Chinook Structure

Last week I looked at chinook and their relationship with structure. Here are a few more thoughts.

There are times when chinook are not related to structure. I mentioned open ocean fish far above the bottom, nursing, but there are circumstances closer to home. In Saanich Inlet, for instance, chinook mosey down the Bamberton shore glued to structure until they hit Sheppard Point. Conventional wisdom would have them bear right and thence to Stone Steps and McCurdy Point.

When I started fishing in the ‘70s, I would turn that corner, avoiding the reef that veered out from Sheppard between the two points to try and catch your gear. Often I would see the old timers simply carry on in a straight line and cross Squally Reach aimed directly at the other side and McKenzie Bay (Saanich regulars did not go by the ‘correct’ name of McKenzie Bight).

I thought it was because they were fishing a full spread of Peetz wire-line rods and it was easier to go in a straight line, crossing the fishless deep water, and then pick up structure and fish on the McKenzie side. But I was corrected and told that chinook often simply went in a straight line there and crossed the deep water, that, in fact, they caught lots of fish ‘high’ in the water way above the 700 foot depths.

In other words, instead of following structure, the fish did not change direction and crossed deep water with no relation to structure. I did not receive a good reason, only that they did so, and so I picked it up and, yes, caught fish in mid-channel unrelated to structure.

One explanation seems reasonable to me, but there would be more. In March to early May, some years Chinook in the 16- to 22-pound range came into the Inlet and seemed to follow it, swimming around the structure from top to bottom. My SS Guppy II 24-pounder was one of those fish. After several years of our catching them and giving creel reports and heads, DFO eliminated retention for those fish in Saanich and anglers were not impressed.

It turned out these fish were from the north and south Nooksack and Samish rivers in Puget Sound, a genetic pool the Americans were trying to save – and Victoria Waterfront retention was also closed for this reason. The behaviour we saw was crossing deep water, and circling the perimeter, but not leaving.

The best explanation is that, as Jimmy Gilbert and Charlie White put it, Saanich Inlet is a giant, natural fish trap. Wain Rock to Cherry Point is the opening, and fish migrating south simply pass into what is an 18 mile long ‘trap’. Genetics made them stay deep in the inlet, milling around, and not think to migrate back 18 miles to the north to get out of the trap and off south to Puget Sound. That made them available for a long time for anglers, and it was well known that they would migrate the perimeter and each successive day’s angling was hottest ahead of yesterday’s hotspot.

The same structureless pattern often happens in September. The Cowichan chinook, and, more-so, coho, can be found in Squally at 250 feet mid-channel, particularly on blue-sky high-pressure dog days of summer. Still prevails. That is why there is a closure in the Inlet – to protect the remaining Cowichan fish.

Another example is where migrating chinook cross deep water pushed by their genes. Some years ago, a young angler in the Pink Salmon Festival received the biggest fish of his life almost out in the shipping lanes, fishing with pink hootchies for pink salmon high in the water. That fish was likely crossing Juan de Fuca to a Puget Sound river. The same pattern prevails for chinook that hit Tumbo reef off Saturna or Active Pass. There is thirty miles of deep water that must be crossed to get to the Fraser River side.

Now, the fishing in deep water would set up a fish highway that you could follow by GPS marks, provided  there was only one opening on our side of Georgia. Let’s say only Active Pass existed. It would pass all the fish, tens of thousands in a summer.

Finally, this phenomenon exists even though chinook tend to stick to shore in the last 100 miles from home. Our late chinook, the white Harrisons, are typically Island Outfitters leader board fish in September, into the forties. They are caught on the Owen Point ledge at Port Renfrew that is a stone’s throw to shore – ditto for Aldridge and Creyke points, also flood tide waters, in Sooke – even though when passing into Georgia they cross deep water unrelated to structure.

One last thing: I have often caught chinook absolutely perpendicular to a point of land. McCurdy Point and Trial Island are such examples. Tide pushes quicker passing round a horizontal point, and one would expect the fish to be swept into the downstream eddy. But darned if they aren’t in the faster water off a point. So fish past a point rather than hauling your lines and moving, on days the tide will let you pass the point; days when it won’t, don’t waste time trying to get by, just move.

