TL: BC Salmon Fishery Crisis SO: Catherine Stewart, Greenpeace Canada DT: October 1995 Keywords: oceans fisheries fish salmon bc canada stocks quotas governments policy / -------------------- *********************** THE B.C. SALMON FISHERY Crisis in the making *************** by Catherine Stewart Greenpeace Canada Fisheries campaign The west coast fish crisis has been a hot topic the last couple of summers. There isn't much that is simple or straightforward about the state of west coast salmon fisheries and the role of government, industry and interest sectors. The state of some stocks is certainly clear - it's disastrous. But the public aren't quite sure which, if any, salmon are in crisis, or which "side" in the fight is right. Or if anyone is on the side of the fish. The one thing that is clear is that everyone harvesting fish has an answer and knows, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that their answer is the only one that's correct. THE PROBLEMS In the wake of 1994's "missing fish" crisis, it became increasing clear that the problems fall into three basic categories: dead fish, missing fish and paper fish. DEAD FISH Dead fish were numerous in 1994. DFO's technical report on their findings into the sockeye shortfall estimated some 466,000 salmon fell victim to the hottest water temperatures ever recorded in the main stem Fraser. There are a lot of reasons why fish are in hot water, and both levels of government are failing to do much about any of them. CLIMATE CHANGE At the federal level, the government still doesn't grasp the concept of the interconnectedness of ecosystems. Chretien tells Tobin to go fix the west coast fish crisis, but Canada consistently fails to live up to it's international obligations under the climate change treaty. We are not reducing carbon dioxide levels at the rate promised. Federal policy and ongoing subsidies to the fossil fuel industry are prime movers behind the warming river and the changing ocean climate. This year's pathetic return of Fraser sockeye shocked DFO and the scientists of the Pacific Salmon Commission (PSC). The PSC began the year with a long-range forecast of 21,000,000 returning from the North Pacific in 1995. The downgrading to, at one point, an estimated 3.3. million left them scrambling for answers. The public line taken by DFO and Tobin was that El Nino did it. The warm ocean current brought southern mackerel into our waters and all those juvenile salmon got gobbled up. We did everything right, and this unforseen natural occurrence was not our fault. A handy explanation for a politician, but could there be other factors? How much has climate change affected the ocean's carrying capacity? Can the North Pacific still nurture the growing salmon? Are other factors at work as well? OZONE HOLES AND TOXINS The growing ozone hole leads to increasing ultra-violet radiation, which in turn may be impacting phytoplankton, the basis of the marine food chain. Exposure to toxins, particularly organonchlorines, may be hampering reproductive ability. There is certainly a growing body of evidence to show that chlorine compounds impact human ability to procreate. As Miranda Holmes of Georgia Strait Alliance put it, men are "shooting fifty-percent more blanks than your father". If humans can be so profoundly affected, what about the salmon who live in our waters? It is increasingly imperative that DFO increase research into the impacts of toxins on salmon, the level of loss of spawning streams due to siltation from clearcut logging and the health of ocean ecosystems to name a few. It is also essential, as it has been for so long now, for the province to implement source control of pollutants, halt destructive logging and stop paving over salmon streams. But even habitat destruction, profound as it is, cannot account for all the "missing" fish. MISSING FISH The hue and cry over the native, in-river commercial fishery still remains strong. The accusations that flew at Fraser's hearings led to some stronger enforcement measures at DFO. Most effort was focused on the Fraser River itself. DFO hired 15 new field enforcement staff. (You're forgiven if you thought there were more like 45 of them. Brian Tobin announced the same 15 people at least three times). They were joined by 22 seasonal staff, while helicopter and fixed-wing aircraft over- flights were beefed up by 30 percent this season. In a pre-season meeting with DFO enforcement, the Sto'lo, the Steelhead Society, Greenpeace and the Mennonite Central Committee were told that the Fraser River was probably the most closely watched and best-enforced fishery in the whole country. All this effort yielded some charges by September. DFO stopped 10,000 vehicles on the road from B.C. to Alberta and charged 20 people with fisheries violations. Eight individuals were charged in the lower Fraser and vehicles, boats and nets were seized. And the list goes on. OCEAN FISHERIES There were a couple of changes in the ocean fishery as well. Commercial seiners had to brail or dip net their catch out of the seine nets in the northern coast fishery. This was primarily a steelhead conserti ftFhrmn coast wide were encouraged to release coho alive if possible and seiners in Johnstone Strait and Juan de Fuca were forbidden to keep chinook, dead or alive. DFO hired observers to monitor the fishery and keep a running count of by-catch. Those measures sound good on paper, but other than the north coast order to brail, they didn't really amount to much. The much-touted observer programme observed a mere two to three percent of the seine sets in Juan de Fuca. Some fishermen disregarded the clear rules about chinook and kept their catch anyway. DFO laid charges against three individuals with a fourth charge pending. But it was too little, too late. There were no charges laid in the first seine fishery opening for illegally keeping chinook. As a result of DFO's failure to enforce regulations, their observer data show the numbers of endangered chinook illegally retained went way up during the second opening. SPORTS FISHING A MYSTERY And there is simply no telling what really transpires in the sports fishery. Creel checks, where DFO field staff conduct random checks of the fishermen's catch, are few and far between. The data on sports catches are unreliable at best, fiction at worst. The sports sector is targeting the stocks most at risk - the coho and chinook. In the face of huge conservation concerns, the number of boats and fishers keeps increasing year by year. DFO places no limits at all on the total number of sports licenses that can be issued in a given year, nor