Since Time Immemorial, by Bob Hooton

OldBlackDog

Well-Known Member
Taken from part of the article,

Recent social media pronouncements concerning the allocation of salmon (chinook in this particular situation) originating from the Somass River watershed on the central west coast of Vancouver Island tell one side of a story. This has been the hallmark of mainstream media throughout the fisheries crises plainly evident on the Fraser system this year but also in other times and places throughout British Columbia. Have a look at the news piece by CHECK News on Sept 2 for some background.

[URL]https://www.cheknews.ca/one-alberni-valley-first-nation-says-its-being-left-out-of-chinook-fishery-697357/?fbclid=IwAR12ag8d4DmCKN86eLVokaNXLGqYI8UwDBuZGXl0rXpLlGKejNNGnz4f0zU


The comments of protest rally organizer Martin Watts at 1.20 – 1.28 are what catalyzed my remarks.

In part:

.

“We have a right to this territory. We have a right to the fish in this water. That’s important to our people and it’s been important for centuries,”

Well Mr. Watts here are some facts you and a host of others, not the least of them the current cast of Department of Fisheries and Oceans “fisheries managers”, apparently aren’t aware of. Either that or all of you are wilfully blind. Take your choice.

The fish you claim rights to did not exist at a fraction of their recent abundance historically. Robertson Creek Hatchery was built after a failed attempt to produce pink salmon from spawning channels constructed in the late 1950s at what eventually became the hatchery. The spawning channel was officially opened by then Minister of Fisheries, J. Angus McLean on November 4, 1960. The conversion to a chinook (and coho and steelhead) production facility occurred over a number of years that followed. As memory serves me, the first significant returns of chinook didn’t occur until the early 1970s. As with all salmon hatcheries in this part of the world, the honeymoon was comparatively dramatic. However, the typical longer term pattern of declining survival from juvenile release to adult return prevailed there too. Returns of the present may seem dramatic to some but the cost and technical issues around sustaining those levels is disproportionately much greater today. The point is, the current chinook population is vastly in excess of anything that existed historically.
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http://steelheadvoices.com/?p=2179&fbclid=IwAR32iUHkt844u0kCywGS4mpgBaqLsVPMINVhg5oR5evBNPIDCWWvionHp_g
 
Well you definitely believe the FN fisheries are the worst offenders, judging by your wilful attempt to leave out any grievances with the commercial guys... Why aren't you saying anything about them if you're gonna play the finger pointing game?

It's abundantly clear that they harvest a disproportionate amount of fish compared to all other user groups and they do so purely for profit, and at the expense of taxpayers... in fact there is more taxpayer expense than the FN fisheries as well, given that they harvest the fish in numbers that are orders of magnitude greater than FN fisheries.
 
Sorry....the commercial guys are fishing at the expense of the taxpayer?

Fish4all or Ironogginn can chime in about the comm #s. My question is how much of the commercial catch is done by the alaskan fleet?


What was final escapement for sockeye in Stamp/Sproat?
 
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Sorry....the commercial guys are fishing at the expense of the taxpayer?

Fish4all or Ironogginn can chime in about the comm #s. My question is how much of the commercial catch is done by the alaskan fleet?


What was final escapement for sockeye in Stamp/Sproat?
Yeah it is at the expense of the taxpayer when they are targeting taxpayer funded hatchery runs in order to profit for their private enterprise. Why does this logic apply exclusively to FN fishing and not commercial guys?

Edit: Not to mention, inshore commercial guys (FN and non FN) are getting handsome covid gibs right now at the expense of everyone, despite the fact that they're already benefiting from increased commercial quotas due to the lack of tourists this year...
http://www.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/fisheries-peches/initiatives/fhgbp-ppsp/index-eng.html
Notice how they leave out the guides from the eligibility, despite being the guys who are probably being hit the hardest by covid, as they rely heavily on tourism for their customer base. Totally fair...

Edit #2: I would also like to know how much of the Alaskan commercial industry is depleting the runs, as well as the chinese commercial guys that prowl just outside (and probably just inside) the Canadian Exclusive Economic Zone.
 
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How much do the commercial guys give back to the hatchery programs within Nootka and Robertson creek in terms of $?

Do they not pay a charge per lb towards enhancement?
 
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How much do the commercial guys give back to the hatchery programs within Nootka and Robertson creek in terms of $?

Do they not pay a charge per lb towards enhancement?
I wouldn't know, do they? Post your proof if you have it, rhetorical questions don't really build on the conversation in any meaningful way and I'm certainly not inclined to spend my time looking for sources for you...
 
I'm asking a question. Dont take offense because you don't know the answer. You want to engage on a topic that you seem negligent on and criticize me for for an honest question?
 
Do they not pay a charge per lb towards enhancement?
That really seemed like a rhetorical question in which you were implying there's an obvious answer. I wasn't actually offended, I'm just blunt and autistic.

Forgive me if I seem ignorant to the topic of commercial fisheries. I actually do try to look into it on my free time, but a lot of the info the DFO posts is very hard to find and tends to be very convoluted and difficult to interpret at times.
 
My understanding is that there's a small yearly ~1500 piece "stewardship quota" (~18lb average, ~$3/lb revenues) that is gifted to the Area 23 stewardship group that the seiners fish for on behalf of Area 23. Robertson is funded & run federally - it's not a small, non-profit community hatchery.
 
Enlighten us then...

It's f--kin hard to find the data out there, but everything that I've seen posted (albeit I haven't seen much SOURCE material since late August) over the past few weeks strongly indicates that both the Tseshaht Nation and the commercial gillnet fleets have went way over their f--kin quotas, all at the expense of all sporties. How is that fair?

