The Province: Federal-provincial steelhead recovery plan mired in dysfunction

[Derby]

Subject: The Province: Federal-provincial steelhead recovery plan mired in dysfunction


http://theprovince.com/news/local-n...come/wcm/851baedb-29a9-4462-ae2b-6ee4fd522632

 

[SpringVelocity]

 

[SpringVelocity]

Fish wheels or other selective methods run by FN with heavy DFO enforcement. Complete gill net ban. You did this for 5+ years those fish would come back. But people are two bullheaded to do it. They are getting wiped out in the style of fishing we are doing.

Rolling closures in the saltwater aren't going to do anything.

 

[Whole in the Water]

I like the idea of other more selective means of fishing in the river - gillnets have got to go! Totally agree rolling closures do not work well. Don't know if we are likely to see heavy DFO enforcement unless citizens make it a political priority as all major political parties in the recent past have not enforced many fishing regs. with FN's for fear of bad publicity and possible lawsuits. The FN's need to convinced this is a good way to go for it to happen IMHO. Hopefully we can all work together to make this happen for the sake of the salmon.

 

[Derby]

There is a lower Fraser round table process that will start to roll out.. hopefully this fall...

 

[wildmanyeah]

IT will be interesting to see if they include ocean fisheries in the round table and if so how far out into the ocean.

 

[wildmanyeah]

The commercial fishing fleet in the Fraser in the early 1900's used shallow purse seines. Catches of 5-15k sockeye were not uncommon in the Fraser. The dominion of Canada had issues tho with them over fishing stocks, so they switched them to drift gillnets that still allowed fish to swim underneath so some would get past.

With using quotas that issue would easily be solved nowadays Shallow seines can have good release mortality if fishermen stick to smaller catches So they can process the catch and bycatch efficiently.

 

[Ringo]

In 1,600 pages of documents and correspondence obtained by the B.C. Wildlife Federation through freedom of information requests, senior staff at the ministries of environment and forests allege “management influence” at Fisheries and Oceans over the scientific process.

“We have requested (Fisheries and Oceans) return to the wording agreed to by the scientists,” Jennifer Davis, provincial director for fish and aquatic habitat, wrote to assistant deputy minister of agriculture James Mack. “We can all disagree on what management actions to take, but at least we have common science this time. They have said no.”

 

[high tide]

How Pathetic of our officials past and present to let this get to where we are today.

The drum beats on..........same ol same ol lame reaction rather than proactive due diligence.

 

[SpringVelocity]

https://oregonhistoryproject.org/articles/historical-records/columbia-river-fish-wheel/#.XYwep397lEY

Canneries owned most of the fish wheels on the Columbia River. Their design was simple: powered by the downstream rush of the river, huge wooden and wire baskets continually scooped through the water, picking up migrating adult salmon that were moving upstream. The fish found themselves funneled into the wheel by weirs, the wooden fences in the photo that extend into the river. Once fish were scooped out of the river, the wheel dropped them into a “fish box,” which was a holding pen or cage. In order to remove the salmon from the fish box, the wheel’s operator(s) climbed down a ladder from the deck (see photo for opened hatch in deck) and speared the fish with a long pike. The fish were typically hauled above deck in a small elevator powered by a hand-crank. Fish wheels were used in the shallow, fast-moving waters of the Columbia River from 1879 until 1934.

Fish wheels were not popular with other fishers on the Columbia. Downriver commercial fishers resented their use and accused fish wheel owners of exhausting the river’s salmon fishery. Indian fishers found themselves dispossessed of traditional fishing sites by fish wheel owners, and successfully fought for their removal through the legal system. Sport fishers also railed against their use, arguing that the only way to honorably catch salmon was with a hook and line.

Conflicts between competing fishers became increasingly more public by the twentieth century. In order to harness public sympathy for statewide votes, fishers called on voters to outlaw their opponent’s gear in the name of “conservation.” As the public became more aware of the ever-shrinking numbers of salmon returning to the Columbia River, they responded to calls for conservation by passing a number of regulatory laws to govern the salmon fishery of the river and its tributaries. Voters passed laws that prohibited the use of fish wheels in Oregon in 1928 and in Washington in 1935.

 

[SpringVelocity]

Another way...


https://salishseasentinel.ca/2018/10/nation-revitalizes-traditional-fish-weir-to-manage-salmon/

 

[quill]