, is the type of measure
I’m alluding to. Developing partnership must be our
common goal, and we must pursue it together.
My second topic is enforcement. The Fraser Board
sent a strong message that inadequate enforcement
was a significant part of the problem. To enforce
better, we have to improve in two areas. Basically, the
refereeing of the game, and the rules of the game. On
the first heading, the refereeing, we must sharpen our
enforcement teeth. The Fraser Board report said we
did not have enough people on the ground to enforce
the regulations effectively, and we are in the process of
correcting that situation. The Minister has authorized
the addition of fifty fishery officer positions for ’95;
they will all be in place by June 15th. That is above
and beyond last years complement, and by the way,
fisheries officers these days do exclusively fishery
enforcement; they don’t do other things. They are
more focused in what they are doing. We will also hire
32 seasonal guardians in ’95, and on that topic you’ll
remember that the Fraser Board criticized the training
of seasonal, well, these people will take an intensive
pre-training program, before the month of July. We
are increasing sea-borne surveillance of the fishery.
In ’95 we will increase sea days in terms of boat, DFO
and chartered vessels, and at the same time, we are
developing some tactical new approaches, mostly
aimed at faster response—blitz. Officers will come in
the deep of the night.
Enforcement is expensive, and all in all, we will
spend about $2.9 million more in ’95 on this function,
than we did last year, despite restraints and cutbacks.
Some of you wonder how we can do that, in light
of the recent budget. Well, very simply, I got some
money from Ottawa, and we’ve moved money from
other envelopes, and the priority for the Department,
the region, essentially is to move money away from
overhead functions, to the core functions, which are,
essentially, enforcement, management, habitat, and
science. So we will reduce overhead gradually—this
cannot be done overnight—to allocate resources to
those functions.
I don’t want to leave the subject without
underlining a reality I believe we all recognize,
there’s no way to protect this resource exclusively
through policing—we would go broke. There’s 1500
watersheds in this province, miles and miles of ocean,
and effective enforcement has to be a community
effort and a collective effort, based on grassroots and
riverbank support. And to get where we need to be,
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79
we have to replace the cops and robbers thinking with
civic concern, by sectors, by citizens, by everyone. We
must arrive at a mode in which the “stakeholders,”
of the salmon, understand that the title is not an
honourary title. That the stake they own is very real,
and what hurts the salmon hurts them, economically,
environmentally, and otherwise. We have to get to a
mindset in which cheating on conservation is treated
as what it is: an act of theft from our community and
our children, and we must arrive at a mode in which
the acceptable response to the kind of lawlessness we
saw last year, it is not to wink, but to blow the whistle.
I missed, unfortunately, this morning’s
proceedings, but I was very, very pleased to miss
them, because I threw some guy out of the fishery,
because he had too many crab traps. He’s out of there
for this year. I had done one on salmon, in January,
and the direction to the fishery officers and to the
enforcement staff, is “I want to remove sanctions.”
Somebody spoke about the courts, and I wanted to
speak about it at the end, but I will address it now.
It would be nice, Madame Campagnolo, if, because
we can’t talk to judges, but if somebody wrote to the
Chamber of Judges, if there’s such a body, to tell them
that poaching and illegal activities involving fish, are
not like shoplifting. That $250 fines, are simply out
of the question. Maybe that message has not gone
through to the judges; they deal with minor offenses,
and then they hit a fishery thing, and they say it’s not
really important. Well, they should be told, by this vast
body of people, representing a vast array of interests,
that it’s really important. That they should apply the
penalty to the fullest extent of the law, and they are
severe. So much for the judges, and so much for the
sanctions, but for those commercial fishermen in this
room, tell your buddies that we are going to remove
fishing privileges, and this will be systematic. We’re
also, to involve citizens, expanding the existing citizen
outlying service, which is observe, record and report
to a 24 hour operation, as recommended by the Fraser
Board. We’ve also tested the effectiveness of piggybacking on programs like Crimestoppers, and we hope
to expand these kinds of activities in the near future.
Over all, we are striving to work to make enforcement
a community-based activity, with the highest possible
profile. That’s the refereeing side.
