Halibut fishery topic of community meeting tonight

[Sushihunter]

http://www.canada.com/Halibut+fishery+topic+community+meeting+tonight/4069871/story.html

Halibut fishery topic of community meeting tonight

By Julia Prinselaar, Westerly News January 6, 2011


The BC Sportfishing Coalition is holding a town hall meeting in Ucluelet tonight to discuss the future of the recreational halibut fishery and voice concerns over the Department of Fishes and Oceans (DFO) policy and the season's potential closure.

"It's just criminal," said Brian Clarkson, general manager of Canadian Princess Fishing Resort, one of 18 license holders in town that charters sports fishing.

He said the season could close as early as mid-July if the fishing quotas are reached by then, just as halibut stocks reach their peak. This would be the third time in recent years that the season closes early.

But even more of a concern to Jay Mohl, former chair to the Sport Fish Advisory Committee and owner of Jay's Clayoquot Ventures, is the government process that was created in 2003, when DFO allocated 88 per cent of Canadian halibut stocks to commercial licensees. With just 12 per cent left to recreational fishermen, once the sport fishing sector has reached its allocation, they'll have to shut down.

The Department of Fisheries and Oceans was unavailable for comment.

"Their system is not working, they admit it doesn't work," said Mohl.

He said that the problem lies with the fact that the market has turned halibut into a commodity instead of a fish that is uncaught. And since most commercial fishing licensees don't catch their 88 per cent quota, they can sell their remaining quota to recreational fishermen.

But buying quota costs recreational fishermen money and hardly attracts tourists willing to pay the cost of inflation. "For small commercial [halibut] fishermen, 75 per cent of their cost is to buy quota," said Murphy's Sport Fishing owner Marilyn Murphy in a report from the Nanaimo Daily News.

"Fishermen are held hostage to their own industry," said Mohl. "Instead of it being a livelihood it's a game of commodity and price."

The BC Sportfishing Coalition will hold the meeting this January 6 at the Seaplane Base Rec Hall at 7 p.m.

--reporter@westerlynews.ca

© Copyright (c) Postmedia News

 

[Cuba Libre]

I dont know about you guys,,, but this REALLY pi##es me off

"The Department of Fisheries and Oceans was unavailable for comment. "


What a crock. There is a whole Communication Department at DFO headquarters in Vancouver and even a bigger one in Ottawa

 

[Fish-Hunter]

I dont know about you guys,,, but this REALLY pi##es me off

"The Department of Fisheries and Oceans was unavailable for comment. "


What a crock. There is a whole Communication Department at DFO headquarters in Vancouver and even a bigger one in Ottawa

Question is who are they communicating with? The commercial fishermen??? Is that how they ended up with the 88% while we got 12%???
In 2002/2003 there were total 258,251 Residential Sport Fishing licences issued to sports fishermen, (this is not including the non-resident licences totaling 75,048) Note: Numbers are taken from DFO licencing stats. So there were 436 Commercial licenced fishermen that were given 88% of a Canadian resource, when they only represented by numbers of licences, a meager 0.1688%. That is less than 2/10ths of one percent! and they got 88% of the halibut TAC! How is that FAIR?????
Even in 2010/2011 there were 245,449 resident licences sold (and 42,993 non-resident). That means that last year the Sport Fishing licences outnumbered the Commercial Halibut Quota licences by 562 to one. There is something "fishy" here, and it seems that no one in DFO wants to deal with it because then they would have to admit that there is something wrong with the management of the resource.

The more that I look at this issue and learn about it, yes you are right this is a "CROCK". And even worse is that we are paying these jackaces to screw us over.