If the commercial guys are giving back in some way after they take more than what they were allotted, what is the amount they're giving back... You were asked to shed light on it and you come in here and sh-tpost about how ignorant and uninformed I am.

Uninformed, perhaps, but I am making efforts to inform myself and I am not wilfully trying to remain ignorant. If you'd just rather just refrain from dialogue than that's fine too, but it's kinda funny how I'm really trying to engage with people on here and am somehow the 'ignorant' one.

My understanding is that there's a small yearly ~1500 piece "stewardship quota" (~18lb average, ~$3/lb revenues) that is gifted to the Area 23 stewardship group that the seiners fish for on behalf of Area 23. Robertson is funded & run federally - it's not a small, non-profit community hatchery.
Thanks for sharing something anyways, even if it isn't cited.

1500 x 18 x 3 = $81000... If they're donating 1500 yet their quota was 6000 that's actually a commendable donation for sure. However, it's on behalf of the seiners and not the gillnetters (from my understanding the commercial gillnet fleet were the ones that harvested 13000 over their quota from the Chinook run?).

Tseshaht Nations EO Commercial fleet was allocated 8000 Sockeye and harvested 18000 as well, correct?

I'm really trying to get a clear picture of all this ecological gangbanging that's going on, I really don't want to be uninformed, misinformed or ignorant...
 
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Tseshaht did not sign an EO agreement until about halfway thru the Chinook season. They were fishing for their FSC needs in sockeye season - not EO (commercial). If they had of signed an EO agreement where they agreed to the fishing plan and the TACs in that plan - they would have gone over what was allocated there for FSC in that plan that DFO dictated. So no - they did not overfish.

However, as far as case law goes (as I posted before) - FSC is second to conservation. If there was a conservation concern - then all fisheries would be shut down - but they were not - and there was no conservation concern.

FSC is also a needs-based number that can be negotiated in a bilateral Tier-II process w the Crown (DFO) - but not within a Tier-III process.

And as soon as Area D went over their TAC by some 9000 pieces - DFO increased the run size to cover it. Co-incidence? You be the judge.
 
Tseshaht did not sign an EO agreement until about halfway thru the Chinook season. They were fishing for their FSC needs in sockeye season - not EO (commercial). If they had of signed an EO agreement where they agreed to the fishing plan and the TACs in that plan - they would have gone over what was allocated there for FSC in that plan that DFO dictated. So no - they did not overfish.

However, as far as case law goes (as I posted before) - FSC is second to conservation. If there was a conservation concern - then all fisheries would be shut down - but they were not - and there was no conservation concern.

FSC is also a needs-based number that can be negotiated in a bilateral Tier-II process w the Crown (DFO) - but not within a Tier-III process.

And as soon as Area D went over their TAC by some 9000 pieces - DFO increased the run size to cover it. Co-incidence? You be the judge.

From what I've seen it looks like a substantial amount nation member treated their FSC catch as personal economic opportunities which is a damn shame, but I suppose it's their right to do so. I used to be a ****** fish poacher, hustling fish right at Cap River myself in my younger years. Not everything that is legal is morally right.

As a Squamish member I know all too well that FSC openings are subject to closures, as we almost never have opportunities to receive food fish distributions compared to many other nations, and we are more or less dependant on Musqueam (or other nations) EO fisheries selling us fish.

The Area D thing does seem very suspicious to me.

I still don't get the politics behind letting any user groups harvest for commercial purposes before escapement quotas are reached but hey, I really don't know much at all.

I'm gonna sit back and listen for a while and stop barfing my own opinions out there. There is a lot of info to digest and I feel like I need to find out more of that info straight from the sources, as there are multiple folks saying more or less the same things, but with lots of variability in numerical figures as well as variability in the fine details.

Thanks to everyone that is sharing what they know or what they've heard though. I've learned a lot and look forward to learning more so I can become more active in trying to do something positive for the future of fisheries
 
Tseshaht did not sign an EO agreement until about halfway thru the Chinook season. They were fishing for their FSC needs in sockeye season - not EO (commercial). If they had of signed an EO agreement where they agreed to the fishing plan and the TACs in that plan - they would have gone over what was allocated there for FSC in that plan that DFO dictated. So no - they did not overfish.

However, as far as case law goes (as I posted before) - FSC is second to conservation. If there was a conservation concern - then all fisheries would be shut down - but they were not - and there was no conservation concern.

FSC is also a needs-based number that can be negotiated in a bilateral Tier-II process w the Crown (DFO) - but not within a Tier-III process.

And as soon as Area D went over their TAC by some 9000 pieces - DFO increased the run size to cover it. Co-incidence? You be the judge.

can you over fish if you do so in the name of FSC?
 
Overfish by who's numbers, WMY?

You can overfish into a conservation concern - yes. That didn't happen here.

Also - the alloted TACs are within an agreed to fishing plan for Area 23 when the Somass FNs sign an EO agreement. Tseshaht did not - and was not bound by that plan.

In case law- it dictates how FSC numbers are developed. It's not within a Tier - III process, neither:
https://www.canlii.org/en/#search/text=FSC allocation

This court decision in particular is comprehensive in it's Background on Regulation of the Pacific Salmon Fishery: https://www.canlii.org/en/bc/bcca/d...jYXRpb24gbmVlZHMgYmFzZWQAAAAAAQ&resultIndex=2
 
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you may wish to check your numbers, Nog - as well as your assumptions. When they sign an EO agreement - that's when the "agreed-to" starts - with the EO agreement "agreeing to" the numbers "agreed to" in the fishing plan.
 
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