Yes not a good thread name. The topic is very important however. Notice carefully that the primary focus of the Ministers announcement is to manage the Rec fishery by placing more restrictions while posting up a joke of an investment to increase habitat of $9.5 million. A total political move with no investment. That kind of cash does nothing but make the Liberals appear to be doing something. Classic bait and switch.
The plan does nothing to reduce physical and acoustic disturbance caused by the biggest culprit which is the whale watchers. What a poor decision. I’m at a loss to comprehend how the Minister chooses to ignore the science while picking on the easiest group - Rec fishers.
There is good evidence that the SRKW's are in a genetic bottleneck and have been for quite some time. even if we could force feed them fillet o fish sandwiches, take pollution out of their fat and breast milk, reduce vessel traffic and so how reverse the planet from warming. They still may be to inbred to have healthy babies. I am not saying we should do absolutely nothing I am saying that when these media release are made they should be fully honest with the public about the realities of them recovering.
Then we have to look at Chinook, Eco Based management, If SRKW eat Chinook and Chinook fisheries are being severely cut, And Chinook eat herring. Then herring fisheries need to be cut. How any you employ that logic with Chinook but not with herring.
Now we got to look at the Chinook measures. Lets assume they do their job and stocks start to recover. How long would that take, Probably at lest 20 years, will they lift the harsh restrictions if stocks start to recover? or will they go now there X number more population and fishing pressure is twice as much bla bla bla restriction are here to stay.
This is just for Chinook, When you start to look at other salmon populations like sockeye, chum and pinks recreational fishing has almost zero impact 1-2%. Yet last year the fishermen on the Fraser could not even go out an fish for pinks.
This whole situation is frustrating and sad. How can we come together and make a difference? show me the path and i will drive it.
x2! Honesty in resource management and politics - what a concept!There is good evidence that the SRKW's are in a genetic bottleneck and have been for quite some time. even if we could force feed them fillet o fish sandwiches, take pollution out of their fat and breast milk, reduce vessel traffic and so how reverse the planet from warming. They still may be to inbred to have healthy babies. I am not saying we should do absolutely nothing I am saying that when these media release are made they should be fully honest with the public about the realities of them recovering.
There are a lot of complex issues surrounding the endangered SRKW's - but lets get real. The bottom line is this. The SRKW's are starving! What the first thing to do when any life form that is starving - FEED IT!
They need food now, not after a bunch of studies are completed, not after we try to sort out all the multi-sector, very complicated, time consuming issues like pollution, marine traffic, acoustic pollution, fishing regs, and then all the issues negatively impacting their main food source (chinook), like over fishing, climate change, habitat destruction and loss, water extraction, pollution, predation, over fishing of herring, etc.
While trying to work on these issues are important unless we work to provide more food for these orcas and damn fast they will continue to starve! Since their main food source takes 4 years to grow we need to grow more food for them NOW.
It seems clear to a growing number of citizens that the Feds need to increase hatchery production and help fund local community sea pen projects and reduce over fishing of herring (i.e. chinook and seal food) to produce more orca food, or all the other studies and efforts will be a too little, too late! We need to push this message hard to the political decision makers to focus on the right things to do first.
There is good evidence that the SRKW's are in a genetic bottleneck and have been for quite some time. even if we could force feed them fillet o fish sandwiches, take pollution out of their fat and breast milk, reduce vessel traffic and so how reverse the planet from warming. They still may be to inbred to have healthy babies. I am not saying we should do absolutely nothing I am saying that when these media release are made they should be fully honest with the public about the realities of them recovering.
This is true that genetically the SRKW are in a state that may not allow them to recover regardless of how many salmon there are. Northern Residents are doing OK despite chinook runs in trouble there as well, so I dont completely buy the simplicity of less chinook=less SRKW. That being said chinook are probably part of the problem. I don't think its as simple as just putting net pens of more chinook out either. The summer and fall are still probably times the SRKW do fine. There are lots of runs of fall chinook, Sockeye, Coho and chum to key on. The lean times are obviously the winter, where feeders are spread out and only the chinook are big enough to feed on. My opinion is closing or restricting winter fisheries would perhaps help, would stop the mortality from C&R on so many undersized, and keep boats out of the foraging areas. Winter has always been a tougher time, but SRKW have evolved to store fat during that time. I believe the big problem for SRKW is likely the Spring, as traditionally there were good runs of mature, sometimes quite large spring chinook runs from the Columbia, Fraser and other watersheds for them to feed on and gain weight after the lean winter. Those runs, which have always been smaller than the fall runs, have been decimated worse than the fall runs, possibly extending the lean times far enough into the spring to damage the whale population. When you add on pollution, whale watching harassment, shipping traffic, inbreeding ,etc the outcome is not good.
