Angling opportunities will disappear if catch monitoring doesn't improve
By Neil Cameron, Campbell River Courier-Islander November 21, 2012
A halibut divided cannot swim. And without a province-wide buy-in to catch monitoring, the Sport Fishing Institute of British Columbia cannot properly fight to allow its members more access to a common property resource that the Department of Fisheries and Oceans gave to the commercial fleet.
That was the message SFI Executive Director Owen Bird gave as part of a meet and greet with Campbell River sports fishers in Campbell River last Wednesday.
About 30 concerned anglers attended the meeting and the main topic of conversation was the halibut allocation in which 85 per cent of the Total Allowable Catch is given to the commercial sector and 15 per cent to the sports sector. The disparity, one that forced the sports industry on the west coast to close its halibut season early the last two years, did not sit lightly with any in the room.
Bird said SFI is continuing to petition DFO for a more equitable split, but it first needs better numbers as to what the sport sector actually catches per year. Usually that information is collected in what is called a creel survey, in which various dock-side interviews capture such things as effort and species landed.
Bird said while the Campbell River area is a model for creel survey results, other more remote parts of the province make it difficult to gather that kind of information. And, not only that, some anglers refuse to give catch record information as part of their protest for what they see as the federal government handing over a common property resource to private interests.
That, said Bird, is understandable but it doesn't help move the negotiations along.
Those who don't or won't report halibut catch information have "a rationale," said Bird, but, "I'm not saying it's an appropriate or right rationale. There are people who are very disheartened, and displeased with fisheries and how they go about things or how they perceive fisheries go about things, and that's how they choose to behave and react.
"The fact is that we are a significant participant in the fisheries and we need to be able to, with a straight face, say this is what we're up to, this is what we're doing," said Bird, adding that in some areas they have great data, but not so in others. And in those other areas it's causing real problems.
"In particular areas it's a big problem, it's going to really damage opportunities, and fisheries is sort of poised and saying look we don't have confidence in the estimates we're making now so let's play it safe - and you can't blame them for that approach - let's play it safe and use the precautionary principle and your's going to see opportunities for angling disappear and you all know that once you take them away it's awfully hard to get them back."
The lack of some "catch monitoring, more and more, is having a pretty significant effect on our ability to negotiate, to talk, to defend against those in other sectors or even in the government that seem to believe the recreational sector is unchecked."
The problem is that the commercial fleet, with on board cameras and other reporting criteria, provides DFO with pretty accurate catch records. And since there are only about 430 licences for halibut, with a lot of the quota holders leasing them out and not even fishing, keeping track is much easier than trying to keep track of about 230,000 sports fisherman spread all along the coast.
Last year regulations were changed by DFO, in conjunction with the angling community and mostly the Sport Fishing Advisory Board of BC, to change the halibut possession limit to two fish, but one of which can't be larger than 83 cm.
That somewhat controversial regulation did have objectors, but it was credited by Bird as one of the reasons the 2012 halibut season ended on Sept. 9 instead of early July.
Bird also cautioned that negotiating with DFO over the halibut issue is a dangerous one because it could conceivably lead to the same type of 'quota' system for salmon and other species. He said that is especially so with the 'peace' (or maybe better called 'piece') offering DFO offered to sport fishers in that they could lease quota from the commercial sector.
"We have to be really careful about not buying into this whole business of quota for the recreational sector, we don't want to step off that curb unless we're absolutely forced to and there's nothing else to do because once we do that for halibut, then so too go salmon and on it goes," he said.
"It's a really slippery slope. There has to be some acknowledgement that Fisheries is like a train and they've left the station and they're all jazzed up about quota management."
When DFO increased the allocation from the sports sector from 12 to 15 per cent after relentless pressure, the commercial sector filed for a judicial review because it believed the extra three per cent was "theirs" and they wanted to be compensated for it.
And while the catch monitoring by sports fishers isn't perfect, said Bird, it isn't the vacuum that the commercial sector would have the government believe.
"No our sector is not perfect by a long shot in regards to catch monitoring but we've taken great strides, the lodge operations provide almost a census of information. For the halibut management association to claim that the recreational fisheries is unchecked and totally out of control and is not doing catch monitoring is patently untrue, it's totally false," he said.
Former Campbell River Mayor Charlie Cornfield was in attendance and he said that not only was he not in favor privatizing a common property resource, but that the creel survey information the SFI needs should be gathered and provided by DFO, not the other way around.
"I don't support anything that has to do with privatizing what is rightfully ours," said Cornfield.
"About your analogy of the train, that says it's already left the tracks. I never bought a ticket on that damn train, but I'm riding it so I want it to be as comfortable as possible and I want to get off as soon as I can.
"Providing this kind of creel data isn't the sports fisher's job, it's the government's job. That's what they get paid to do and it's obviously important in their decision making so forcing someone else to gather and provide that information is simply wrong."
© Copyright (c) Postmedia News