Licences and Chinook Structure

Licences: 2015 saltwater licences are now available and become effective April 1.

You can pay and print your licence at: www.pac.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/sportfish.

Or you can get one at an Independent Access Provider, a list of which can be found at: http://www.pac.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/fm-gp/rec/licence-permis/IAP-FAI-eng.pdf.

You can get the Tidal Waters Sport Fishing Guide at: http://www.pac.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/fm-gp/rec/index-eng.html.

Chinook Structure: Every fisher knows that chinook are always found related to structure. But there is much to ponder and many kinds of structure.

Offshore, chinook spend their open ocean phase related to feed and bottom structure may be a mile away. Feed becomes a kind of structure in this case. It also does where herring/baitfish ball together prior to spawning. In the past, that meant finding the bait in front of the Victoria Harbour in January to March. You found the fish once the bottom slipped away from 115 feet off the Ogden Point Breakwater and moved down to 200 feet.

The fish were found associated with staging bait, rather than bottom. The same can be said of offshore fishing spots. For example, at Langara HG, a couple of miles out from Lacey Island, one strips out 80- to 100-pulls (a 2 foot pull) and at 80- to 100-feet, at a slow troll, plenty of big mature chinook have been taken over the decades. This kind of instance is very unusual in that the chinook are not related to structure. They are coming in from the open ocean and have yet to line themselves up. You catch them because there are just so many of them you will encounter some, and because it is a kind of freeway for fish coming on shore at that spot.

There are few places along the coast where the Lacey pattern prevails, it happening largely because it is situated as the first structure the nursing chinook encounter. It is also true to say that migrating mature chinook are found miles off shore in many open ocean spots, but they are all on structure.

The 1.5 mile ‘highway’ at Kyuquot Sound has a lot to do with the ledges of rock deep in the water. But off Nootka Sound, the 13 mile bank – as in 13 miles offshore – is a flat pinnacle that migrating chinook preferentially pass because they are structure related, and most are bound for the States. Last year more than 1 million chinook formed the Columbia River escapement, for example.

Off Ucluelet lie many banks, from the 7.5 mile all the way out to the Rat’s Nose some 25 km out, a high spot in the bottom. Swiftsure Bank is the same. It can be accessed from Bamfield, Ucluelet and Port Renfrew, and forms a series of clover-leaf-shaped banks some 13 miles off Vancouver Island. Banks naturally attract fish for several reasons.

The bottom to the west of Swiftsure is more than a mile deep and the shallowest part of the bank is less than 200 feet deep. Swift rips occur any place where a vast amount of water is restricted in its flow, in this case it is a vertical restriction (as is the case with all banks) rather than the more usual horizontal restriction, the obvious examples occurring in rivers; the Powder Wharf on James Island is an example of a rock structure changing directions and forming a pocket in which chinook sit – a very common occurrence.

On the Swiftsure example, and whenever water is restricted, it must speed up to pass over and around bottom structure, in this case from 5,000 feet to 200 feet. Anyone who has been out there on a rough day can tell you that the house-sized chop has to be experienced to be appreciated. Boats and then their aerials just disappear from view, only to be lifted high by the next wave rolling under them.

All banks receive water from much deeper and this water brings the nutrients that start the food chain. Algae, plankton in its various forms, then krill/crustaceans, become the food for baitfish, and sockeye, coho and chum. Where there are baitfish – anchovy, sardines, pilchards, herring, anchovies, needlefish – you will find fish, salmon and other species.

In the case of the Rat’s Nose and Swiftsure, you fish the edges, or canyons for halibut which are right on the bottom. The salmon are farther up in the water column. In Constance Bank off Victoria for instance, the edges on the north side – 60 to 100-feet deep – and south east tack are better for chinook than fishing right on top of the bank. And you will often see boats anchored on the 60 foot depth and then the ebb taking the boat to present its halibut baits on the 140 foot lip that extends to the west. As a lee spot on an ebb, the lip gathers bait and halibut swept off the plateau above.

