Dear Editor,
I have been living in Masset for about 60 years and from day one, this community has always been considered a commercial fishing community.
This resilience worked because the commercial industry was closely monitored and could be stopped with a day’s notice. This situation made it a manageable resource as the Department of Fisheries (DFO) could closely monitor the commercial catch and if they determined that the catch rate was negatively impacting the resource it announced an immediate closure.
Once the next run of salmon showed up and a usable abundance was determined, they opened the fishery once more and the commercial fleet went back to work. All of the above could be checked and logged when this commercial fleet delivered their catch which included all the fisherman’s information and the size of their catch including a count of the number of salmon caught.
This information was entered into the fisherman’s log book which was a federal document with one copy going into the federal archives in Ottawa. In other words, this was checkable and accurate information going back decades. When managing a resource this is a vital tool to have.
Even today, if for some reason a manager wished to know what I had delivered to the fish plant in Masset in May of 1978, all he had to do was request this information from the National Archives and there it was!
This efficient fact made managing a resource, such as commercial fishing, easier and simpler to develop fishing plans for any given year, in a way that kept the resource healthy and sustainable.
Then in the 1980s, the commercial sports lodges showed up and managing the west coast fisheries became a nightmare! The one overriding issue with the sports lodges is that if the DFO doesn’t know how many fish they are killing, it’s impossible to manage them. How can you manage a resource if you don’t know the fish mortality rate of one the largest users?
The sports fishermen implement ‘catch and release’ when out fishing and a political organization determined (i.e., guessed) that the mortality rate of 7 per cent was accurate for all the fish released, so that is what the DFO managers used.
This organization — the Sports Fishing Institute (SFI) — just threw that number out there and Ottawa grabbed it and has used it for decades. With the SFI’s influence in Ottawa, this method has been impossible to change for many years. So, they have been managing the resource with complete incompetence ever since. One might ask, “but why won’t Ottawa manage this resource with the correct data?” This is where Ottawa falls down every time! Ottawa won’t take on the rich and big money, so the insanity continues and the salmon resource continues to decline.
Today in Masset, one can see the remains of this once healthy marine resource decaying and falling down in front of the whole town. The fish plant and dock once employed close to 300 people and most of those were Haidas. I was one of these workers and ran the fish dock for many years and the town thrived with all this employment and activity. The stocks were healthy and managed successfully in a way that was sustainable and long lasting. Things only began to decline once the commercial sports lodges arrived.
Today’s decay and collapse are all because of Ottawa’s failure to do their job. Instead, they cater to the wealthy! What do I mean? The owners of these sports fishing lodges have rich clientele. They fly up to Masset on private jets or leased planes and they are helicoptered out to Naden Harbor or Langara Island to stay in facilities that are lush with luxurious accommodations, food and conveniences. As with many of the world’s rich citizens, they don’t seem to care about climate change issues or their part in making this worse. Helicopters are one of the most polluting carbon-intense modes of transportation producing about 54 pounds of CO2/mile which is as much as half the amount produced by a 747 which emits 105 pounds of CO2/mile. So, an hour’s helicopter flight emits 235 kg of CO2. Way to go spending your wealth sporties!
Unless one lives within earshot of the airport, it’s hard to understand how many helicopter trips take place in a season. Ilive close to the Masset airport and the helicopters fly for all daylight hours all summer long. It probably takes an hour for one round trip from Masset to Langara and back so that’s 235 kg. of CO2 going into the atmosphere for every trip. Having money shouldn’t be an excuse for this kind of behaviour!
The root of the problem lies with the ‘catch and release’ option that the lodge’s customers employ every day they are on the water. What is the mortality rate from these actions of catching a salmon and then releasing it back into the ocean so that it continues on its way to spawn in its birth river? That’s the theory anyway. In reality releasing a salmon back into the ocean in a way that doesn’t harm it so that it can continue on its way back to the river of its birth is a very delicate and tricky process. From all the evidence that has been collected on this process, it is staggering how easily a salmon can be harmed beyond saving while releasing it from the lure it has bitten.
There was a marine biologist by the name of Steven Cox-Rogers who did some experimenting on this activity. He hired a large Boston whaler, put a couple of tanks of circulating and oxygenated salt water on board that were continually pumped and refreshed, hired a couple of the most experienced catch and release guides who knew how to handle salmon in a professional and delicate manner for the entire catch and release process and went out on the water. They caught salmon alright; the guides were extremely careful handling the fish so as to exert the least amount of stress and damage from the hook etc. They kept the salmon on board for several hours until they were swimming seemingly ‘unhurt’ in their tanks and then they were released in the gentlest way possible with a tag inserted so as the fish were identifiable when they arrived back at their spawning river. This entire process was implemented but they couldn’t reduce the mortality rate of these fish to anything less than 60 per cent and even that was suspect.
This was followed up by another experiment. One of the largest seine boats on the BC coast, The Western Investor, used to fish at Coho Point at Langara Island. He was targeting sockeye but had a small bycatch of spring salmon. The DFO would close this fishery as they were trying to save the spring salmon.
