This was sent to me, thought I would share.
Chris
Ardent Angler for 05/27/09.
Like anyone returning home to find a “pick up a parcel” card in my
mailbox I was curious as to what it could contain because, to the best of
my recollection, I wasn’t expecting anything. ”Oh” the helpful lady at the
post office said, “yours is the big one”, immediately increasing my
curiosity. Actually it was long and, having pointed out the parcel was
from Fisheries and Oceans Canada, she speculated it likely contained a
fishing rod.
Indeed it was, followed the next day by a matching fishing reel. After
turning in heads from adipose fin clipped salmon for more years than I
can remember, I got lucky in the annual draw used to encourage anglers
to participate in what is called the Salmonid Sport Head Recovery
Program. My thanks to DFO and Shimano, who donated the equipment
in the first place.
I mention this unexpected piece of good fortune because I think it
provides a useful introduction to a program that many sport fishermen
know about, however it is one that is struggling to remain effective, even
as the information derived from it becomes ever more important over
time.
The Head Recovery Program (HRP) has been active for four decades or
more and the basis for its operation is pretty simple. A certain percentage
of salmon, most commonly chinook and coho’s but occasionally other
species as well, have their adipose fin clipped in a hatchery to denote the
presence of a coded wire tag in the fish. These CWT’s, as they are known
in the jargon, are tiny metal bars inscribed with a number code
containing a variety of information and which are inserted in the nose of
the juvenile salmon before they are released from the hatchery.
Fishermen of all kinds have been encouraged to look out for adipose fin
clipped (AFC) fish in their catch, retain the head and turn them in at a
prescribed drop-station.
Usually months later the CWT’s are retrieved from the accumulated
heads and the code read. When combined with information such as
capture location and date supplied by the fishermen, this has enabled all
the various agencies responsible for salmon management along the west
coast of North America to develop a pretty good understanding of when
and where the different chinook and coho stocks migrate to in the ocean.
So far, so good but times change and for several reasons in recent years
the HRP has been struggling to remain as effective as in the past.
One reason is money, or more accurately an insufficient amount of it.
The tagging, recovery and analysis takes money and given the usual
parsimony of governments for fisheries management this is a program
that has been challenged to place as many CWT’s as in the past.
Concurrently the marine survival of many salmon stocks has declined to
very low levels, meaning the number of tags effectively present in a
fishery is much lower than it was several decades ago, which in
combination with reduced fishing opportunity and an overall reduction of
fishing effort coast wide means that the number of CWT’s being
recovered is proportionately far less than in the past.
This trend is especially unfortunate because there is growing evidence
that as ocean conditions have become less productive some salmon
stocks are showing signs of changing life-history patterns, changes
which are important to know about but which are difficult to detect with
diminished information from their time at sea.
In addition to this the HRP has faced an additional challenge because of
the development of what would otherwise appear to be a constructive
new tool in fisheries management, the mass marking (i.e. adipose-fin
clipping) of all hatchery origin chinook and coho salmon to enable
fishermen to readily distinguish between enhanced salmon and wild
stocks, which aren’t marked. Mass marking enables the use of what are
called Mark Selective Fisheries, which sustain fishing opportunity but
can be structured by regulation to be responsive to the conservation
concerns of wild salmon that are occurring with increasing frequency,
especially in the southern part of their range.
To date Canada has used mass marking only with coho but in the US
Pacific Northwest states almost all hatchery production of chinook
salmon is now adipose fin clipped as well. A positive and creative
response to one aspect of fish and fisheries management, however mass
marking has really debased the ability of fishermen to recognize a CWT
bearing salmon, adding to the problems outlined above.
Several years ago the Pacific Salmon Commission, which deals with the
co-management of salmon between Canada and the USA, became so
concerned about this situation that it convened what was literally called
the Expert Panel of independent scientists on the future of the CWT
program. Their report, and much else of interest, is available at
www.psc.org . Despite advances in alternate ways to determine salmon
stock composition in mixed-stock fisheries, such as DNA analysis of
tissue samples and the application of thermal marks to the fishes otolith,
the Expert Panel concluded that there was no practical replacement for
CWT’s and urged management agencies to collectively develop the Head
Recovery Program such that it might reach previous levels of usefulness.
Easier said than done but all the same it points to the real desirability
for anglers to continue to participate in the HRP. We are all aware that
fisheries are being regulated in a much more risk-averse manner than in
times past and the precautionary approach requires that management
decisions are based on the best available information. Conversely, an
absence or insufficient amount of information could lead to fisheries
being more restricted than might be necessary, so I urge anglers not to
succumb to the oft-heard but erroneous idea that turning in the heads of
marked salmon will lead to closures, in fact quite the reverse is true.
There’s no question that the advent of mass-marking hatchery origin
salmon has added additional challenges to the Head Recovery Program,
especially in places like offshore WCVI where a high percentage of
chinook salmon are of US origin. As a function of diminished resources,
DFO’s track record in retrieving accumulated heads, especially from out
of the way places, isn’t entirely perfect however staff are trying their best
to work with the recreational fishery to maintain the usefulness of this
important program. The future of the recreational fishery to some degree
depends on it.
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Topic: Head Recovery Program (Read 4889 times)