So overall the SRKW are a good excuse to restrict all fisheries, even though summer/fall restrictions may not really be needed for them. however it doesn't alter the fact runs are declining rapidly, and because of that there really is no choice whales or no whales but to restrict fishing. The question is if this is just like the east coast situation where cuts kept being made, but were always trailing the decline in the breeding population until they finally collapsed and a moratorium was put in place. It was put in place so late that even now only a modest recovery of some stocks has been observed (and they started fishing them again with predictable consequences). Not something I would like to see, but it is possible it is what is needed for the chinook to have any hope, and a moratorium would have to include FN food and ceremonial to be effective.
Did you read my post, I state I don't believe restrictions on summer fall runs will do much for SRKW, there are probably enough fish for them at that time. Fishing restrictions are from the decline in the returning runs. So your solution to declining runs is just to keep fishing them at current rates? Sport fisherman take 200,000- 300,000 chinook per year coast wide, about half the catch, and half of those are on the south coast. Seems we already had the cod fishery where we just kept fishing them and they went away. Coho are another issue, urbanization and agriculture have been particularly hard on a species that spawns in small tributatries. Their habitat has been devastated. So have they continued to decline, yes of course. But continuing to fish them like we used to, wasn't sustainable either. I'm old enough to remember the blueback season, 12 inch size limits, hundreds of boats all catching limits of 15 inch coho......Mainly focussing on fishing restrictions is not the solution to starving SRKW's. At the current already heavily restricted rec fishing rates in areas 19 & 20 if you shut down all fishing in areas 19 and 20 for entire year you would save enough Chinook (approx. 11K of the right size) to feed the SRKW's for approx. 2-3 weeks at the rate that they eat for their current population size, while negatively impacting the economies of local business and communities.
How does this help the starving SRKW's?
You forgot to mention open net cage diseased and virus ladened Fish Farms or do you not see them as a problem? If we are expected to swallow such drastic measures surely this blight needs to disapear from these same waters at the same time. And the whale chasing fleet needs to be curtailed to stay at least 300 meters away from them as well.There are a lot of complex issues surrounding the endangered SRKW's - but lets get real. The bottom line is this. The SRKW's are starving! What the first thing to do when any life form that is starving - FEED IT!
They need food now, not after a bunch of studies are completed, not after we try to sort out all the multi-sector, very complicated, time consuming issues like pollution, marine traffic, acoustic pollution, fishing regs, and then all the issues negatively impacting their main food source (chinook), like over fishing, climate change, habitat destruction and loss, water extraction, pollution, predation, over fishing of herring, etc.
While trying to work on these issues are important unless we work to provide more food for these orcas and damn fast they will continue to starve! Since their main food source takes 4 years to grow we need to grow more food for them NOW!
It seems clear to a growing number of citizens that the Feds need to increase hatchery production and help fund local community sea pen projects and reduce over fishing of herring (i.e. chinook and seal food) to produce more orca food, or all the other studies and efforts will be a too little, too late! We need to push this message hard to the political decision makers to focus on the right things to do first.
You forgot to mention open net cage diseased and virus ladened Fish Farms or do you not see them as a problem? If we are expected to swallow such drastic measures surely this blight needs to disapear from these same waters at the same time. And the whale chasing fleet needs to be curtailed to stay at least 300 meters away from them as well.
Did you read my post, I state I don't believe restrictions on summer fall runs will do much for SRKW, there are probably enough fish for them at that time. Fishing restrictions are from the decline in the returning runs. So your solution to declining runs is just to keep fishing them at current rates? Sport fisherman take 200,000- 300,000 chinook per year coast wide, about half the catch, and half of those are on the south coast. Seems we already had the cod fishery where we just kept fishing them and they went away. Coho are another issue, urbanization and agriculture have been particularly hard on a species that spawns in small tributatries. Their habitat has been devastated. So have they continued to decline, yes of course. But continuing to fish them like we used to, wasn't sustainable either. I'm old enough to remember the blueback season, 12 inch size limits, hundreds of boats all catching limits of 15 inch coho......
This is my argument. Just having restrictive fishing regs, while doing very little to deal with the habit loss, over fishing of prey species (herring), predation, pollution, water and gravel extraction, unsustainable in-river and foreign over-fishing, fish farm impacts, etc. will not work. This is exactly what DFO has done for years - with no success. DFO and their political masters select the politically easiest sector to restrict (recreational) and keep ratcheting back the regs, irregardless of the local economic impacts, while doing very little to deal with all the other contributing issues and then walk away and say they done something, when if fact the situation obviously just gets worse - i.e. our present situation.