Future Halibut Possession Regs

[ziggy]

So, season only is July and August due to allocation?

One per day! Two in possession.
Total weight/size 140 lbs combined.
Total fish allowed 4 per year.

Thoughts?

Don’t support the July August season. That seems to me to be designed more for the lodges to bring in customers than for the average fisherman. Perhaps if that’s the plan,we need to look at different regulations and separate allocations for the Northern Lodges and Southern,primarily non guided fishers? I know that isn’t popular, but as many point out it really is two different fisheries,catering to two different groups.I’d be interested to see if there is any numbers for % of non resident TAC as well as Northern vs Southern total TAC.

 

[searun]

Do you know if these #s being calculated on the total areas that are traditionally open as of today and in the past? with the same fishing pressure?

What I'm asking is, why only 45days? if/when next yr the "proposed KW closures" come into effect.

IMO the total sportfishing pressure on halis will be much lower on the coast as there will be huge areas that produce alot of sport TAC that will be closed..NO?..

Nope, all that happens is we move around effort. If you think people will stop fishing, just look around and see how the pressure got more concentrated this past summer.

Halibut catch count is calculated by conducting creel surveys at the docks to gather data on average catch per unit of effort (boat), then calibrated against over-flight data (counting boats), and compared to guide log book data (deducted from over-flight calculations), and adding in iRec internet survey data....over-simplistic account of how its done, but you should get the idea. Thus it matters not one bit if certain areas are closed in the catch recorded, other than perhaps if we have enough area closures perhaps there will be a little less success if certain honey holes are closed. But people will find new ones as they are forced to venture out looking for new areas to fish. Closing areas just moves effort around basically.

But nothing replaces getting good, more reliable catch data. Thus electronic catch recording will get us better data than the "in ink" version which is never shared because no one is required to turn it in, and even if we asked they likely wouldn't do it. Think of the power of electronic catch reporting that automatically downloads to a data base!

Long way around, I think the point being made here was that the IPHC were serving notice to Canada that they will severely cut back the TAC available to Canada in 2019 if the data challenge we launched proves to be incorrect. So if that is the outcome, the point was we likely will only have enough TAC to run a restricted fishery. Not saying it will be 2 months, but if you look south to Washington State, their fishery is 6 days. We might have to look at how to run fisheries with far lower TAC, which will force us to look at which months of fishing are worth protecting.

That is a rather difficult decision. Do we look at the top 2 months of prior year catch (July/August) as that is when we traditionally have the most effort? Do we start the season in February and close it sometime in June before all the tourists arrive, and the kids get out of school with their parents? That way we save it for local BC residents! Do we wait until September and create a fall fishery to extend the lodge and charter seasons to bring more economic benefit to Canada? See how complicated it will be to find that balance of interests?

 

[calmsea]

Close July and August. ****** tides anyway.

 

[trophywife]

Close July and August. ****** tides anyway.

that must be where YOU fish.

 

[sthdslayer]

Searun when considering effort make sure you account for the fact that a lot of those tourists to the West Coast of Vancouver Island are BC residents who schedule holidays for fishing trips so they can fish for both salmon and halibut. My experience is that the majority of this group only go once a year due to the high costs of getting there. I would support the one fish limit season limit 3 at 140 cm . Recognize that currently BC residents that go to the west coast are spread out both geographically and time wise . Having a shorter season combined with any further KW restrictions will concentrate effort

 

[terrin]

So, season only is July and August due to allocation?

One per day! Two in possession.
Total weight/size 140 lbs combined.
Total fish allowed 4 per year.

Thoughts?

I Concur with this proposal including the suggested max size of 54".

 

[Derby]

You may not recognize it, but we already hold the most accurately wasted data that we could ever want. Discount it all you like, unfortunately there have been numerous people before you working at making the sport sector more accurate. Most of the time your statements come across to the reader that somehow we are well below you. Kind regards.

Perhaps u are just reading it wrong?

 

[searun]

Searun when considering effort make sure you account for the fact that a lot of those tourists to the West Coast of Vancouver Island are BC residents who schedule holidays for fishing trips so they can fish for both salmon and halibut. My experience is that the majority of this group only go once a year due to the high costs of getting there. I would support the one fish limit season limit 3 at 140 cm . Recognize that currently BC residents that go to the west coast are spread out both geographically and time wise . Having a shorter season combined with any further KW restrictions will concentrate effort

I wasn't suggesting anything other than to pose some of the arguments we hear from all sides. Trying to characterize how difficult it is to somehow find that balance between competing interests should we find ourselves in a situation where we have significantly reduced TAC. The net result of reduced TAC being we can't run a long season because there ain't enough poundage available. In some TAC scenarios, we could start our season in March as it did and find we are closed at the end of June because we caught all our available TAC.

BTW, not at all suggesting we discount people who legitimately need to schedule their vacations for the busy summer months. Back in the day when my kids were in school, July and August family fishing trips were golden. Now that they are grown up, we now have more flexibility, but why should the fact my kids are grown up and we no longer need to plan trips for July/August be something I use to push for an early season fishery so we exclude those who are arranging family trips. Family access to these important fisheries should be something we strive to protect IMO.

