Fish advisory board to talk halibut

MILLERTIME

Member
Fish advisory board to talk halibut
D.C. REID

Chris Bos asks: Can you let anglers know the Sport Fish Advisory Board will meet Wednesday, 7 p.m., at the Four Points by Sheraton Victoria Gateway Hotel, 829 McCallum Road — behind Costco. The big issues are halibut and early Fraser Chinook.
Answer: The halibut issue is about the late, short season and only one halibut per day that fisheries minister Gail Shea instituted. Last week I mentioned she is trying to blame stakeholder squabbling when the entire problem is the fault of DFO’s Individual Quota System for commercial halibut and her sticking to a completely unsubstantiated 88/12 per cent split that hugely limits the public’s ability to catch their own halibut. The solution is to buy, permanently, eight per cent of commercial quota and transfer it to the public’s ‘commercial’ licence.
The regulations regarding fishing during the time the early Fraser Chinook pass through Victoria waters will limit your fishing. Come out and learn about both issues. A lot of dedicated anglers work a lot of years on these DFO panels.

Darlene White:
Charlie [White] always felt DFO was unfair to recreational fishermen in spite of their larger impact on the province's finances. They will destroy an entire fishing lodge industry, never mind the fishery for ordinary folks who love to fish and supplement their food budget with their fresh catches. West Coast Fishery Minister — Yes! 20 per cent or up halibut quota for recreational fishermen: Yes! If Charlie is looking down over my shoulder, he would add his endorsement of your great idea! Answer:
Please ask Charlie to bless my flies and trolling lures, too.

Geoff Chislett:
DFO’s role is to manage for the highest and best use of the resource. If this, after looking at the range and value of benefits, is to encourage the recreational sector (which we know provides much higher value per fish) they should man up and take quota from the longliners, and fight the inevitable compensation battle. We, the citizens of Canada, either own the fish or we don’t, let’s find out.
Geoff Chislett Answer: is a well-respected, senior voice for sport fishing issues. In a recent decision — the Saulnier case — Mr Justice Binnie said fish could not become property until after they had been caught and that anything that violated this rule constituted a fettering of the minister’s authority and therefore would be illegal. In other words, Shea has the choice to change the 88/12 per cent split, must act and it is against the law for her to fetter her decision-making by saying only stakeholders can act to exchange money for fish. Do Canadians have to take our politicians to court to make them do what their own acts — the Fisheries Act — says they have to do? Doug Sly:
I am new to Victoria. Can you point me at some good fishing or tell me whether Elk or Beaver lakes are stocked. My wife and I have a canoe. Answer:
Go to catchsalmonbc.com and pick up my
Vancouver Island Fishing Guide. There are 35 stocked lakes in the CRD, see: gofishbc.com. Elk and Beaver receive trout every few weeks from March to October — 25,000 in total. In winter, you can troll in your canoe using searching patterns on a Type 3 full sink line. Try black or burgundy WoollyBuggers, olive Carey Specials, Doc Spratleys and so on.

todays paper.
 
The solution is to buy, permanently, eight per cent of commercial quota and transfer it to the public’s ‘commercial’ licence.



There has not been any comment here about this idea for DFO to buy back 8% from the Slipper Skippers. Personally I'm opposed to buying back what was literally stolen from us but if it would solve the problem once and for all then maybe. Any comments?
 
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Evaluating how the 12% is being accounted for by DFO, may offer some ideas worth working toward and helping to develop some positive solutions. The main issue to the problem is, everyone needs to start focusing on the solution rather than getting stuck and concentrating all of their passion and energy on the cause of the problem; an issue of the past. Consult with the other sectors in a nonbinding manor in order to grasp an understanding of their position and why it is that they are opposed to arbitrarily changing the ratio. What can we do as a whole sector to help create a positive end result, and to stop the head clashing that is diminishing everyone's energy for building solutions that will work for everyone?
 
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I agree, and I will reiterate my position again; I believe that solutions can be reached, however the challenge is something that we all must work at together in order to maintain opportunities that will work for everyone. Part of that challenge will be met when we overcome our fear of loss, and look at it in the perspective of gains. We can change this, DFO, Ottawa and the two other sectors already know that we can develop a fishery that will work for us; they want us to pull it together and present it. Part of it, which some disagree, but I believe we need to accomplish better accountability so as there can be no question of how much of the halibut resource is being used by anglers. If this is about Canadians having fair access, then we dam well better be sure that we know how it is being gobbled up.
 
Part of the problem that we all carry with this issue, is for the simple fact that do not know without a doubt how many fish our sport sector is actually taking. Until this aspect has been arranged in such a manor that it is clear what we are taking, we truly can not demand anything(we can try but we will get exactly what we have already got.) we need to attack DFO and burden them into the changes that we need to make in order for the other sectors to take us more seriously. DFO simply wants an out, or a scapegoat with good excuse by keeping the current enumeration system.
 