On the rules side, our lawyers are working on
draft legislation to revise fisheries’ general regulation
in the Pacific fishery regulations, and these changes
are intended to improve our ability to enforce, and
we do so in many ways. One example is the matter of
mandatory hails. For those unfamiliar with the term,
80
this is the process in which a fishery officer calls on
a vessel at sea to report their catch. The changes we
have in mind would make accurate—and that’s the
key word—reporting a legal requirement. So you’d
better tell us what you actually caught, and what’s
in your hold. We will also be able to attach new
conditions to licenses, and this will improve our ability
to manage by species, by gear type, by class of vessels.
We don’t have these kinds of precisions now, and we
need them. We’re also building stronger enforcement
requirements into the agreements we sign with the
aboriginal fishing groups, and I’ll get back to that in a
second.
The third element of the action plan, response to
the recommendation that we improve our integration
of science and management priorities. Because one of
the problems that the Fraser Report observed was that
the scientists weren’t communicating, the managers
were not communicating, the enforcement were not
communicating with the PSC. I don’t know if Mike
covered that today, and I don’t want to repeat what
he said, but let me simply say that we are making
progress, and that’s Mike’s new organization, the
Stock Assessment Division. That’s part of the answer.
It’s an integrated organization made up of 70 scientists
and 40 operational people, and one of its key missions
is to forge effective links between scientists, managers,
and the PSC. And the numbers you just saw last week
coming out of the Department in terms of forecasts,
are a first product of that group.
The fourth element deals with the absolutely noncontroversial issue of the aboriginal fisheries strategy.
The central message I bring you in that regard is that
we’ll be taking a much tougher and tighter approach
to agreements under the strategy. That applies to both
contents and compliance. I’ve got three examples that
illustrate that. As a matter of policy, we will insist that
AFS agreements be signed and in place before the
fishery begins. We’ve set a deadline of May 15, well
before the sockeye season begins—in the last three
years, it’s always in the middle of the season that those
things happened—and if we don’t get an agreement
by that time, we will manage the fishery unilaterally,
in accordance with our obligations for conservation,
and to safety, and to satisfy, of course, the aboriginal
right to fish for food. So there is a deadline, if the
deadline is not met, voilà. No sale of fish nor payments
in the case of sales for First Nation, for AFS purposes,
will be permitted, until agreements are completed
and signed. And thirdly, the agreements we sign will
contain clear and explicit definitions of the working
relationship between DFO fishery officers and AFS
Getting the Missing Fish Story Straight
guardian, and fisheries enforcement personnel are
involved in the negotiations as we speak.
This brings me to industry renewal. The Fraser
Board report pointed out that overcapacity was a very
important part of the total problem. This very, very
critical problem has been with us for a very long time,
as long as the working lives of many of the people
here today, and longer than that for most, with the
possible exception of Bruce Buchanan. As long as it
continues—the overcapacity question—we will be
managing at the edge. The Fraser Board suggested that
we begin discussions to deal with overcapitalization
and overcapacity, and DFO is moving decisively to
deal with the issue. This is a major area; we are going
further than the Fraser Board report recommendations.
The report also said we should develop a cooperative,
on-going process for dealing with not only the
issue, but later with others: for instance, user-group
allocation, and the need to ensure equitable treatment
for users under the law.
