Giving More Back than You Take can Benefit All!

I am a firm believer of volunteering. Not that I don't have better things to do, but the satisfactory feeling of donating my time back to something that I have benefited from is all worth it. My volunteering started when I was still involved in mountain bike racing. From there, I stepped into the sportfishing community several years ago, but saw a lack of involvement by anglers.

Let's face it, fishing, like many other activities that involve the outdoor, poses some kind of negative impact. A catch and release fishery will increase mortality of a stock doesn't matter how careful you are. Everytime when you take a fish home, you're reducing the fish stock. The lead that slips off your line when it breaks can be harmful to the environment. The list goes on, and most likely any of us will never fish if we become so concerned about overexploiting and damaging supernatural BC's resource.

To combat these "wrongs" that you make is to give. Your giving starts by purchasing all the licenses that you need when fishing. The fund that accumulates from license fee is supporting the cost of enforcing, establishing and maintaining of our fisheries. That's not enough however, underfunding often leads to closure of smaller hatcheries and elimination of enforcement officers.

A few years back, I started volunteering at Seymour Salmonid Hatchery. This hatchery, located at the Lower Seymour Conservative Reserve in North Vancouver, is designed to reestablish the salmon stock that used to be found in this beautiful watershed many years ago. The amount of experience that I gained was priceless. The first day when I attended in November, I was able to spawn a few coho salmon. The following spring, I assisted in a one day steelhead smolt release. Fin clipping in December was a challenge when the hands constantly became numb due to the cold water. My favorite was definitely the coho seine netting and tagging program that has been going on for the last couple of years.

Since then, I have been to many community based stream enhancement programs. To my surprise, most of the people who put their time and sweat into these are not anglers. This somewhat disappoints me a little. I mean, we are so-called stewards of the river, who are usually the first to witness the change of a system as we are always there. Yet, when we see a drastic change such as the decline of fish stock, or pollution, many of us seem to become oblivious and ignore the problem. The equation certainly doesn't fit, if we continue to take without giving, wouldn't the fish stock continue to decline, garbage continue to pile up?

I think most of us have visualized this image of volunteering as boring, time-consuming labour. In fact, it's completely opposite. Volunteering in sportfishing related programs is incredibly educational and social. Most of all, it makes you appreciate your catches even more during your future outings. So roll up your sleeves, a good place to start would be contacting your local salmon hatcheries, or come out to our river cleanups and kids fishing days.

Rodney Hsu
Webmaster

If you have any comments regarding this editorial, or need further information on volunteering, please contact us.