OldBlackDog
Well-Known Member
Bob Hooton
7h ·Who’s Counting?
One of the fundamental components of fisheries management is knowledge of the number of spawners of the species and stock of interest. Let’s look at that in relation to Skeena steelhead.
Typically, the only figure everyone wants to pay attention to is the number of steelhead estimated to have entered the lower Skeena, as determined by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans’ test fishery at the location known as Tyee, slightly upstream from the commercial fishing boundary on the tidal reaches of the lower river. Estimates of how many steelhead may have been caught in commercial fisheries in the approaches to the Skeena all the way from Alaska to Tyee can be made. Much debate ensues about the quality of any numbers that do surface but at least there is attention paid to what they may be. Once steelhead reach Tyee, the fast forward interpretation is those fish represent the aggregate spawning population. No attention is paid to what the stock specific numbers might be or how they do or don’t match long established prescriptions for the number of spawners required to seed the available steelhead rearing habitat in individual streams. How many of the steelhead estimated to have passed Tyee are bound for the Kalum or the Zymoetz or the Bulkley/Morice or the Babine or the Kispiox or…….?
Apart from natural mortality attributable to predation and disease, we have the in-river fisheries prosecuted by First Nations and anglers. Anglers generally hold themselves to be a negligible contributor to any lethal or sub-lethal effects from catch and release practices. Mortality can be estimated, although not without debate about just what the percent should be. Sub-lethal mortality has never been considered. The question to be answered in that context is how much catching is too much catching before the reproductive behaviour and success is negatively impacted? First Nations are virtually exempt from any scrutiny or estimates of their impacts associated with gill nets so frequently operated in the mainstem Skeena, especially in the Terrace, Kitwanga and Kispiox through Hazelton reaches. The only numbers that ever surface from those operations are those self-reported by monitors that we’re told are on top of the fisheries that occur in their traditional territory. Ask for the numbers from any of them and see what, if anything, comes back. Try the federal and provincial fisheries management people as well to see if you can get a response.
It isn’t just the in-river gill nets that harvest a very significant but unknown number of steelhead all through the late summer and fall. We also have a great deal of angling conducted by First Nations individuals right through the dead of winter when all other recreational angling is forbidden. Some examples below serve to illustrate those practices.
Back to the original question – how many of the steelhead estimated to have passed DFO’s test fishery actually contribute to spawning populations? Do any of the people we pay to manage our fisheries have the slightest clue of what transpires upstream from Tyee? Do they even care? I challenge them to prove it.
(Sidebar – while returning from a grocery run this afternoon a news announcement involving DFO caught my ear. It was some fisheries officer taking a bow for having achieved a fine of $2500 for a paddle boarding woman who came too close to killer whales near Ucluelet. Bless me!)