So under this general block of recommendations
by the Fraser Report, we’re taking action, with the
establishment of a round-table process, which is
not, Madame Campagnolo, an excuse not to act, as
you mentioned this afternoon... And basically, that
will focus on overcapacity and related issues in the
commercial fishery. It’s focus will be the commercial
fishery. The exercise will work also to develop more
effective machinery for consultation. ‘Cause we
consult a hell of a lot on salmon, but it’s kind of
disjointed. There’s lobby groups all over the place,
who have a hold of one consultative process, and
they never really join. So the process will involve all
sectors of the fishery. To start the process, because
we don’t want to rush into solutions that don’t make
sense, that are unworkable, or that disrupt the lives
of people forever—that’s not our intent, we want to
address the problem. We’re going to start small, with
a workshop on April 20 and 21, to which many people
have been invited. And basically, the major objective
for that workshop is to reach consensus on what is
the problem, and this may appear simple but it isn’t,
what are the major options from traps to nets, that
we have to really focus on over the summer months,
while the people are fishing. To have an educated
dialogue, in September, October, November, on what
should be done. As well, the workshop’s mission
will be to define who should be sitting at the roundtable. Because during the Vietnam-US talks to close
the Vietnam War, they spoke for months, about the
configuration of the table, who should be sitting on the
table, and so on and so forth. And I have the strange
feeling that before we strike a round-table and define
its membership, there will be a lot of saliva spent on
who should be sitting on it and so on. If people are
not in the workshop they should not feel excluded,
because the round-table will be in September, October,
November, and that issue will have been dealt with,
aired, and otherwise agreed to. In September, October,
November, we’ll be focusing on answers. We’ve
discussed it long enough; Pearse made his first report
on this in 1982. Enough said on that, except to add
that if there is no consensus at the end of that process,
on a reasonable approach, made in BC to manage
the fishery—the commercial side of the fishery, in a
civilized fashion—over the longer term, the Minister
has made it quite plain that he will unilaterally bring
about change in the commercial fishery in ’96. I don’t
want this to be threatening. I have every confidence
that stakeholders, the people involved, have it within
themselves to find solutions that make sense, and that
can be implemented without major disruption.
So that covers the five major elements of the
action plan, and there are two more that do not fit
neatly into these categories. The first one is the need to
clean up the Fraser estuary. A lot has been said about
higher up on the river, but very little on the estuary,
where juvenile fish are reared, they live there, and
every single fish passes through there, and 41% of the
effluence of the Fraser system as a whole happened
to be dispensed, with great benevolence, by the
Lulu Island, and Annacis Island, through treatment
facilities, who happened to be putting out, in that very,
very delicate environment where water doesn’t move
as fast, substances that are not treated, that are kind of
poisonous. So basically, Mr. Tobin, and Environment
Minister Sheila Copps, have made a joint public
appeal in the context of the federal government’s
response to the Fraser Report, to both the governments
concerned, to act immediately and decisively to fulfill
this recommendation, and we are working on this as
we speak.
The second item, that does not fit into any one of
the categories, because it is common to all, is concern
about the way we do our business, the way we
conduct our mission. The Review Board recommended
that the Department improve communications, both
internally, and with the three fishing sectors. And we
are trying to respond on both fronts. Internally, we
are working on a better integrated, fully accountable
approach to planning. This is gobbledy-gook for many,
but basically, I want to make sure that all of the sides
of the DFO house speak together, before decisions
are taken, but we are going to take decisions. We are
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81
not going to diddle, we are going to take decisions.
I’ve mentioned how we approach this, in this context,
the aboriginal fishing agreements, by involving all
the players inside, and I have also appointed one
official, that some you may know, Bruce Turris, who
was in charge of the groundfish program, to basically
coordinate the response of the 33 recommendations of
the Fraser Report, to ensure that nothing falls between
cracks. Bruce’s full time job for the indefinite future,
will be to ensure that we implement the fullness of
the responses to the recommendations. I will very
soon establish an advisory committee, which will
focus specifically on our response to the Fraser
Board panel report, and this small group will include
representatives of the Fraser Board itself. We have not
yet chosen that person, but the lucky person will be
identified soon. And the commercial, aboriginal, and
recreational sectors will be represented on this small
group, because I want to be sure that what we do, I
have a sounding board so that our implementation
plan makes sense from that perspective, and we will
communicate regularly on what we do, to implement
these recommendations.
Before I wrap this up, I want to make two
observations that concern our prospects for the
future. Data is an issue that’s been mentioned by the
Board, by many people today. Well, I spoke about the
Stock Assessment Division, getting our act straight
in terms of science. I spoke about our priority to get
scientists, managers and enforcers in touch, as the
season proceeds, and that’ll happen in ’95, hopefully,
certainly will. But we are also making improvements
at Qualark and Mission; we’re looking at sale slips,
landing slips, system, mandatory hails, more test
fisheries, indexed fishermen, etcetera. Two gentlemen
up there have volunteered to provide me with insights
on how we can improve the data, and we will do that.
If the province can be helpful and work with us in
terms of sale slips, landing slips, and dealing with the
processing sector, that would also be very helpful. But
we are addressing the data issue.
On the Fraser River Basin Management Board,
I would just flag to the attention the Fraser Board
report Recommendation 29. I would see a role there,
Ian, for the Board, and that’s part of our response.