On days when there is a rip snorting tide, the speed often reduces fishing, for both halibut on the bottom, and salmon above. A fast flood on the Rat’s Nose pushes so hard to clear the 250 bank depth that it pushes the salmon and halibut as much as a mile off the bank to the south and east where the water is soon 500 feet deep, but the fish remain at 250. The bank gives up few fish on such a tide, but letting the current push you off keeps you in contact with the fish that the tide is also moving.

But as chinook become mature they tend to come on shore and migrate down the surf line rock piles and walls. Whale Channel, a Westcoast Resorts lodge, has some mighty fine walls as does Rivers Inlet. The chinook come right up to them and slowly move from pocket to pocket – meaning Vs formed by two horizontal outcroppings of rock, resulting in slower water between them; this is what makes Bamberton in Saanich Inlet so special – it has a half dozen Vs in half a mile.

Perhaps the best example, and my favourite place, is Tasu Sound on Haida Gwaii. It was a Westcoast lodge though there is none now, but is a classic full meal deal having halibut pinnacles, walls, a half mile wide opening through which wind just rips making the trees look some demented they are pushed sideways so much, along with bucktailing for coho, and surface fly casting to chum rafts, and half a dozen streams on the inside, calmer waters. If a lodge opens there, do go. It’s a treat.

The wall on the outside of Tasu is so vertical that you are trolling cutplugs so close your rod tip almost touches the wall, as in one foot. You are actually trolling right underneath the rock outcropping that rises right above your head. A small island completes the pocket. You feel very small among the big fish, many 50 pounders annually. Ditto for Rivers, and right around the corner from the Oak Bay lodge, tight to a wall that abruptly changes direction 90 degrees, the lee of flood or ebb indicating which side to fish – always on the lee.

And then there are surf line rock piles where you are cutplugging in water less than 50 feet deep while waves crash on the rocks and reflect back to where you rock in the conflicted water. It is a straight adrenaline hit simply to be there with your offering in the water. If you can’t get up for surf line fishing, it is time to hand in your licence.

At Langara, that is what makes Cohoe Point such a solid producer of big springs. You can grind as close to the rock as you dare and the chinook are again in the lee. Andrews is a more pronounced horizontal point – like Otter Point and Clover Point – where tight to the inside sit the springs.

Even after 30 years of being fished, Andrews still has black bass, as does Langara Rocks farther north. A strong flood will push the springs out of shore from McPherson – you follow the tide line. For anyone who has fished Langara, the nature of points of land attracting chinook, is clear because the long flat Egeria Bay shoreline that leads to Cohoe seldom gives up a fish. Like the Oak Bay and Ross Bay flats, and the apron from Quatsino’s Grant Bay, as well as the 150 apron off Nootka, that fishes well for winter springs until June.

In Nootka Sound, Esperanza Inlet, has a dozen rocks to do the grind the pocket thing, much like Spider Island north of Hakai Pass, and like Cape Beale in Bamfield, Guinia Point north of Massett, and even Church Island off Pedder. The best Nootka rock is Ferrer (pronounced Fair-e-er) and on any given day there may be as many as 25 boats grinding in a circle the underwater structure. When the bite comes on, there may be a dozen boats into big fish at the same time.

And then there are ledges. Port Renfrew’s Owen Point has an absolutely bench-like ledge at 40 feet and everyone wants to be on the same tack on the flood. In all these cases, it is structure that has affected the chinook passage, and the presence of bait, if it is there. It is one of the magical mysteries of salmon fishing that chinook will migrate right on shore. Typically, this is for local fish that have intentionally moved to shore, presumably scenting their natal river. This is the point at Ferrer Point, particularly in September when the Conuma chinook come home.

In the Broken Islands, the ebb on the rocks at Ecoole and Diplock also bunches up homing Robertson Creek Fish. Ditto for Brady’s Beach. And this water is very precise. At Cape Beale, at the 36 foot ledge you watch your downrigger drop as the skidding ball goes off the edge, and into the chinook.

In Quatsino its Kains Island has an open rock pile, surf line fishery. It makes a person jittery while learning the precise nature of pockets in the surf. I looked down one day, saw the bottom and before I could say anything, up came the downrigger arm signalling the loss of a ball.

