Lines out of the water by Halloween

For recreational halibut fishers, October 31st is more for tricks than treats, when it comes to the quest for halibut on the North Coast.

DFO has issued a decision that eliminates the ability for anglers and charter clients to catch any halibut from Oct. 31 to the end of the calendar year. A decision which has the members of the Sport Fishing industry joining the chorus of displeasure with the handling by the Department of Fisheries of the fish resources of the north coast.

The Daily News featured the decision and the Industry reaction to it as the front page, headline story in Friday's paper.

SPORT FISHERMEN STUNNED AS HALIBUT PUT OFF-LIMITS
Recreational fishery to be closed until end of the year, commercial sector is unaffected
By Kris Schumacher
The Daily News
Friday, October 24, 2008

Pages one and two

The recreational halibut fishery in British Columbia will be closed one week from today, announced Fisheries and Oceans Canada yesterday morning.

The DFO decision effectively eliminates the ability for anglers and charter clients to catch any halibut from Oct. 31 to the end of the calendar year.

Already the decision has prompted harsh criticism from recreational stakeholders such as the Sport Fishing Institute of British Columbia (SFI), which claims the 10,000 pounds of fish the sport sector could have caught before Dec. 31 pales in comparison to the 1.3 million pounds the commercial halibut fishery is expected to catch during that two-month period.

"This decision represents the complete failure of government's halibut allocation policy in that recreational anglers are being told to stay home while commercial fishers will continue to harvest halibut," said SFI President Rob Alcock.

"Make no mistake, this decision will not conserve halibut, it will only further the interests of a small group of wealthy commercial licence holders. The result is that family fishing trips and fishing charters will be cancelled and many in the public fishery will suffer because DFO insists on clinging to a nonsensical and unworkable policy."

The SFI said the decision contradicts an explicit promise from former Fisheries Minister Robert Thibault that the department would not make in-season adjustments to the fishery.

The promise was made back in 2003 when an interim halibut allocation policy was enacted, under which British Columbia's 430 commercial halibut fishers were awarded 88 per cent of the annual halibut harvest, and the province's 300,000 recreational anglers were given access to 12 per cent of the catch.

The SFI and other recreational groups have attempted to develop a quota transfer system through years of work with DFO, which they claim has failed due to the overtly flawed allocation policy.

They come for the halibut, but for now they can only have half of it!

Sport fisherman making plans for a north coast vacation this spring will be heading back home with a lighter load due to some new allocations in the halibut fishery.

DFO has issued a change to the recreational daily limit, cutting in half the daily fishing limit to one from April1 to May 31, the allocations return to a daily limit of two and a possession limit of two from June 1 to December 31.

The background on the decision and more details on what to expect were found in Monday’s Daily news.

Daily catch limit for halibut is halved to one fish
By Kris Schumacher
The Daily News
Monday, February 25, 2008
Pages one and three

The official fishing management regime for the 2008 recreational halibut fishery was released Thursday, changing the daily and possession limits.

In order to manage within domestic halibut allocations, DFO has changed the recreational fishery daily limit to one and the possession limit to three from April 1 to May 31. However, from June 1 to Dec. 31 the daily limit will be back at two fish, and the possession limit will also be two.

"We took another month so we could finish up all of the planning with the sport fishing community to make sure what we implemented is what they would like," said Gary Logan, DFO North Coast Fishery groundfish manager.

"We try to work very closely with the sport fishers, and commercial fishers if it's something that affects them as well.

"The Sport Fish Advisory Board and the Sport Fishing Institute are the primary mechanisms by which we communicate with the sport fishery, and we've been working with them on this since last fall as to how we can approach this next fishing season."

Logan said that talks worked through a range of options, but did include up-front principals, such as minimizing the in-season changes, and trying not to focus changes in one specific geographic area to avoid local economic impacts.

"It's always difficult when you're cranking things down, and we've had a reduction in the total allowable catch for halibut in Canada, so of course we have to manage accordingly because it is a treaty with the U.S.," said Logan.