Basically, what the Fraser Panel said, there’s a need
for better coordination of federal, provincial, and local
policies, designed to deal with basically three issues.
One, effluent discharges, two, forestry practices, three,
urban developments. The Fraser Basin Management
Board has got all the people that can do this, and
maybe they will rise to the occasion and do that little
82
part for us.
One new element in our favour, is that in ’94, at
long last, fisheries conservation is not just a fisheries
issue, it’s become everyone’s concern. The collapse
of Northern Cod drew national attention all over
Canada, and so has the Spanish onslaught on turbot.
Our Minister is “turbot-charged” these days. Over the
past few weeks, DFO has logged thousands of calls
on the subject from all over Canada. Toronto is not
exactly ocean-awareness city, but yet last Saturday, the
first page of the Globe was about overcapacity in the
world fisheries. So he’s really raised the consciousness
of everybody about these issues. And that kind of
awareness will be extremely helpful as we push
ahead with the tasks at hand. Conservation imposes
pressures and disciplines on society, that require
commitment based on understanding. It helps to be
swimming with the tide of public opinion, rather than
against it.
My final point is about something else we
have going for us, a sense of reality in the fishery
itself. Someone once said that the first step towards
improvement, is to look facts in the face. And the
stakeholders in the fisheries are doing precisely this,
and today is a perfect example of that. Folks who
took the resource for granted, have been scared out
of their complacency, and I detect a new readiness
to divert some of the energy previously used about
squabbling over shares, to working together on the
real task of getting on with the job of conservation.
Lee Iaccoca put it this way, “when the wolf is at the
door, you get pragmatic in a hurry.” It has been a
learning experience for all concerned, including DFO.
We acknowledge that mistakes have been made, we
accept responsibility, but our attention now is turned
onto the future, and we intend to apply the lessons of
experience, and with your help, we’re going to get the
job done.
There’s one issue left to discuss and that is
Recommendation 10 for a conservation council. Well,
I don’t disagree that a conservation council would be
a good idea. But there are priorities. Three months
from now, we’re in the salmon fishery. We have to
manage that properly, better than last year. We have
to deal with the overcapacity issue in a civilized and
very focused way, to achieve recommendations to the
Minister in December. So in that light, we don’t have
the money to set up a conservation council. We don’t
know, in light of the new management regime that
will come out of the round-table, how a Conservation
Council would fit. There’s a lot of questions to answer,
so we just asked, and the answer the Minister gave
Getting the Missing Fish Story Straight
was a raincheck, a nine-month raincheck, “le temps
d’une accouchement” as we say in French—a time to
give birth to something. The time to deal with other
priorities before we address it; it’s not a dead duck, by
any shred of the imagination, but we’ve got to look at
it, see how it fits, find the money to make it happen. I
should mention, however, that in response to one of
the other recommendations of the Fraser Board, we
will have, at the end of the 1995 salmon season—I hate
the pun, but I cannot resist making it—a post-mortem,
of the 1995 season, with specialists and experts. As a
first step towards adding a watchdog function, and
we will try to tackle the big issue of fleet capacity,
and things like that. And next year, we will get into
the easier issue, the Conservation Council, and intersectoral allocations.
The Honourable Iona Campagnolo
Today we have heard the voices of scientists, students,
business people, new-style water-based entrepreneurs,
the general public, sport fishers, trollers,
trawlers, gillnetters, seiners, fish camp operators,
environmentalists, community-based thinkers, labour
representatives, aboriginal speakers, and government
spokespersons. Long ago, in the darkest days of the
1930s, faced with a radical change of a different sort,
Franklin Delano Roosevelt put just such a conundrum
to a demoralized and fearful people who were split,
fractured and factious. “Everyone else is wrong!,”
he announced on behalf of each of the contending
sectors of society yet each group says; if only we were
running things, then everything would be perfect!.”
I think we have gained a more solid comprehension
of each other’s perspectives and the complexities of
implementation of real change among and between
groups.
In my view there has never been anything
egalitarian about the fishing industry, but if the
human family is to survive, we must assure that there
is equality of access to the resource for the world’s
people. Privatized oceans can not be countenanced. If
we have done nothing else here we have swept aside
the thought that any one sector, group or individual
had control or capacity to create a solution alone!
