Thanks for all your hard work Rodney … I really appreciate what you have done for the fishing community and the access and polarization of alternative fisheries to help bring kids into the sport through your videos .
Despite what my views on this topic are I know they’re are lots of people like yourself advocating for anglers and First Nations alike. I just don’t understand why we can’t get more funding for these programs . If more parties are to participate more effort needs to be put out .
I can’t really comment on definitions of hatcheries and interests as I can only comment on the experience of spending my whole life in the lower mainland and watching the salmon slowly become extinct .
What number of fish do you think is fair for sumas band ? Percentage or number ? 150-200? 2000?
Another question I have is how many fish are being turned into animal food and or for human consumption through the soowalie(sorry don’t know the spelling.) reserve program? . An actual number might give a better idea of how many are not being harvested or utilized for brood once the rec sector is done angling .
Also the news video portrays the vedder red salmon return of more than 10000 annually.is that an accurate estimate ? I would have thought the return to be more likely 2500-3500 on a poor year to 7-12000 on a really good year with the median return number being 3-6k
Thanks. So the reason I get involved has a lot to do with just my interest on fishery management (that's my academic background) and I like how I am able to do my own work (website, videos), while almost treating this as a pastime. I see a problem and I can't leave it alone lol. I do wish more young people in the sport fishing sector would get involved. This is what I have observed in the past two decades... When I first started getting involved, I was in my mid 20s and the youngest one among those who are involved. In the last twenty years, I've only seen a few new young additions to the group. Today, I am pretty much still the youngest one! Some of the guys who are still involved are now in their 70s or even 80s! Meanwhile, I've seen a clear shift within the representations in the First Nation bands. Twenty years ago, the elders who were involved were not very receptive to new ideas. Today, taking Sumas for example, I am seeing a team of young individuals who are thinking progressively, and coming to the meeting with new ideas. It's refreshing, and people need to get behind it to make this work finally.
Anyway, going back to some of your questions. I'm not really sure if I could be the judge on how many fish is "fair" for Sumas. When this first started, the proposed quotas were quite high, and I was kind of shocked. They've been reduced since then and I personally am pretty happy with it. I have to dig these numbers up again later so will just provide a rough picture for now.
For the summer red chinook fishery, the proposed harvest is in the hundreds, not thousands. The total number of fish arriving at the hatchery each year is a lot smaller than you thought. In a low year, it's in the hundreds. In a good year, it's in the thousands, never over 5,000.
The hatchery release target of summer chinook is 500,000 juveniles. In 2015, the number of fish returned to the hatchery was around 500. 2016 was a low year, around 300. 2017 and 2018 both had around 800 to 900 fish. 2019, 1,500 fish. The returns in the last two summers were around 2,500 fish. This year should be the same as the last two, or maybe more. That increase in the past three years is most likely due to the drop in harvest in the ocean due to closures. Conservation concern isn't really an issue here. The hatchery only needs a few hundred fish to meet the brood target. So far the harvest by Sumas in the past two years has been way below 100 each year. This year will most likely be even lower unless catch results improve this week. The proportion of harvest between the two groups is pretty one sided and doesn't look so good on paper (rec group is open daily and has access from Vedder mouth to upper boundary, while Sumas is open from Thursday to Sunday, from Vedder mouth to KWB).
The fall returns are much bigger obviously due to the much larger production. Right now, we produce 2 million fall chinook juveniles each year, and around 800,000 to 900,000 juvenile coho each year. Last year, 12,000 adult white chinook salmon returned to the hatchery (a lot of these were jacks). This year, we will see an even bigger return because these are offsprings off the first year when they doubled the production from 1 million to 2 million. 32,000 coho salmon returned to the hatchery last year, which is also a huge number considering the hatchery only needs a small % of those for broods. The remaining fish become part of the ESSR (excessive salmon to spawning requirement) program which involves Soowahlie contracting a fish buyer to take the fish. The fish are sorted and sold, could end up at your local Superstore, or as animal feed, depending on the grade of the fish. The number of fish for this program is in the 10,000s. This is why I always tell others that it is ok to keep your hatchery coho salmon and white chinook salmon, don't waste them, enjoy eating them. If they are not retained, they'll just end up being sold.
The number of hatchery coho salmon being proposed for harvest by Sumas originally was in the thousands. This would not have made a difference on the stock based on the numbers I presented you above, but if that many coho are taken out beween September 20th and October 20th below Hwy 1, I'm sure you'd see a change in rec fishing experiences. Right before the season started last year, that number was reduced to a few hundred. A total of one coho salmon was caught last fall by Sumas.
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Topic: Vedder Canal Red Springs (Read 16235 times)