An ages old industry that may need a new management plan

A panel created by the Pacific Salmon Foundation has finally released their review of the Skeen Salmon fishery and with it comes a number of recommendations that they feel will make the fishery more sustainable.

Included in some of their thoughts were a desire to see the interception of Skeena bound salmon by Alaska reduced, reduce harvest rates on the Skeena to protect weak stocks and implement changes to gear at the mouth of the Skeena.

The panel was given their task six months ago in the wake of controversy over a late season opening in 2006 which left many wondering if the current management structure was enough to preserve and protect the Skeena stocks.

The Skeena Wild Conservation trust posted a complete copy of the reports findings, which you can access from this link.

Opinion 250 offered up a synopsis of the report on their website while the Daily News featured the story as the front page article in Thursday’s paper.

SALMON REPORT LIKELY TO MAKE WAVES IN INDUSTRY
Pacific Salmon Foundation panel offers suggestions for improvement
By Kris Schumacher
The Daily News
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Pages one and three

An independent review of the Skeena Salmon fisheries management has made a number of recommendations for the region, including a clear warning against proposed oil, gas and coal-bed methane developments in the watershed.

More than two months after the Pacific Salmon Foundation created the independent science review panel to review salmon management on the Skeena River, the four independent scientists have delivered their report.

They were tasked with recommending ways to improve future salmon management in a critical watershed for wild stocks.

The report begins with an executive summary that cites three specific reasons for the highly critical 2006 salmon fisheries, and explains that the current DFO management system has “achieved about 95 per cent of the maximum yield of sockeye salmon since 1982.”

The report also explains that the practice of making weekly adjustments in run size and escapement estimates, combined with large a run size, led to late season openings of the sockeye fishery as happened in 2006. That incident caused a controversy that deemed such a report necessary.

The summary findings of Dr. John Reynolds, Dr. Randall Peterman, Dr. Carl Walters and fisheries consultant Jim Lichatowich also state that the method of collecting data used to generate computer spreadsheet models estimating steelhead exploitation rates is insufficient. The panel reports “the model can give some ‘worst case’ guidance about possible steelhead exploitation rates, but this is as far as it should have been taken,” and that they have “no idea how reliable DFO’s estimates of steelhead recovery rates are.”

The scientists conclude that unless total exploitation rates in both the Canadian and Alaskan fisheries reduce by 30 to 40 per cent, non-Babine sockeye stocks will remain at severely depressed levels, half of what they’ve been in Canada in the last 20 years. They predict “that it is not possible to achieve high proportions of the maximum average yield in mixed stock fisheries without overfishing at least 10 to 20 per cent of the coho and Chinook stocks and at least 30 to 50 per cent of the sockeye and pink stocks.

The panel felt that decades of fighting among stakeholders about allocation has distracted people from threats to the watershed such as those from road, mine, and fuel development.

The report outlines the authors’ concern about a lack of input from biologists and planners in the decision–making process for such projects, and says that neither DFO nor MOE have the staff or resources needed to monitor or protect habitat. It goes on to make recommendations to move to a new three-part governance structure that would give the public easy access to information and officials.

Fisheries and Oceans Canada and the Ministry of Environment, along with the rest of the fishing community will be reviewing the report for the next three weeks and delivering their responses to members of the ISRP at a full day meeting in Terrace on June 10, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m at the Best Western Hotel.

“We do expect comment from the public at the meeting as well, and it will have a tight agenda, but that’s the purpose of it,” said Chad Brealey, communications director of the Pacific Salmon Foundation.

“And because this is an independent thing, the governments certainly aren’t required to take the recommendations on by any stretch of the imagination.

“But they’ve been very cooperative to this point in providing information and the panel has been very clear on that as well. There hasn’t been a single roadblock in getting information from anybody.”

The review was funded by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, and, although it was sanctioned by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and the B. C. Ministry of Environment, the foul panel members “carried out it’s assignment with complete independence from both those institutions.