There is no doubt at all that like every other sector
of society, the future of farmers, loggers, miners and
fishers particularly, is intricately interconnected. None
of our lives can prosper without the involvement and
willing co-operation of all other sectors of society. in
a time of interdependency for fiercely independent
people, adjustment is difficult and painful and we
have seen much of that here today. I would like to
thank you for having progressed that torturous path
today through the influence of this forum.
On your behalf I thank all those who contributed
financially and in-kind in supporting this forum and
I thank each of you who have given so much the
substance of your many years and study related to the
fishery here today. We regret that on such an occasion
that every voice outside this hall can not be heard, but
I think everyone here can agree that we owe a great
debt of gratitude to everyone who has spoken here
and given generously of their ideas for solutions.
We also thank Watervision productions in
association with Great North Releasing, BC Film and
The CanWest Global System with the participation
of Telefilm Canada for allowing us to be the first to
view A Last Wild Salmon, a magnificent film featuring
a run of salmon that has become extinct. A Last Wild
Salmon has fueled our commitment and reminded us
graphically of the thousands of BC streams in which
unique species once spawned that are today extinct
forever and that will now never sustain our children’s
children.
I would also like to thank Dr. Patricia Gallaugher
and her associate Ann Cowan and their magnificent
team at the Simon Fraser University Centre of
Continuing Studies, and the Faculty of Science, for
their painstaking work and inspired guidance in
creating today’s forum. The briefing book alone
warrants permanent display in the Archives of
fisheries studies in this province.
Finally thanks go to each one of you here today for
all the disciplined and productive means in which you
have approached this day of thought and contention.
There is never enough time, however, I don’t really
think that this day ends anything at all, it is in a very
real sense the start of a new era in Pacific fisheries and
will be remembered and continued in other places at
other times by some of the same people and by the
many others who follow.
No, we are not perfect yet, but we have done the
work today of assuring that if we continue the struggle
to change, we will be among those who may begin to
see ourselves as having been good ancestors.
Dr. Bob Brown
First I’d like to thank all of you for coming. We really
appreciate the interest and the sincere concern that all
of you share with us about our fish stock resources 83
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in the province. This is one of the very, very, few
times in human history, that we’ve been able to get
people together to face a very, very complex issue,
and to set aside their own personal interests. I don’t
think that there is a single person in this room that
doesn’t agree that we have made a step forward in
that regard. Now, Iona has thanked almost everyone
who has had a major role in this, but I would like to
take the opportunity to thank her. I think all of you
would agree with me, that she’s done an absolutely
extraordinary job today, in keeping this thing on track,
and keeping it moving. So Iona, thanks very much
indeed.
84
Getting the Missing Fish Story Straight
speakers’ biographies
Roy Alexander (President, Pacific Seafood Council)
has worked at trolling for salmon on the west coast
of Vancouver Island, as a fish buying agent, and
as designer and manager of the Central Native
Fishermen’s Co-op in Ucluelet. He now operates his
own plants in Ucluelet, Zeballos and Beaver Cove
and is a representative on both the Commercial
Fishing Industry Council and the southern panel of
the Pacific Salmon Commission. He has been active
as a fisheries liaison to the regional districts, and as
a director on the Licence Committee of a local tribal
council. He has been a strong proponent of regional
input into fisheries management policy, and continues
to promote the concept of a “Fishing Villages
Advisory Committee” to allow native and non-native
community input into fisheries management and
policy decisions.
Lee Alverson (Professor of Fisheries, University of
Washington; Past Chairman, Advisory Committee
on Marine Resources Research of the United Nations
Food and Agriculture Organization; Member, Fraser
River Sockeye Public Review Board) is a highly
regarded fisheries specialist who has served as an
advisor to the US and Canadian government on
numerous fisheries related issues and as commissioner
for the US Section of the International North Pacific
Fisheries Commission, chief of staff for the US
delegation to the U.S./Canada Salmon Interception
Negotiations and special advisor to the Minister of
Fisheries and Oceans in Canada. He is the author or
co-author of over 100 scientific and technical articles
relating to fisheries management and issues.