If it were up to me personally, I would look at the catch data and effort to use that to protect those months with highest effort first.

Just saying that season length could become a factor we are forced to deal with due to a shortfall in TAC afforded to Canada in the IPHC agreement for 2019.

 

[searun]

If DFO really wanted the data, they would already be utilizing the pen marks recorded on our existing license. If the NGO's catch wind...we will get accurate data reporting. Then, I guess I'll be fishing for freshwater bass.
By ignoring the entire history of recorded data that has invariably been wasted each and every single year since the first day that anglers were required to record their catch...DFO is the issue.

I'm not suggesting we don't have good catch data today - simply that we could improve that, and provide more real time information to allow in-season management decisions. Currently we have to wait until all the data is crunched and validated - example being we didn't get the preliminary halibut catch data for August until today. BTW, solving the logistics of collecting paper licenses and/or data - I would be interested to hear how we accomplish that one in-season? (serious question - we have a catch monitoring committee that is looking at this stuff)

 

[ziggy]

I think when you go online to renew your license part of the process should be detailing any catch recorded on your previous license. Will it give accurate data after the fact? Of course, but for starters DFO could use this data as a comparator to their predicted TAC numbers using their current method and determine how big the error factor is. It’s not perfect, but it’s at least as reliable as spot online surveys, fly overs etc.

The issue of when the season should be open if it in fact becomes 45 days is going to be contentious. Maybe spread it over several months. I see no reason why it needs to be 45 consecutive days. Maybe a week or two or whatever in June,July ,August and September for example.Maybe a week a month for 6 selected months? July and August needn’t be the only choice.

 

[searun]

Good point, we can do what they do in Washington - they split up their 6 day season so that the days are spread out over a few months. Tough problem to solve, but it is possible if we can think outside the box as you suggest...which BTW, hope we never have to go there!!

Getting real-time data (if that is technically possible), is going to become more important as time goes along for fisheries such as halibut that are managed to a specific catch quota. Going to be a real challenge to find ways to do that real-time and accurately....and, yes careful what we wish for is a risk.

One of the potential flaws of collecting data when people sign in to buy their new license is there is a recollection bias to contend with. We already face that with iRec data/surveys - people can't recall after the fact how many they caught when surveyed, even when DFO tells them in advance for a particular month that they will be surveyed. We are also experiencing a lowish response rate. The saving grace is we have pretty good over-flight data that when combined with the manual fisher independent creel surveys helps to statistically validate other methods of collecting data via surveys etc.

Its very fascinating, and unbelievably complicated as I'm learning from the DFO experts involved with catch monitoring. I'm not suggesting that the current methodology is perfect (we can always seek ways to improve), but from what I have seen so far the methodology DFO employs is pretty robust...but I think we can make it even better.

 

[searun]

What do other sectors do? Commercial fisherman pay for the service of having Archipelago oversee and facilitate catch landing data either by paper and pen log books, or digital recording via internet tabulation.($400.log book+fisherman lic.+plus boat lic/lease) They must also verbally hale all landings during fishing opportunities.

What does this have to do with sportfishing? Simply an example of a private sector service that analyzes catch record data for the commercial sector and tabulates it for DFO. Oh, so we wasted last season's sport data when we recycled it at the time of purchase for the new season, all while being logged into our DFO sport fishing lic. account where we could have easily entered our catch data for the previous year or at minimum uploaded a scanned copy of it for further analysis by DFO.

Wait, but that is just useless data anyway! Or is it? For decades the sportfishing sector has destroyed mountains of invaluable catch record data on behalf of DFO. Yep, with our help.



The Problem: The ability to make effective, compliant decisions without wasting time and money is incredibly difficult. Too often, the solution is hiring more people and adding workflows to your decision-making process. This drives up complexity, cost, and time.

The Solution: The solution is using AI technology for better decision workflow through speed and efficiency. AI is not new, although the acronym or moniker is. Artificial Intelligence has been used in many industries for a very long time. It wasn't until within the recent past that it can now be accomplished easily in affordable manor.

- AI can analyze any document of any size and identify elements that it's been specifically trained to look for.
- AI is able to present that information in a visually rich environment such as a heat map or Venn diagram.
- AI gets smarter the more it's used. As you use the system, it learns what it's gotten correct and incorrect and that then improves its accuracy over time.
- AI is able to read and even understand a broad spectrum from ancient to modern type or handwritten documents.

No longer is artificial intelligence the stuff of books and movies. It’s already part of our everyday lives. Now, with machine learning and contextual technology, AI is evolving to the next level. Why the Gov't of Canada and DFO are stalling on this impervious area of concern is totally beyond me...

