Early halibut closure upsets B.C. sports fishing industry
CBC News Posted: Aug 24, 2011 8:53 AM PT Last Updated: Aug 24, 2011 9:57 AM PT Read 31 comments31 Accessibility Links
Related Story ContentStory Sharing ToolsShare with Add This Print this story E-mail this story Accessibility Links Beginning of Story ContentSports fishers ply the waters off West Vancouver. Andy Clark/Reuters.The early closure of the West Coast recreation halibut fishery is upsetting operators in B.C.'s sport fishing industry who say the catch is not being fairly divided with commercial fishers.
Earlier this month the Department of Fisheries and Oceans announced the recreational halibut fishery will close on September 5.
That's the earliest end to the fishery in history, according to Rob Alcock, the president of the Sport Fishing Institute of B.C., and he says the early closure will be devastating for many fishing lodge owners.
"I talked to one of our members there. He told me he has to phone 2,000 of his customers now that this has come up. So that's just one lodge that has to phone 2,000 customers. So you can multiply that up and down the coast," he said.
The recreational fishery is given 12 percent of all catchable halibut in B.C., but Alcock says that share should be much larger.
"It's not a conservation issue. Let's make that clear. There's still 2.8 million pounds of Canadian total allowable catch in the water so the conservation is not an issue. It's an allocation issue," he said.
"It's how it's divided up between the recreational and commercial sector — 88 percent to the commercial sector, 12 to recreation."
DFO spokeswoman Tamee Karim the said the total allowable catch has been reduced this year, affecting quotas for both commercial and recreational sectors.
"We're facing now a total allowable catches around 7.5 million pounds, so the amount of halibut available for Canada to catch has been reduced and so both the commercial and recreational sectors are facing more reduced access to the resource," she said.
Division of catch divides halibut fishermen
The annual overall allocation is set by the independent International Pacific Halibut Commission and the season closes when each sector's portion of the quota is reached.
In recent years, however, the commercial fishery, squeezed by rising costs and declining wholesale halibut prices, hasn't always taken its full quota. But it hasn't wanted to give that up either.
Talks have been underway to change the way the fishery is divided between the commercial and recreational sectors, but in February federal Fisheries Minister Gail Shea said those talks had broken down without reaching a resolution.
The federal government did introduce a trial program in 2011 to allow recreational sports fishing operators to lease quotes from commercial licence holders.
But the new pilot project is seen by many in the recreational industry as tilting the system in favour of big business and possibly turning even daily fishing excursions into a tradable commodity.
In British Columbia, it is estimated that approximately 60 per cent of the total recreational halibut catch comes from sport fishing business operations and 40 per cent from individual anglers, according to DFO.
Recreational anglers with a tidal license are allowed to catch one halibut per day with two in possession. Last year DFO issued 300,000 individual tidal-water fishing licences, of which 120,000 were resident anglers, at $21 each.
The B.C. government has estimated the provincial sport fishing industry is responsible for 7,700 jobs and contributes $288 million to provincial GDP.
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Topic: Halibut (Read 1799 times)