Charles Bellis (fisher from Masset) has been the
Director of the Council of Haida Nations for many
years and is an active participant in coastal fisheries
and environmental management issues.
Dennis Brown (Secretary Treasurer of the United
Fishermen and Allied Workers Union) is a third
generation member of the fishing industry of British
Columbia. He studied at the University of British
Columbia and from 1980–1993 worked as an officer
of the UFAWU. He has served as commissioner
on the Pacific Salmon Commission, co-chairman
of the Commercial Fishing Industry Council, and
representative for UFAWU on the Canada–U.S.A.
Treaty Negotiations Advisory Committee.
Richard Carson (Area Manager, Fraser River
Division, Pacific Region, Department of Fisheries
and Oceans) received a BSc from the University of
British Columbia, and has worked for the Department
of Fisheries and Oceans since 1972. He has worked
for the Fisheries Inspection Branch, the Commercial
Fisheries Licensing Division, and the Conservation
and Protection Division. In his present position he
provides management direction for all operational
programs in the Fraser River watershed including
indirect responsibility for Habitat Protection and Stock
Assessment and direct responsibility for Fisheries
Management and Conservation and Protection.
Alvin Dixon (Executive Director, Native Brotherhood
of BC and Chief Executive Officer, Native Fishing
Association) is of the Heiltsuk First Nations People
of Bella Bella. He has served as chairman and
commissioner of the International Pacific Fisheries
Commission, advisor to the Canada–USA Fish Treaty
Negotiations and is a former manager of the Central
Native Fishermen’s Co-operative. He also served as
conference minister for the United Church of Canada
from 1983–1992.
Fred Fortier (Chairman, Shuswap Nation Fisheries
Commission) is an elected band councillor for the
North Thompson Band and has participated on
various watershed committees and forums that relate
to the fisheries.
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85
Dr. Ehor Boyanowsky (Associate Professor, School of
Criminology, SFU; Past-President, Steelhead Society of
BC) currently serves as president of the Confederation
of Faculty Associations of BC. His interests include
human social behaviour, conformity and deviance,
and crimes against the environment. He is a Fellow of
the International Society of Research on Aggression
and has written many articles related to environmental
issues.
The Hon. Iona Victoria (Hardy) Campagnolo
(Chancellor, University of Northern BC) was elected
as a Member of Parliament in 1974 and immediately
named Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of
Indian Affairs and Northern Development. She was
the fifth woman in Canadian history to enter the
Federal Cabinet in 1976, where she held the portfolio
of Canada’s first Minister of State for Fitness and
Amateur Sport. In addition to her political activities,
she served for more than a decade as a fundraising
and public relations consultant for CUSO and has
worked internationally with OXFAM, INTERPARES
and the Inter-Church Committee for Human Rights.
Currently, Ms. Campagnolo serves as Vice-President
of the North/South Institute, Advisor to the Centre of
Sustainable Regional Development at the University
of Victoria, Trustee of the Lewis Perrinbam Award
for International Development, and Chancellor of the
University of Northern British Columbia. She will be
awarded an honourary doctorate from Simon Fraser
University in spring, 1995.
Dr. Parzival Copes (Professor Emeritus, founder and
former Head of the Institute of Fisheries Analysis,
Simon Fraser University) served as the charter Head
of the Department of Economics and Commerce at
SFU, and was founding Director of both the Institute
of Fisheries Analysis and the Centre for Canadian
Studies. He has an international reputation as a
specialist in fisheries economics and management,
and in 1993 was awarded an honorary degree by the
University of Tromso in Norway for his pioneering
contributions to fisheries economics. Dr. Copes has
extensive experience as a consultant to government
agencies and international organizations. He is
principal contractor and author of a report on Fraser
River Aboriginal fisheries for the Royal Commission
on Aboriginal Peoples.
The Honourable John Fraser (Chairman, Fraser
River Sockeye Public Review Board and Canada’s
Ambassador for the Environment) is respected for
his work as Minister of the Environment, Minister
of Fisheries and Oceans, his many achievements
as Speaker of the House of Commons, and for his
longstanding involvement in fisheries, forestry and
the environment. As Canada’s Ambassador for the
Environment, Mr. Fraser advises the Government on
key issues on the international environmental agenda,
provides leadership in defending and promoting
Canada’s interests in the followup to the 1992 UN
conference on Environment and Development,
and co-ordinates the implementation of Canada’s
international commitments at home and abroad.