"We're trying to do it in a manner that will achieve these objectives but at the same time minimize the impact on the fishers and their businesses themselves."

Logan also says reports that a weight limit on halibut had been imposed are entirely erroneous, and that the idea was simply one of many suggestions that DFO had brought to the table when the process began.

"When we develop management options and talk with people, you have to put everything on the table. Was [weight limit] something we talked about? Absolutely, but it was dismissed," said Logan.

"When we talk with fishers, some of the ideas fall off the table right away, but that's how you get to a point when you can agree on something. So we always start out with a giant list, and you whittle away at these things."

The Sport Fishing Institute of B.C. says that opting not to implement size limits was an obvious choice because it didn't make any sense.

"While most recreational halibut that are caught tend to be smaller, people still want to go fishing to try and catch a big fish," said Eric Kristianson of the Sport Fishing Institute of B.C. "Taking away that opportunity struck everybody as impractical and counterproductive."

However, he says the department's decision to implement a one halibut per day restriction up until June will have a dramatic impact on individual anglers and the charter boat sector.

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"Effectively, for a third of the season charter boat operators will be faced with a new restriction, and that's going to have an impact on them. Where charter operators have to travel greater distances to get to the halibut grounds, that's going to really discourage customers and we're very disappointed in that."

Kristianson said DFO was in the process of seeking to acquire quota from the commercial sector, in order to provide the recreational sector with greater ability to catch halibut in the future.

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"But really, what it underscores at the end of the day is that the allocation policy itself, that put us in this position of 88 to 12, is flawed," he said. "This is the direct result of that policy, a policy that we've been pushing the minister and department to revisit, because it's the source of the problem in the first place."

Sport fishermen get a one month timeout from the halibut fishery

The Daily News featured developments from DFO in the halibut fishery, which see sports fishermen in BC having to keep their lines out of the water for one more month.

The start of the sport fishery will be delayed until March 1, due to concerns over a decline in the number of older, catchable halibut along the entire Pacific Coast

The story was the front page entry in Monday’s paper.

HANKERING FOR HALIBUT WILL HAVE TO WAIT A WHILE: DFO
By Leanne Ritchie
The Daily News
Monday, February 04, 2008

Pages 1 and 3

Sport fishermen chasing halibut will have to wait an extra month to drop their hooks in 2008 after Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DF0) announced a delay in the opening of the recreational fishery.

The season, which normally starts Feb. 1, has been delayed until March 1 in response to concerns from the International Pacific Halibut Commission (IPHC) that there has been a decline in the number of older, catchable halibut along the entire Pacific Coast.

Meanwhile, stakeholders and Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) are meeting to try and figure out how the allocate this year's total allowable catch between the commercial and recreational sectors, which has been dropped by the IPHC from 11.5 million pounds to nine million.

“It is giving us a chance to get the management plan sorted,” said Bill Shaw, DFO recreational fisheries co-ordinator for the South coast area.

According to Mark Reagan, DFO management co-ordinator for recreational fisheries North and Central Coast area, the halibut stocks are still healthy, the problem is they have fished hard on those halibut that are of the catchable size and now need to lower the catch limit until the younger fish have enough time to catch up.

“We fished fairly hard on the biomass that is above the available size limit for catch, which is 32 inches. We have removed the biomass that is there and we have fished it down. Now we have a couple of strong year classes coming through the system but they haven’t grown enough to reach the size to be in the fishery itself,” he said.

“You have to back off the harvest a little bit and allow these fish to grow, and move into that harvestable range. We are reducing our harvest levels to allow these fish to get bigger, so the kids can become teenagers and move in to the adult phase so we can catch them.”

Earlier this year, the International Pacific Halibut Commission (IPHC), which conducts stock assessments for Canada and the United States, reported a decline in the amount of older catchable halibut along the Pacific Coast and recommended both countries drop their 2008 catch limits from 7.3 per cent of 2007 levels.

