Sport anglers find shorter halibut season hard to swallow
MARK HUME
mhume@globeandmail.com
October 27, 2008
VANCOUVER -- When the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans suddenly announced last week that the sport fishing season for halibut was closing early, it sent a shudder along the West Coast.
With salmon stocks at historic lows, recreational anglers this year have increasingly turned their attention to halibut.
Guides and lodges especially have been counting on the bottom fish to get them through a poor salmon season, with many advertising their access to good halibut grounds.
But with two months left to go in the season, the DFO has announced fishing will be closed from Oct. 31 to Dec. 31. Guides will have to cancel any trips they have booked and lodges that are now selling next year's season at outdoor shows will have to explain to customers why this season has been cut short.
The Sport Fishing Institute of British Columbia was quick to condemn the government, noting that in 2003, Robert Thibault, who was then fisheries minister in the Liberal federal government, introduced a halibut allocation policy that promised no in-season closings.
That policy, subsequently adopted by the Conservative government, split the annual allowable catch between the commercial fleet (88 per cent) and the recreational fleet (12 per cent).
Mr. Thibault said the new sharing agreement would balance the interests of the two sectors, allow the DFO to better manage stocks and provide for greater certainty because "there will be no closure of the sport fishery in-season."
But that was then, and now, as of Friday, some 300,000 recreational licence holders will no longer be allowed to go out for halibut.
"This decision represents the complete failure of government's halibut allocation policy in that recreational anglers are being told to stay home while commercial fishers will continue to harvest halibut," said Rob Alcock, president of the Sport Fishing Institute.
Mr. Alcock described the DFO's halibut allocation policy as "flawed beyond repair" and said it is causing undue hardship to recreational anglers.
But Sue Farlinger, regional director of Fisheries Management for the DFO, said that while the sudden closing is regrettable, it shows the policy is doing just what it was designed to do: provide better protection for halibut and greater stability for fishing sectors in the long run.
Ms. Farlinger said the closing is necessary because sport fishermen have taken far more halibut than was anticipated at the start of the season.
With salmons stocks down, more anglers have been going after halibut. The result is that sport fishermen have caught 300,000 pounds more than the limit set in the total allowable catch.
At the start of the season, the TAC for sport anglers was set at just over one million pounds. Through a one-season arrangement, the DFO then awarded an additional 150,000 pounds to the sport fleet, by in effect leasing allocation from the commercial TAC.
But even that bumped-up share wasn't enough, as sport anglers have now caught 1.45 million pounds of halibut.
The Sport Fishing Institute estimates that if recreational anglers were allowed to keep fishing they would catch only about 10,000 pounds of halibut over the next two months, less than what the commercial fleet took in a 24-hour period last week.
So shutting the sport fishery makes no sense from a conservation standpoint, the institute argues.
But it's more complicated than that. Among the things the government has to consider is what federal officials report when they sit down to a joint Canada-U.S. panel that manages halibut stocks.
Because halibut range across B.C.'s borders with both Alaska and Washington, the fishery is managed co-operatively, with TACs set in Canada and the United States each season for sport and commercial sectors.
Each country expects the other to stick to its TAC and is held accountable at the annual meetings.
"Well, if we were to say to anybody 'you're over quota but we're not going to close you because you're not going to take very much more,' you know, that's a bit of a difficult argument. We need to respond responsibly when the fishing plan is not functioning as it was intended to," Ms. Farlinger said.
She added that halibut stocks are in decline and that is added incentive to stay as close to the TAC as possible.
Given all that, it seems the DFO had little choice but to close the sport fishery for halibut.
And the worst may be yet to come for sport anglers. In the past, when the commercial fleet has exceeded its TAC, the DFO has deducted an equal amount from the catch allocated the next season.
That means next year sport anglers could see the one-million-pound TAC cut substantially. And if they keep fishing halibut with the same intensity as they did this year, the season could end much sooner.
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