Mr. Fraser is associated with a number of outdoor/
environmental organizations including the Canadian
Wildlife Foundation, the World Wildlife Fund, the BC
Wildlife Federation and the Steelhead Society of B.C.
Richard Gregory (Chairman, Fisheries Council of BC
and Senior Vice-President, BC Packers Ltd.) is a third
generation member of the British Columbia fishing
industry. Following in the footsteps of his father and
grandfather, he fished for 10 years. Since then, he has
worked for BC Packers for 25 years, spending time in
Maritime, Newfoundland and BC plants.
Dr. Richard L. Haedrich (Professor of Biology;
former Director, Marine Sciences Centre and the
Newfoundland Institute of Cold Ocean Science,
Memorial University) is a biological oceanographer
and ichthyologist with broad research experience in
the systematics and biology of fish. In collaboration
with his students, his work of late has turned to the
fisheries, both commercial marine and, in freshwater,
the recreational salmonid fishery. Author of over
100 publications, he is one of the team members
on Memorial University’s Tri-council Eco-Research
project “Sustainability in a Changing Cold Ocean
coastal Environment.”
Wayne Harling (Director, BC Wildlife Federation and
Chairman, BC Wildlife Federation Saltwater Fisheries
Committee) was a research technician at the Pacific
Biological Station in Nanaimo for 35 years with
experience working with salmon, groundfish and
shellfish species. He is an avid saltwater angler.
Dr. Michael Healey (Director, Westwater Research
86
Getting the Missing Fish Story Straight
Centre, University of British Columbia) is an expert on
the biology and ecology of Pacific salmon. He worked
as a research scientist for the Department of Fisheries
and Oceans from 1970–1990 where he led a number
of projects on freshwater and marine fisheries. He is
author or co-author of numerous articles on Pacific
salmon.
Dr. Mike Henderson (Research Scientist, Head, Stock
Assessment Division, Department of Fisheries and
Oceans) obtained his PhD from the University of
British Columbia. His research focuses on marine
growth and the survival of salmon. Formerly he
worked for the Fisheries Research Branch of the
Ontario government, and has worked for the
Department of Fisheries and Oceans since 1985. He
has participated in the Pearse/Larkin review of Pacific
salmon (1992) and the Fraser Sockeye Review (1994).
He is the author and co-author of a number articles on
Pacific salmon resources.
Ronald MacLeod (Research Associate, Fisheries
Centre, University of British Columbia) began his
career with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans
in 1956. He designed and implemented the Salmonid
Enhancement Program and served as DirectorGeneral of Fisheries Operations for the Pacific and
Freshwater Fisheries. His responsibilities in Ottawa
included aboriginal affairs, fisheries regulatory
systems and processes, national enforcement
standards and training, and Ministerial relations.
He was the Ministry’s principal liaison with First
Nation organizations and other federal departments
with regard to fisheries-based economic and social
development. He coordinated the Department of
Fisheries and Oceans’ support for the creation of
the Northern Native Fishing Corporation (BC) and
later, the Native Fishing Association (BC) and was
co-founder of the Native Fishermen’s Training and
Development Society.
Dr. Craig Orr (Executive Director, Steelhead Society
of BC) holds a PhD (Simon Fraser University) in
behavioral ecology and has worked in Atlantic Canada
as an environmental consultant. An environmental
writer with approximately 150 articles to his credit,
Dr. Orr sits on the Treaty Negotiation Advisory
Committee (a federal-provincial committee), the Public
Advisory Board for the Habitat Conservation Fund,
the Sto:lo Fisheries Public Monitoring Board, and is a
founding member of the newly formed “Wild Salmon
Coalition.”
