IT SHOULD BE NOTED THAT THEY WANT TO STOP ALL HOOK AND LINE FISHERIES, THAT INCLUDES BOTTOM FISH TOO
Ugg i hate to say this but Watershed Watch Salmon Society and the wild salmon defender alliance vigorously apposes salmon farms but seems to be on recreational and commercial fishermen side. Its odd because Alexandra Morton started her career listening to whales so you would think she would be more involved in saving them but i guess shes just too pissed off that salmon farms used sound devices that chased the whales off where she lives in the broughton archipelago.
Maybe it helps that Alexandra Morton nabour was a commercial troller and she worked on it.
https://www.watershed-watch.org/get-involved/
These groups should be our public enemy number 1 as they have declared war on recreational fishermen.
On behalf of David Suzuki Foundation, Georgia Strait Alliance, Natural Resources Defense
Council, Raincoast Conservation Foundation and World Wildlife Fund Canada
(the “Petitioners”)
https://www.nrdc.org/sites/default/files/petition-for-srkw-emergency-order_2018-01-30.pdf
i. Establish protected Southern Resident feeding refuges in priority feeding areas (Figure 5) to enable Southern Residents to forage without competition, interference, noise or disturbance from recreational and commercial salmon fishing, between May 1 – November 30.
This measure is intended to prevent adverse impacts from salmon fishing within core Southern Resident feeding areas. These proposed Southern Resident feeding refuges lie within habitat identified as Southern Resident critical habitat under SARA or proposed as resident killer whale critical habitat by DFO. These areas include the Southwestern shoreline of Vancouver Island through Juan de Fuca, extending westward to Pachena Bay; Boundary Pass to southwest North Pender Island and to East Point on Saturna Island; and approaches to the Fraser River (Figure 5). (In the U.S., key foraging areas established for Southern Residents reflect the work of Ashe et al. (2010), who identified priority feeding areas near southwest San Juan Island, Salmon Bank and Stewart Island, and suggested consideration of a whale protection zone within these feeding areas near southwest San Juan Island.)
Figure 5. Proposed Southern Resident feeding refuges. Feeding refuges are recommended to enable Southern Residents to forage without competition, noise and disturbance from recreational fishing and whale watching activities between May 1-November 30. Feeding refuges in Canada should include the Southwestern shore of Vancouver Island, Boundary Pass to East Point on Saturna Island, southwest side of North Pender Island, and approaches to the Fraser River. (See Appendix C for enlarged map.)
DFO’s science-based review identified the high priority need to establish greater access for Southern Residents to Chinook salmon within key foraging habitats.157 It identified measures for greater access to prey through reduced competition from fishers, and reductions in physical and acoustic disturbance from vessels. The review states that areas should be identified and protected for periods of time to provide improved access to Chinook salmon by Southern Residents.
DFO may deem it preferable to extend the restrictions in the refuges to prohibit not only salmon fishing but all hook and line fisheries, in order to support enforcement and to increase confidence that disturbance is adequately reduced.
Southern Residents occur within the Salish Sea year-round, but more frequently between the late spring to fall when they target Chinook salmon migrating as spring, summer and fall aggregates to the Fraser River, Georgia Strait, Puget Sound, and other Salish Sea rivers.158
This measure should apply until there is evidence that it is not needed, i.e. until the health of Southern Residents (as determined by photogrammetry, pregnancies, hormones, vital rates or other proxies) indicates a high likelihood that Southern Residents are recovering. To determine whether this criterion is met, a reviews of this management initiative should be conducted every five years.
At a Southern Resident prey workshop organized by DFO in 2017, scientists suggested there were likely “thresholds” of Chinook abundance that would promote Southern Resident recovery. It was suggested that tools such as photogrammetry, pregnancies, vital rates or other measures of Southern Resident health could be employed as proxies to determine whether Southern Residents are recovering. Additional research and science based management advice are required to identify and calibrate such proxies and indices, and assess the effectiveness of foraging area closures, and incorporate these findings into recovery measures. Because Southern Resident recovery is expected to take longer than one generation (25 years), reviews of the recommended management measures are unlikely to confirm the likelihood of recovery if conducted more frequently than once every five years. These periodic reviews can also be used to assess the efficacy of the specific feeding refuge locations and adapt them if necessary.