Maintain Priority Access to Chinook and Coho for the Canadian Public in a New Salmon Allocation Policy. Send Your Letter to DFO!
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G Gordon
Crew Member
Surprised nobody posted anything about the potential snap decision to turn area 23 into 1 chinook fish per day for the entire month of July to save an estimated grant total 15 (yes that is not a typo) upper fraser 5-2 chinook, at the request of certain FN bands so that their in-river fishing opportunities will not be prejudiced. There was an email that went around the area 23 SFAB mailing list requesting submissions in less than 2 business days to meet the extremelty short notice DFO deadline for feedback. I just heard about it on the weekend.
ABSOLUTE CROCK OF SH-T!
How is this stuff not more publicaly available to the masses? Decisions like this being made basically in secret behind closed doors. Unbelievable.
To the area 23 people - what the hell is being done to fight this and how is DFO able to pull something like this????
ABSOLUTE CROCK OF SH-T!
How is this stuff not more publicaly available to the masses? Decisions like this being made basically in secret behind closed doors. Unbelievable.
To the area 23 people - what the hell is being done to fight this and how is DFO able to pull something like this????
wildmanyeah
Crew Member
Why bring it public and have people panicking and changing their reservation for something that may not even happen.
Where would one find anything official on this?
Gee I dunno … maybe so they can have some input and/or berate the morons at DFO out of making an abomination of a decision?
This should be posted on every social media page, marina and tackle shop to get ACTUAL public input and not just a few chosen people involved in the SFAB process, which frankly, most people aren’t.
Nowhere unless you were one of the chosen few who got the email
Care to share the email on here?
Derby
Crew Member
Perhaps pm myself or other sfac chairs and ask to be at on area sfac123/23 mail list.
The SFAB has had 3 different calls deal with with the S52 stuff and if it was to go thru there would be impacts from123/23 all the way to area 19.
searun
Well-Known Member
Maybe a little background to help everyone understand how this came about would help. But before I provide the background, this is a good example of why folks should be involved (attending and getting your email address onto a local Sport Fish Advisory Committee (SFAC). People who participate and are members of a local SFAC will get regular updates on important issues from their local SFAC Chair. So a plug here to encourage people to join your local SFAC.
So how this came about, is in early March the DFO South Coast Salmon Team approached the SFAB Salmon Committee to organize a meeting to review fishery issues and proposals - they invited all the local SFAC Chairs to participate. At that meeting, the Salmon Team raised the issue of floating proposals for a number of Areas (not just Area 23 - in fact Are 23/123 all the way around South VI into Area 29 Fraser approaches) - all were designed to pass thru about 500 Fraser 5-2 Chinook to the Fraser River so that local FN's could increase their in-river fishery Exploitation Rate (ER) to 50% of the total ER for all fisheries (recreational, commercial, FN's).
To achieve the goal of passing thru these fish, DFO examined possible regulations that lowered the recreational ER and identified those Areas where there was enough savings realized to accomplish the goal (500 fish). So a few from this Area, few from that Area and so on. They looked to find options that made sense while also trying to identify regulations that had lower impact to recreational fishing opportunities.
A lot of feedback was provided at that first meeting, and some of the issues raised needed further investigation from the Salmon Team. Another meeting was scheduled for a few weeks later, and finally in late March at the SFAB Conference Board Meeting the Salmon Team presented their final thoughts on each of the proposals (NOTE - no decision has been reached - the Minister will have to sign off on the IFMP and any proposals)
The Area 23 Co-Chairs following the CB meeting requested the data files for all the options DFO examined so they could conduct a further review. This review was completed, and a response back to the DFO Salmon Team was made a few days prior to the deadline for SFAB and other stakeholders to provide formal input to the Salmon IFMP (Friday April 10). We were asked if it was our desire to include the SFAC response as formal input to the IFMP....which we did request with one condition.
That condition was to allow the SFAC Chair time over the weekend (April 11 & 12) to send the draft response out to SFAC members seeking their review, endorsement and opportunity to provide advice on their additional comments to be included in an updated response letter. We were afforded additional time to validate member support/input but had to submit by Monday Aprile 13. This was completed per the agreement.
So in fairness to DFO, they made every reasonable accommodation to the local SFAC to reach out to members to validate the response letter input to the Salmon IFMP.
Sorry for the longwinded note, but I think it will help people understand the timelines, challenges in securing local SFAC input and validation - and also challenges for DFO...and how we were accommodated.
Final word - strongly encourage everyone to join your local SFAC - you can stay informed about key issues and have your input hear and advanced through the SFAB process.....and, important to note that the SFAB is the Minister of Fisheries official advisory process.
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wildmanyeah
Crew Member
Why not just send them 500 fish from a stock that’s not at risk and be done with it. Also they could just give them like 10 thousand more sockeye instead and not make a dent in the forecasted sockeye return.