The owner/skipper of the Western Investor made up his own tagging system and then went to the DFO and proposed that he be allowed to fish at Coho Point where he would gently tag the spring salmon and then release them back into the ocean. He had several holds on his enormous seine boat, one of which he filled with circulating and oxygenated ocean water. He would hold the spring salmon in this hold, until they seemed healthy and lively again, before releasing them. The DFO gave him the go ahead but they wanted the results of his tagging program and proof that the released spring salmon survived the catching and tagging process and made it to the spawning grounds and laid their eggs and they were fertilized and the whole process was successful.
It seemed like the entire process worked, when his tagged spring salmon began showing up in streams and rivers on the west coast of Vancouver Island. Everyone was impressed and the Western Investor was about to get the ‘all clear’ to proceed with fishing for sockeye. However, there was a fish biologist who went to check on the fish that were arriving in the rivers on the west coast of Vancouver Island. She found the rivers and she also found the tagged spring salmon. She was “impressed’!! She checked several rivers and found the tagged spring salmon. Then she noticed something wasn’t quite right. The salmon on the banks of the rivers all looked too fat and round! She took out her knife and cut them open. They all still had their eggs and milt in their bodies! She realized that the salmon had had the strength and resource to swim back to their spawning rivers, had swum up the rivers but the trauma of being caught and tagged had not left enough energy and resources to actually go through the egg laying and fertilizing process! The Western Investor had to admit his project was a failure and he bowed out of the fishery.
My point is that catch-and-release doesn’t really work! Just because a fish that seems to swim away from a skiff that has just caught it and then released it, doesn’t mean it’ll survive and be successful at the entire spawning process. In fact, the data seems to suggest that catch and release is a myth. Sure, some sports fishers are very good at what they do, but many don’t care so the actual success of any catch and release process is very problematic. I fished amongst the significant fleet of sports fishing skiffs at Langara Island for several years and the overall impression of their catch and release habits was shocking. Often, I would see a sports fisher wind in a fish they had caught and then once at the skiff, they would lean over and grab the fish
and hold it up. Reaching into the skiff they’d pick up a fish they had already retained and compare it to this latest catch. If the one in the skiff was smaller, they’d throw it overboard. It was already dead and yet that fish would be included in their erroneous 7 per cent mortality. Often one could count dozens of dead fish floating around in the water from their catch and release program!
As commercial fishermen we were fighting with all our imagination on how to deal with this ministry in Ottawa (DFO), and in the early 1990s we contacted the fisheries minister at that time, John Crosbie. We pleaded with him to come to Haida Gwaii himself and we would show him first hand that we weren’t just making this stuff up, and there really was a significant problem. After several weeks of pleading and phoning and emailing etc., the minister finally agreed! We couldn’t believe it, the top man himself was coming to Masset and we would meet and offer to take him out on the fishing grounds to see the problems for himself.
We were ecstatic! This could change the management plan of the fishery we depended on to make a living-wow!!! The day arrived, we met the federal jet and watched excitedly as the minister himself disembarked along with his wife. Then our excitement turned to anxiety as we watched the minister and his wife climb on one of the lodge’s helicopters and fly away. We were struck dumb! We madly made some phone calls to find out what was going on and the story we were told is that Mr. Crosbie wanted to have a look at one of the lodges before meeting with us so we were asked to be patient.
We heaved a sigh of relief and waited. patiently… for several hours. Finally, a helicopter came into view and it was the one the minister and his wife had left on. The doors opened, the minister climbed out without his wife and climbed onto the federal government’s jet that they had arrived on and he left.
That was it. No meeting, not even a hello or goodbye or l’ve had a change of plans…. nothing!!! After several across country phone calls and much pushing we got the answer. Minister Crosbie and his wife had decided to accept an invitation to dine at one of the lodges and had a wonderful first-class meal with plenty of lubricants to help wash it down. Crosbie’s wife fell down the stairs and broke her leg and had to be immediately medevaced out. Crosbie decided that he had seen enough, these lodge people seemed courteous and friendly and generous and so he was sure those commercial fishermen were just complaining about nothing.
So, he went home! That was it! That was Ottawa’s way of ‘dealing with the problem’.
Today there is virtually zero commercial salmon fishing around Haida Gwaii as Ottawa has refused to ensure that this important resource remains healthy for one to take place and be sustainable. It’s a mystery to me why they don’t seem to care that the rich are decimating what’s left of the salmon resource and/or what places like Masset and Old Massett do to survive.
I don’t have any experience of Canada’s east coast fisheries but from what we hear on the news, it seems like their cod fishery is in an equally poor state. I think Ottawa should get out of the fishing game and focus on things like not buying anymore pipelines and meaning it when they say they’re concerned about climate change. I haven’t seen anything to suggest they care!
Yours truly,
John Disney,
Masset, Haida Gwaii