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Well, you might have been caught in one of those half truths? That 70% exported figure thrown around, just might be debatable? :)

According to, "A joint venture between several industry and government agencies," it might actually be closer to:
Markets: Approximately 95% of Pacific halibut from British Columbia is exported with 90% being sold to the United States and the balance of that being sold to European markets.

http://www.bcseafoodonline.com/files/pacific_halibut.html
 
It's pretty much the same with farmed-salmon and it's not rocket science. There's 10 x times more people south of the 49th' than north.
 
Well, you might have been caught in one of those half truths? That 70% exported figure thrown around, just might be debatable? :)

According to, "A joint venture between several industry and government agencies," it might actually be closer to:
Markets: Approximately 95% of Pacific halibut from British Columbia is exported with 90% being sold to the United States and the balance of that being sold to European markets.

http://www.bcseafoodonline.com/files/pacific_halibut.html

Geez, Charlie. Don't cloud the issue with facts - it will confuse everyone.



lol
 
Part of the problem that we all carry with this issue, is for the simple fact that do not know without a doubt how many fish our sport sector is actually taking. Until this aspect has been arranged in such a manor that it is clear what we are taking, we truly can not demand anything(we can try but we will get exactly what we have already got.) we need to attack DFO and burden them into the changes that we need to make in order for the other sectors to take us more seriously. DFO simply wants an out, or a scapegoat with good excuse by keeping the current enumeration system.

Here is an example of how the recreational sector is taking the lead on safety and catch monitoring in our fishery. Although the commercial boats do have camera’s running on board, the actual hard drives are only reviewed 10% of the time. In essence they are 10% compliant, not 100% as they claim. The guide and lodge catch monitoring books are filled our daily, 100% of the catch is recorded and that information is provided to DFO.
 
Here is an example of how the recreational sector is taking the lead on safety and catch monitoring in our fishery. Although the commercial boats do have camera’s running on board, the actual hard drives are only reviewed 10% of the time. In essence they are 10% compliant, not 100% as they claim. The guide and lodge catch monitoring books are filled our daily, 100% of the catch is recorded and that information is provided to DFO.

Derby if the first random 10% viewing of each trip does not meet a very high standard (90% accurate on many different species including individual rockfish,lingcod,sablefish,dogfish not just halbut), then the vessel pays to have more sets reviewed at $114/hr. if and only if the vessel meets the requirements for that trip can he leave the dock again and the hard drives are erased. the log books you speak of for the rec sector are voluntary at best.

How many lodge/guides are there in BC???

Again work on cleaning the rec fishery up before you start pointing fingers. How about a mandatory guiding license and a mandatory log book to start with. Get on with it..

ding dong good posts.
 
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95% Of Halibut is exported - WOW - who would have thought it was that high, and the slipper skippers are worried about there being enough for Canadians - if non- commercial fisherman are given a bigger share. I wonder how much halibut caught by Non commercial fishermen stays in Canada - way more than 5%. Is there no control of how much of our resources are shipped away?
 
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So who's going to the the meeting tonoght? I am. It'll be great to have a big show of people to let DFO know that we are NOT satisfied with their stupid decision re. this years hali allocation. Looks like we are going to have to fight on this one for a while yet!:mad:
 
Again work on cleaning the rec fishery up before you start pointing fingers. How about a mandatory guiding license and a mandatory log book to start with. Get on with it..

Great suggestions-perhaps you should be asking DFO this?
 
The worst part about all of this was if they split up the 8% among all the slipper skippers it was going to range from 50 to 500 lbs off of each quota really small especially if they got a buy out of a NON allocated canada resource which AGAIN NOBODY owns.......

Wolf
 
the actual hard drives are only reviewed 10% of the time.

It's a lot higher that


Edit.... I knew I remembered something about 10%
I your catch log and landed catch wt have a discrepancy of over 10% you will be audited.... At a pretty penny.. Not sure it would be in the best interest for a commie to lie
 
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The call for better accountability is coming from the commercial sector. IPHC has no problem with how the amount is calculated from the recreational sector. In fact the system has been audited by an independent auditor and found to be accurate. This is why we have seen our catch numbers go up without anyone seeing our effort go up. Why would the commercial side call for better accountability? The answer is simple. They know it would cost tens of millions for the recreational sector to count every halibut that is caught. They know that DFO has no way to get the job done. It is a good strategy to bring to the negotiation table. It also plays well with the media and public opinion. It assures them that until this perceived unfair condition is meet they will in fact keep fishing at same old unfair quota of 88%. It’s simply a barging chip and a stalling tactic.