are there limits on the total harvest for the sports sector. Commercial and native fishers are given a specific allocation or total allowable catch and theoretically held to that limit. The sports fishers are held to a daily bag limit, but the yearly take for the sector is limited only by the declining number of fish. While there are still many individuals who enjoy the experience of fishing and are happy to bag one or two fish for the freezer, the sports industry is a whole different kettle of fish. Sonar and electric downriggers have made fishing about as sportsmanlike as shooting bears at the garbage dump. Visiting fishermen are guaranteed a catch, and if there are no chinook or coho to be found, endangered ling cod will serve just as well. Camps are set up for the summer, and portable canning operations churn away, processing the bag limit (or a lot more than the limit) after every day's "sport" catch. A huge portion of the sports sector is a full-tilt industry being regulated as though it were a few kids with a willow branch and a bent pin. It's no wonder fish are still going "missing". Or are they? PAPER FISH Perhaps our "guesstimates" as to the productivity and survival rate of salmon are getting increasingly inaccurate in the face of changing ocean and river conditions. Maybe we're trying to manage fishing effort based on fish that exist on paper, but not in the sea. A quick look at the Pacific Salmon Commission's estimates of returning Fraser sockeye for the past ten years shows that we have certainly been wrong before. Sometimes the experts under- estimate, sometimes estimates are far to large. Either way, relying on this "science" makes harvest management increasingly difficult. THE NUMBERS GAME In 1985, the long-term projection estimated a run size of nine million sockeye in the Fraser. The post-season count was almost fourteen million. In '86, we guessed 18 million and got just under 16. In '89 the guess was 10 million, the end result 18 million plus. The biggest miscalculation to date was 1994's prediction of a run of 29,600,000, downgraded to 19 million, with a preliminary final count of 16,522,000. 1995 could prove even worse for conservation. The PSC's long range forecast was for 21 million sockeye this year. The current estimate is down to a dangerously low 3.5 million. And that's just the shortfall in Fraser river sockeye. Chinook, coho and steelhead stocks in numerous rivers are on the verge of total collapse. SEARCHING FOR SOLUTIONS So what are the answers? How can we remedy the biological crisi without destroying jobs and communities? A few answers do seem clear. We must reduce and gradually eliminate large corporate concentration in the commercial fleet. A return to owner-operated small vessels, and fewer of them, would set us on a more sustainable path. Experience in the forest industry has proven that vertically-integrated conglomerates are not the best stewards of a fragile resource. We must adopt a real "risk-averse" strategy and stop fishing so close to the line. We're going to have to reduce the harvest rate - in all sectors - and put more fish on the spawning grounds. We have to embrace a precautionary approach to fishing. The framework for implementing this approach to fisheries management is outlined in the new United Nations treaty on Highly Migratory and Straddling Fish Stocks. Canada has enthusiastically embraced the treaty, partly because it will help to control high seas fishing without constraining fisheries inside our territorial waters. The rules only apply to stocks like cod and turbot that straddle the international 200 mile boundary. But the treaty can be used as a pressure point by the environmental movement to demand that the standards of conservation our government wants applied to high seas fishing nations should apply in our own waters as well. And finally - to find the solutions that are not just industry driven - we must force Brian Tobin and DFO and the fishing industry to open up the process. The communities that depend on fish and fishing, the bears, eagles and orcas who deserve a "quota" too, the environmentalists concerned about genetic diversity being eroded by hatchery production -- all have a role to play in determining the future of west coast salmon. Fisheries Minister Brian Tobin, (aka Captain Canada) in his final speech to the United Nations treaty session, acknowledged the role played by Greenpeace and other NGOs in obtaining what governments have deemed an excellent fisheries treaty. The treaty is at least better than it would have been without NGO pressure. However, the same Minister Tobin, on the same day in New York city, adamantly refused to open up the industry-only Round Table process this fall that will basically decide the direction of the west coast commercial fishery. Will the industry group, heavy with lobbyists for the corporate sector, decide on a future of locally-based, small scale fishermen and women taking salmon at a pace that will sustain communities and fish? Or will B.C. Packers, CanFishCo and Ocean Fisheries decide the future lies in "efficient", high tech seiners and push the restructuring in that direction? Either way, the federal Liberals and the industry have decided fish are an economic issue, not an environmental one. Adding insult to injury, Tobin has also decided to follow through on John Fraser's panel recommendation to create a "watchdog" conservation council by referring the council's future to the industry Round Table. The public's watchdog will likely end up being a german shepherd; with a big bark, ferocity towards outsiders and total loyalty to its industrial masters. Solutions are found in every sector - finding the right direction will be a balancing act. Communities, environmentalists and fishers must all be involved. For information on a few ideas that are circulating, order the Greenpeace reports: 1. A Precautionary Approach to Fishing, 2. It Can't Go On Forever (the crisis in global fishing) or 3. Individual Transferable Quotas - the Big Business Takeover of the Fishing Industry. The David Suzuki Foundation has recently released a new report called "Fisheries that Work", a review of solutions from around the world. And the T.Buck Suzuki Foundation (environmental arm of the United Fisheries and Allied Workers Union) has just re-printed Don Cruikshank's report, based on interviews with fishermen. All reports are sold on a cost recovery only basis from the organizations listed. GREENPEACE FISHERIES CAMPAIGN 1726 COMMERCIAL DRIVE VANCOUVER, B.C. V5N 2A3 PH: 604-253-7701 FX: 604-253-0114 E-MAIL: catherine.stewart@green2.greenpeace.org.