Wow, I need a smoke. That was almost as good as sex. Guess we are now back to let's build the best science-based MSE model as possible, and let that determine if there is or is not a harvest....and if there is a harvest, set it at sustainable levels.
It does not seem to be happening. DFO is not doing what is required. This pretty much sums it uo from Times Columnist
In response to a formal information request for research reports regarding the relationship between Pacific herring (that spawn in the Strait of Georgia), chinook salmon and the southern resident killer whales, the federal government responded to Pacific Wild researchers on Sept. 30:
“Please note that the Fisheries Management branch and Science branch of our Pacific region [sic] advised us that they will be providing a Nil response … We have been advised that there is no other research that DFO has done regarding the impacts the commercial herring fishery has on southern resident killer whales.”
First, it’s mind-boggling that industry representatives want to debate the exact magnitude of herring declines — the point is that herring populations are collapsing, potentially to the detriment of chinook salmon and orcas. Adopting a precautionary principle and correcting any population decline is immediately needed.
Second, it is astounding that the federal government, faced with two struggling species, hasn’t even done any research on the impacts of industrial fishing to population numbers and survival rates of chinook and orcas.
The government needs to do its homework, industry needs to take a step back and we need to look for ways to financially assist our fishers in this transitionary period. Both federal and provincial governments are investing millions of dollars in salmon and whale recovery programs, and we believe the first logical step should be to protect their main food supply — Pacific herring.
Ian McAllister is the executive director of Pacific Wild. Bryce Casavant is a former B.C. conservation officer and is currently the conservation policy analyst at Pacific Wild. And to give you some perspective here is what was being done in the early part of the last century. We are going backwards.
“My grandparents were telling me, and my parents were saying, that some of the creeks here were just full of sockeye,” he says. “You could practically walk across the creeks, they were so full of sockeye and other species.”
Gilbert, the Stanford fish biologist, died in 1928. But the years of cutting-edge monitoring in those notebooks had him recommending conservation measures to save the sockeye even then. It didn’t work. And now the dearth of the monitoring he so exactingly put in place draws into question whether it’s even possible to correct a century of declines.
“There were warning signs there almost from the beginning, and we didn’t heed them,” Price says. “That blows me away.”