Saw something on TV the other day that may explain why the current system is accurate enough. If you needed to count all the blades of grass in a football field, how would you do it? Simple, you would sample one square foot and count all the blades of grass in that square foot. You would then move to another area of the field and count all the blades of grass in that square foot. Do this a number of times and then average out your results. The more samples you take the more you confidence level improves. There is a point where you will find that you don’t need any more samples because the individual samples make no difference to the average. At this point you are wasting your time taking more samples. Its time to move on. Now take your average of how many blades of grass there is in one square foot and multiply that by how many square feet in a football field. You know how many blades of grass in a football field. Is it 100% accurate? No, but it is close enough.

The same logic can be applied to the number of halibut that is caught in the recreation sector. You need to sample enough fisherman to create an average pounds caught by one fisherman. You need to sample enough fishermen to have a high level of confidence in your numbers. You don’t have to count ever halibut caught by the recreational sector to attain a high level of confidence in your numbers. In fact to over sample you are wasting time and effort. You then multiply that by how many fishermen there are in a given area. That is how you get the total fish caught at any given area at any give time. DFO was tasked with improving its accounting methods back in 2006/2007. To date they have invested 1.5 million per year to improve their numbers. We can tell that this money was well spent because over the last several years the recreational sector numbers have shown that we take more than 12% of the halibut. In fact we have had our season start later and close sooner because of the level of confidence that DFO has with the numbers. Keep in mind that the recreation is just a small portion of the total Canadian TAC. So even though we don’t count every single halibut that is caught, by the recreational sector, the numbers are close enough for IPHC.

Don’t be fooled into believing that we need to count every halibut that our sector takes to have an accurate number. It just is not needed and frankly a waste of time and money to come up with a number that is 100% accurate. All that is needed is a high confidence level with the sampling and the end results. So if you hear we need to count every halibut that the recreational sector takes, look who is calling for it and why. You will either find someone who is uninformed and mislead or someone who is stalling for time for their sector.

GLG:mad:
 
GLG

How about phoning the IPHC and asking them the confindence level they have of the BC rec numbers and then post their reply. They have no choice but to accept the numbers from dfo as there are no other numbers to use.

If the majority of the rec fish is being harvested by lodge/charter then by getting proper accounting from that group would be leaps and bounds better then what we have to day. You are not taking about 100,000 people but a few businesses.

Again quit stalling get the sfab to design something that works for accounting and move this issue forward.
 
Maybe it's time for the Commercial sector to get on board & start a fish farm for halibut then they can sell it to the Int. market along with the cat food salmon.
The Govt. run DFO has to give their head a shake & quit widdening the gap between the have & he have not way too much greed in the world today!
 
GLG

How about phoning the IPHC and asking them the confindence level they have of the BC rec numbers and then post their reply. They have no choice but to accept the numbers from dfo as there are no other numbers to use.

If the majority of the rec fish is being harvested by lodge/charter then by getting proper accounting from that group would be leaps and bounds better then what we have to day. You are not taking about 100,000 people but a few businesses.

Again quit stalling get the sfab to design something that works for accounting and move this issue forward.

Lets go back to the very beginning of this- There was no problem with numbers until the sport fisherman asked for a fair share of the halibut and I say "sport fisherman"- The commercial "Flipper Skippers" all of a sudden had a issue with the recreational numbers-again no problem when we bought halibut from you and you were buying halibut from the sportfisherman?
So we going to have the commercial industry suddenly tell everyone who will listen that its broken? If have been listening to the sport fisherman, we have been working on this and will continue to work on this.I might add we have been doing this on our own accord.
 
Well, you might have been caught in one of those half truths? That 70% exported figure thrown around, just might be debatable? :)

According to, "A joint venture between several industry and government agencies," it might actually be closer to:
Markets: Approximately 95% of Pacific halibut from British Columbia is exported with 90% being sold to the United States and the balance of that being sold to European markets.

http://www.bcseafoodonline.com/files/pacific_halibut.html

There is a report by Chartered Accountant Firm PRICE WATERHOUSE COOPERS called the “State of the BC Seafood Industry Report” which looks like it was prepared for the:

BC Seafood Alliance
David Egan
BC Seafood Summit 2001
May 29, 2001
Vancouver BC

I have it as an Adobe file but I could not get it to imbed into this thread. Perhaps you can find a copy and post it Charlie, you seem to excel at that. There is a lot of interesting reading in this report. For example:

The BC Seafood industry supplies less than 10% of the total seafood consumed in Canada.

Halibut increased to 7% of total exports.

… over 90% of wild halibut is sold in fresh form and exported to the US.
 
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