Conservation of What?
March 25, 2018
As the business of conserving the critically depressed Thompson and Chilcotin steelhead stocks (now commonly referred to as the Interior Fraser Steelhead or IFS) rolls along there are a few realities that those not necessarily close to the decision making power brokers and their carefully constructed consultation processes might like a bit more insight on. I’ll state right at the outset here, the game is not about conserving steelhead.
The big push by our Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) at present is to come up with an Integrated Fisheries Management Plan (IFMP) that they can wave from the podiums as evidence of agreement by all “stakeholders” on the conduct of fisheries under DFO jurisdiction through the 2018 season. The proposal for conserving those IFS now reads “protecting 90% of the IFS with a high degree of certainty”. Until very recently the proposal read 80% but it seems the management is now so surgically precise that a 10% increase in the level of protection is deliverable.
Pause for a moment. DFO computer modellers are telling us they can tweak the commercial seine and gill net fisheries and the multitude of First Nations fisheries all the way from the top of Johnstone Strait to Sawmill Creek in the lower Fraser River Canyon (500 km or 312 mi) over the run timing window such that 80% (apparently the modellers haven’t been made aware by their masters that the figure has been revised to 90%) of the fish that enter the top of that funnel will emerge from its outlet unscathed and end up on the spawning grounds…….unless some evil sport fisherman targeting sturgeon on the lower Fraser happens to catch and release a steelhead and harm it such that it won’t contribute to a spawning population. The side bar to that is the now dominant in-river fisheries involving dozens of individually entitled First Nations will be negotiated with DFO outside their IFMP processes. I’m told recreational fisheries advocates, including the provincial government agency that claims responsibility for managing steelhead (the Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development or FLNRORD), will not be directly involved in those negotiations.
That computer modelling item is worth a bit more scrutiny. Its the bailiwick of technical experts in the DFO shop who have been assigned the task of conjuring up measures now referred to as “rolling window closures” over the peak weeks of the IFS steelhead return (i.e. 3-4 weeks, as opposed to 10 weeks over which IFS are migrating through the commercial and First Nations fishing territories). Those new closures are supposed to deliver that 90% safety margin. One wonders if any of these well intentioned people have ever seen the Johnstone Strait seine fishery or a drift gill net fishery on the lower Fraser or set gill nets anywhere from the outskirts of Vancouver to Sawmill Creek and beyond in operation. What I find most interesting, though, is a notice sent my way by a very well connected fisheries scientist indicating that the three DFO staff central to this new steelhead saving model are scheduled to present their work at a prestigious international fisheries conference in Khabarovsk, Russia in May of this year. I don’t know anyone familiar with the fisheries involved and appropriate knowledge of IFS run timing who has been familiarized with this model but its architects are off to Russian to extoll its virtues to an audience that doesn’t have a clue about what its being fed. Nonetheless, the model will be the centrepiece of the IFS conservation strategy for 2018.
When contemplating all this promise of new approaches sold as the salvation of IFS, remember that the objective of “protecting 80% of the IFS with a high degree of certainty” has been the priority of the IFMPs for the past several years. That is precisely the objective that has seen the IFS escapement estimates plummet steadily over those same years. Now DFO is telling us they can manage all those commercial and FN fisheries such that 90% of the IFS will escape all those nets. Even if such fantasy could be realized, unless there was a dramatic turnaround in the number of steelhead entering the top of the net fishing funnel up there in Johnstone Strait (there is zero evidence to support that possibility), we’re talking about getting another 20 or 30 fish beyond Sawmill Creek in the Fraser Canyon. How many generations of similar restrictions and management precision will it take to rebuild those IFS?
Surely even DFO and its commercial fishing industry allies don’t believe those rolling window closures will result in a free pass for 90% of IFS steelhead. The fish that don’t adhere to that 3-4 week window will be protected by selective fishing though. That goes back to conditions of license for seiners and gill netters that specify steelhead must be released “immediately and unharmed”. Recovery tanks with circulating pumps are mandatory equipment to be employed in situations where steelhead retrieved from nets need to be resuscitated before release. Of course every steelhead released will never see another net for the rest of its journey.
Hey, computer modelling advocates, go have a look at how all this unfolds. Compliance with steelhead handling and release is abysmal. That is confirmed every time any serious independent investigation is undertaken. But, how many commercial fishers have ever been charged and convicted of such offences anywhere in BC? There has been a conspiracy of silence around steelhead catches by the commercial fleets for decades. Recent Facebook entries by commercial fishers are classic in this regard. “I’ve fished Johstone Strait chums for 30 years and never seen a steelhead”. To all these righteously indignant folk I say you have two choices to support your claims. Take a polygraph and/or pass a course in fish identification.There are completely adequate data on the timing, location and number of IFS steelhead exposed to seine and gill nets in years past. There is also reasonable evidence of the number of steelhead reaching both the Thompson and Chilcotin rivers in just this century, let alone the decades before. If there are none being caught in Johnstone Strait now that ought to be a conservation red flag extraordinaire. It certainly would be for any other salmon species. When Fraser sockeye are down to a million returnees the fishing world dependent on them lights its hair on fire. Where area all these same devoutly concerned people in that same world when steelhead stocks from two of the most productive fish bearing watersheds in BC have fallen steadily to 220, a decline of 98% in two or three decades?
The mythical fish that seiners never see!
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Topic: Conservation Of WHAT (Read 2704 times)