Prior to retiring, I spent my days working to set up a Robotic Process Automation (RPA) practice, with AI as the eventual end goal (which is very expensive and difficult to set up cold out of the gate with no prior experience)...so yes we appear to totally agree with one another. That is where we can get to by moving away from the regulatory requirement for recording catch "in ink"...full circle. We can get there without AI, a simple process automation software package would more than do it and is far less $ in capital investment. Under $200k to buy and set up shop. I'm not even sure DFO actually needs RPA technology to accomplish the data collection and sort, although once running under an RPA process it is basically plug and play.

Forgot to mention, that the OCR (optical character recognition) software available currently does not reliably convert handwritten documents to digital - limits ability to read info from a paper fishing license currently.

 

[wildmanyeah]

One of the potential flaws of collecting data when people sign in to buy their new license is there is a recollection bias to contend with. We already face that with iRec data/surveys

I hope they can remeber what they were required to write in ink on their licenses. I would hope that chinook, halibut and lingcod is accurate for Irec.

Though I do get your point.

I think their is more that sports fishermen could be doing if we want more credibility from the other sectors.

 

[Jencourt]

Currently we have to wait until all the data is crunched and validated - example being we didn't get the preliminary halibut catch data for August until today.

So what are the numbers? How much is left? Any chance of seeing a variance on max size for the last three months?

 

[ziggy]

Good point, we can do what they do in Washington - they split up their 6 day season so that the days are spread out over a few months. Tough problem to solve, but it is possible if we can think outside the box as you suggest...which BTW, hope we never have to go there!!

Getting real-time data (if that is technically possible), is going to become more important as time goes along for fisheries such as halibut that are managed to a specific catch quota. Going to be a real challenge to find ways to do that real-time and accurately....and, yes careful what we wish for is a risk.

One of the potential flaws of collecting data when people sign in to buy their new license is there is a recollection bias to contend with. We already face that with iRec data/surveys - people can't recall after the fact how many they caught when surveyed, even when DFO tells them in advance for a particular month that they will be surveyed. We are also experiencing a lowish response rate. The saving grace is we have pretty good over-flight data that when combined with the manual fisher independent creel surveys helps to statistically validate other methods of collecting data via surveys etc.

Its very fascinating, and unbelievably complicated as I'm learning from the DFO experts involved with catch monitoring. I'm not suggesting that the current methodology is perfect (we can always seek ways to improve), but from what I have seen so far the methodology DFO employs is pretty robust...but I think we can make it even better.

I don’to think “recollection bias”should be a problem. If you are simply supplying the information on the species you were required to log on your license, it seems like it’s pretty hard to forget? I mean how hard is it to transpose the info on the Halibut or Springs you logged from you license to the internet?

 

[searun]

Not trying to argue so please don't take this the wrong way, but who amoung us keeps their old license by the time we need to buy another? Average Joe Tourist certainly doesn't, and if they don't come back we would not get their data as no requirement to turn it in and no incentive (can't get a new one without turning in your old one etc). Many paper licenses are lost every year too...another challenge.

I do a guide log book every day, and believe me its very hard some days to recall what we caught....and that is before beer o' clock time. That's why I think we need to eventually find a replacement to paper licenses. So many other jurisdictions are already way ahead of us on that front.

The solutions always sound simple until you dive into the details.

Halibut numbers - we should end up under TAC - don't know the exact number yet. No ability to amend the size regulations as they are stated as a condition of your license, and that can't be changed unfortunately.

 

[wildmanyeah]

The solutions always sound simple until you dive into the details.

As someone who has been involved trying to get a regulation for leader lengths for the last 15 years yeah 100% the layers of burracy in DFO is right up their with revenue Canada.

 

[searun]

[QUOTE="

You should brush up in this area. It is available and extremely accurate.

[/QUOTE]

Really Stormtrooper? Don't read the bs developers use to market their products. I'm not basing my views on reading the internet. I actually worked with the technology, and can tell you it is not yet reliable for this application. They will get there, but its not stable enough for the kind of data accuracy required when reading handwritten documents especially. I actually have experience evaluating whether or not we would buy this technology - and it did not pass the muster in June when we looked at it. Don't imagine the developers made a quantum leap forward in the past 3 months.

Here's a nice article to explain the challenges:

https://www.microsoft.com/developer...computer-vision-azure-cognitive-services-ocr/

 

[Jencourt]

Halibut numbers - we should end up under TAC - don't know the exact number yet. No ability to amend the size regulations as they are stated as a condition of your license, and that can't be changed unfortunately.

Am I mistaken in my understanding that DFO can use a variance order to amend a condition of license? Daily limit of "one" is written as a condition of license also. Did they not use a variance order to change it to "two a day" a few years back wen we had a large surplus? As I recall it went to two a day for the last bit of the season that year. Was something different in the wording then compared to now?

Anyway a guy can hope.

 

[Policeman44]

Lots of great ideas boys,keep it up... the unfortunate part here and other sport fishing forum is this...unlike the commercial fishers, we target one another with cutting remarks that seem to get quite personal and to be honest...quite childish..this is why we lose all the time...there's an old expression..."you get more bees with honey than you do with vinegar"... try this approach...we are all trying to find and suggest solutions however, some members seem to create even more problems ??? stick to the solutions and we might actually win a battle or 2...