The commission recommends harvest levels for the area from Alaska’s Bering Sea south to Washington State.

The IPHC concluded that a reduction in the harvest rate was necessary “to provide the combination of optimal harvest and to ensure viable spawning mass for the future.”

In B. C., the total allowable catch of halibut is divided between the recreational sector, which includes sport fishing guides, and the commercial fishery.

The recreational fishery generally runs from Feb. 1 to Dec. 31 and the commercial fisher from March 15 to Nov. 14 each year.

This is the second year in a row with reduced catch levels for the B. C. Coast and the second year the IPHC has used a new type of stock assessment.

It has left recreational and commercial fisherman asking questions about Canada’s portion of the international allocation.

In 2005 and prior years, the IPHC used to base assessments in each regulatory area, based on the assumption that halibut do not migrate.

However, new data showing the fish do migrate eastward caused them to change they way they determine the health of the stock.

Now they fit the assessment model to a coastwide data set and then apportion the total among regulatory areas in accordance with survey estimates.

What this means, according to the report by researchers for the IPHC, is about half the decrease in this year’s number of catchable halibut is due to a change in the survey methods, while the other half is actually due to lower catch rates reported in 2007.

In 2007, the IPHC used a catch rate of the B. C. Coast of 25 percent of the total biomass to offset the effects of the new coastwide assessment being used. This year, they are using the biologically based 20 per cent of total available biomass as the catch rate in most areas, including B. C.
Reagan said the IPHC has agreed to a workshop on their new stock assessment method sometime in the summer or fall in order to discuss the fisherman’s concerns.

The line forms on the left for DFO

Yet another group of the fishery sector is expressing its concerns over DFO policies as members of the provinces Halibut Fishery have launched a class action suit against the Department of Fisheries and Oceans.

The Daily news featured the details on the case in the Thursday edition, a story which was picked up by Canwest news and featured in the Vancouver Sun on Friday.

Halibut fishermen look to take on the DFO over quotas
By Kris Schumacher
The Daily News
Thursday, December 6, 2007
Page one

The federal Fisheries Minister can add one more disgruntled fishery to his list, as British Columbia halibut fishermen have now launched a class-action lawsuit against the Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada.

The lawsuit claims that the DFO quota initiative implemented on the halibut fishery in 2001 has unfairly withheld 10 per cent of the annual halibut harvest each season since. Lorne Iverson, a Burnaby-based halibut fisherman explained that DFO transferred a percentage of the entire halibut quota to a single licence holder, who then sold the quota back to other fishermen at inflated prices. Iverson claims that DFO then shared in the additional levies and the funds were allegedly used to support DFO research.

"The lawsuit seeks declaratory relief, restitution and damages from the federal minister of fisheries," said Meldon Ellis, a senior partner of Vancouver firm Ellis Business Lawyers, which filed the action.

"The fisheries were subjected to a funding scheme implemented by the DFO without legislative authority.

"In effect, the minister assessed a tax without parliamentary debate or budgetary approval, thus violating one of the longest-standing principles of tax law and constitutional democracies; that there be no taxation without representation."

Ellis said the lawsuit is based in part on a 2006 Federal Court ruling on a similar situation from the East Coast. In that judgment, the court found that the fisheries minister did not have the legal right to finance his department's research through the sale of snow crabs. The Federal Court of appeal determined that "the minister financed his scientific research program without first appropriating the funds necessary and by misappropriating resources that do not belong to him."

Gerald Dalum is president of an association of B.C. fishermen known as Fishing For Freedom, who are funding the disbursements for action. Dalum said the case is "long overdue," and could have "far reaching implications for the West Coast fishing industry".

"The industry doesn't object to contributing to science and research, but does object to funding costly government policies over which the industry has no input," he added.

According to the B.C. government1s Year in Review report on seafood for 2006, the B.C. halibut catch was valued at $53.9 million and represents nearly 45 per cent of the total harvest of groundfish caught in B.C.