Here’s the real reason, is they need to pass 52s to have a commercial FN sockeye fishery. The summer sockeye run is forecasted to be the bigger run portion, not lates as they were overfish 4 years ago.
The summer run sockeye have similar timing to the 5-2s that if I recall are all past the month of the Fraser by the third week of August.
So if you want to have an in river Gilnet fishery say August 15th for summer run sockeye and not over exploit the chinook need to get more chinook to the river.
Other wise you’re looking at not opening sockeye till September.
But all rational thinking has left building.
Here’s the real reason, is they need to pass 52s to have a commercial FN sockeye fishery. The summer sockeye run is forecasted to be the bigger run portion, not lates as they were overfish 4 years ago.
The summer run sockeye have similar timing to the 5-2s that if I recall are all past the month of the Fraser by the third week of August.
So if you want to have an in river Gilnet fishery say August 15th for summer run sockeye and not over exploit the chinook need to get more chinook to the river.
Other wise you’re looking at not opening sockeye till September.
But all rational thinking has left building.
wildmanyeah
Crew Member
It’s not about the chinook it’s about the hundreds of thousands of sockeye
ryanonthevedder
Well-Known Member
I've seen the sockeye economy and the good it can bring.
How many seals and sealions would have to go to save those 500 fish?
If only there were a group of people who could go out and whack a few of them outside of our neutered system.
How many seals and sealions would have to go to save those 500 fish?
If only there were a group of people who could go out and whack a few of them outside of our neutered system.
I was sent the email string from someone who received the original email string (Note: I did not as I am not part of the SFAB mailing list). I can see that the meat of the issue has now been delved into so no point in including the email string.
Also, today I was sent the very well written response that the local SFAB put together. Very impressive work in my opinion. My gripe is not with Searun or Dereby for their work in dealing with all this (and I know its a ton of work as I used to be involved in it in area 27/127), it’s with the fact that this potentially devastating decision is being made basically with no widespread input. Once this type of decision is made do you really think we are ever going back to 2/day even if the science supports it? Not bloody likely guys!
We need to have 100 responses or more on an issue this big going to DFO! Not 1 email in an internally regulated process. They need to know the public is MAD.
How can the general public help put on pressure if they don’t even know WTF is going on???
I feel like this is similar to how we wound up with that huge indigenous closed area up in Loughbourgh inlet where nobody seems to be able to explain how it happened. Like WTF happened there, a few pages back someone said it would be brought to the attention of the local area chair or whatnot. Was the SFAB not part of that process from the get go, or if it was, why was that issue not given widespread publicity? We now have a race based closed area. Awesome. What a great precedent to set for elsewhere on the coast!
The public is getting railroaded behind closed doors. I know our reps work hard for us, but sh~t like this NEEDS to BLOW UP in public the embarrass the politicians into changing course. START LEAKING THINGS TO SOCIAL MEDIA AND THE PRESS TO GENERATE UPROAR SO PEOPLE PHONE THEIR MP! We FINALLY are getting some attention due to the SAP review, we need to stay in the spotlight!
We all know fisheries management in this country is 75% politics and 25% science/economics. We need to start playing politics WAY better. The science and economics are on our side nearly every time, yet we just rack up loss after loss as our access to the resource shifts to other sectors.
Once DFO takes your fish away and gives them to you know who, THEY ARE NOT COMING BACK!
Finally, to the SFAB guys. I totally respect what you do. When I was in my 20's I had time and was involved (not in area 23). However, you guys need to understand that not everyone has time to be part of the SFAB process. I have 3 kids, 2 dogs, and a business that requires 60+ hours per week of work. I simply no longer have time to meaningfully participate. But I am a hardcore angler, and I know lots of others guys in their 30's to 50's, that feel similarly to me, and if we are made aware that our rights our going to get stripped we can make a little bit of time to send an email or letter or two to make our voices heard, akin to the SAP review process wherein the broader public got involved and it looks like we are FINALLY making a bit of headway because we got the spotlight (and the official opposition) on the issue. The point I'm trying to make is that broader public should be used when there is a serious issue to help get the results that we all want!
Hi Derby, further to your post a while back do you know what the back story on how this "idigenous closed area" came about, or has the area 13 chair provided any information?
Thanks, I think quite a few people are interested to know how this rather scary precedent was set. This seems like the kind of thing that could be set out as a "trial balloon" in a "remote area noone cares about" (which isn't true at all, that's a great area for Chinook fishing amongst other things) and then once in place, used as precedent all up and down the coast to the obvious extreme detriment to the public.
If the SFAB was sidelined in this process, or if not, why it was not more widely publicized, would be the major questions.
ryanonthevedder
Well-Known Member
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