Dr. Peter H. Pearse (Professor of Forestry, University
of British Columbia; Special Advisor to the Minister
of Fisheries on Salmon Resource Management in the
Fraser River, 1992) is a specialist in natural resources
economics and policy at the University of British
Columbia. Dr. Pearse has conducted, as the sole
commissioner, two Royal Commissions of Inquiry on
resources policy—one on British Columbia’s forest
resources in the 1970s, and one on Canada’s Pacific
fisheries in the 1980s. He has also chaired two other
public inquiries on Canada’s natural resources,
on water, and on freshwater fisheries. A frequent
advisor to foreign governments and international
organizations on natural resources policy, he is a
member of the Executive Board of the Law of the Sea
Institute, the Board of Directors of the World Wildlife
Fund Canada, and the external advisory committee of
the Centre for Sustainable Regional and Development
at the University of Victoria.
Dr. Randall M. Peterman (Professor, School of
Resource and Environmental Management, Simon
Fraser University) is a a population ecologist
whose research interests include the assessment
of environmental risks and the design of research
and monitoring programs. He has worked on the
design of resource management actions as large-scale
experiments to permit effective evaluation of those
actions and on simulation modelling of ecological
systems to evaluate proposed management schemes.
Dr. Peterman received the 1990 J.C. Stevenson Award
for his research. He and his graduate students have
also received awards from the American Fisheries
Society and the American Institute of Fishery Research
Biologists for their research in fisheries management.
He was a member of the editorial board of the
Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences from
1987–1991 and has served on several professional
committees including chairing an external review
panel for the US National Marine Fisheries Service.
Dr. Jake Rice (Chair, Pacific Stock Assessment
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87
Review Committee) specializes in multispecies
assessment methods, ecosystem effects of fishing
and management strategies. He has served as a senior
scientist with the DFO on both the east and west
coasts.
Dr. Rick Routledge (Professor of Mathematics and
Statistics, Simon Fraser University and Member
of the Fraser River Sockeye Public Review Board)
is a biostatistician who specializes in problems
which arise in renewable resource management and
population biology. As part of his university research,
Dr. Routledge is currently working on methods of
estimating fish abundance through the use of markrecapture techniques employed in fisheries research.
He is a member of the International Statistical Institute
and a director on the board of the Statistical Society of
Canada.
Ian Todd (Executive Secretary, Pacific Salmon
Commission) obtained a BA and MSc from the
University of British Columbia. He has worked as a
fisheries biologist for the Department of Fisheries and
Oceans, general manager for Trans-Pacific Fish Ltd.
and has served as executive secretary of the P.SC since
1986.
Ian Waddell (Chair, Fraser Basin Management
88
program; Member of Parliament, 1979–1993) received
a law degree from the University of Toronto, and
later a Master’s degree in International Law from the
London School of Economics. Mr. Waddell was the
head of the Vancouver Community Legal Assistance
Society, the first storefront law program in Canada.
In addition, Mr. Waddell has served as counsel to
the historic Berger Inquiry into the Mackenzie Valley
Pipeline, where he organized public meetings and
administered the commission. Mr. Waddell also
organized the first Unified Family Court in BC and
was a Member of Parliament from 1979 to 1993.
He served as the New Democratic Party’s justice,
communications, arts and culture, energy and
economic development critic, throughout his elected
terms. In addition, he served on the Environment
Committee of the House of Commons and was active
in constitutional matters especially in aboriginal
issues.
Peter Weber (Geography Department, University
of California at Berkeley) is the author of several
publications and numerous articles on marine
conservation and the global fishing crisis. He has
worked for the National Audubon Society and
Worldwatch Institute, and is currently pursuing a
PhD in geography at the University of California at
Berkeley. Mr. Weber is the author of Net Loss: Fish,
Jobs and the Marine Environment, and Abandoned Seas:
Reversing the Decline of the Oceans.
Getting the Missing Fish Story Straight
blank page
(Inside back cover)
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Addenda
Addenda
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Subsequent to the printing of this briefing
Subsequent to the printing of this briefing
book, we received additional funding
book, we received additional funding
for this forum from the Ministry of
for this forum from the Ministry of
Environment, Lands and Parks,
Environment, Lands and Parks,
Government of British Columbia.
Government of British Columbia.
ADDITIONAL PANELIST
ADDITIONAL PANELIST
Charles Bellus, fisher from Masset,
Charles Bellus, fisher from Masset,
has been the Director of the Council of
has been the Director of the Council of
Haida Nations for many years and is an
Haida Nations for many years and is an
active participant in coastal fisheries and
active participant in coastal fisheries and
environmental management issues.
environmental management issues.