Surfline fishing in rock piles takes time to learn the coordinates of the bottom depressions so that you can safely pluck out the good spots. At Nootka’s south entrance this includes Maquinna and Bajo points. Off Barkley, try Wya Point. And, Clayoquot’s Catface bar is a textbook example of a vertical eddy that extends for almost half a mile. It is a well-known spot for bucktailing coho from Weigh West in Tofino.

Add Odlum at Hakai, Cheney at Milbanke, and the to-die-for McInnes Point. It makes a guy itch to get out there.

Saanich inlet Fishing Stories – SS Guppy II

Hi everyone. I am still looking for Saanich Inlet fishing stories and history of its fishing to put an e-book together while we still have many of the people around who made the history. You can send them to dcreid@catchsalmonbc.com or to Mike Rose: mike-rose@shaw.ca. Please come forward. And, yes, Jack James, I will catch up with you. I have just been slow.

Here is a story of mine:

The SS Guppy II

My parents used to live on Coles Bay across the water from Jimmy Gilbert’s house. I came into use of my brother-in-law’s ‘whaling dory’ for fishing. It had a faded 2.5 HP Evinrude that was far more reliable than it looked.

The ‘vessel’ was designed well, but he had scaled it down so the boat was squished shorter to 9’2”, a tub far too buoyant for mere water. It floated on air. He had to mix and add two bags of cement to the inside so it would draw a few inches of water. In other respects, it was properly built with a sandwich core of fibreglass matt on wooden ribs, then glassed on top, both inside and out. Nothing could sink it, and on the plus side it couldn’t be stolen either, as it weighed at least 250 pounds.

In my crumby, rubber, hip waders, I dragged it down to the water, launched it and climbed aboard. There was one rule: the engine had to be brought up from the beach every time I used it. The unstealable SS Guppy II could be left on the beach because no one strong enough to steal it would be dumb enough to want it. A ‘sleek’ white hull with Mediterranean blue gunwhales, oar locks, a mid-ship seat and a helmsman bench. Arrgh Billy.

I cut my fishing teeth in this ‘craft’, learning the buoy off the Dyer Rocks, fishing the gully across the Bay, down past Gilbert’s house, to the Yellow House, known so because it was, well, yellow. In between was a hotspot I called ‘The Gas Station’ because it had a raised deck and cherry picker and looked like a gas station, though it was just a boat house.

One day, trolling along the Gilbert side, I bagged a nice ling cod, a chinook of five pounds, and with frost all over me and the seat, putted past several fellows in a big warm boat, who had, thus far, caught nothing. And, of course, just then, I got a big bite on the strip on the other side of a two pound lead ball.

I didn’t have a net (and still don’t really use one much) and the fish war far too big to get in the boat. So I towed the fish on the surface for half a mile trying to catch up to the Cadillac of sporting fellows, and called for their net.

My other rod still fishing, and their several tips on my side, I manoeuvred in, took the net, and pulled out to net the fish, though they offered, noting my decidedly challenged boat, the frost on my nose, and my rod with electrician taped guides. To them I looked a poor cousin, a Grapes of Wrath relative.

When I finally scooped the fish, it was far too big for the net, and with its head in the mesh, and the rest of it hanging out the back end, I lifted it, as heavy as the boat itself, and once in the boat chased it around with a rock trying to bean it a good one.

My Evinrude at max knots, I hunted down the boat full of sports, weaved in among the rod tips, handed off the net, pulled out to run alongside and say thanks. I lifted up my first big spring, one hand in each of the gill openings, and strained it high for good viewing. The mouths of all the sports dropped several inches, and it just added to the smile on my face. I casually asked how they had been doing and was told not a sniff.

So I held up the cod and five pounder, and offered it to them. They politely declined. I was as chuffed as the Michelin Tire man, and putted off across the bay, to land my first big fish – 24 pounds, in April no less. I was some impressed. But more so with my success in a boat of so little worth no one would steal it, and on the other hand, the million dollars of high-tech stuff and zero fish.

The SS Guppy II served me well for the next few years, as I got to know the Ardmore cliff, and the spine of rock that runs north from the buoy to two thirds across Coles Bay toward the Yellow House. Structure, the thing of chinook, I memorized.

One summer night, on water so calm it looked like I could have walked out there, I putted out to the spar buoy, and dropped my 40 gram black (works better than green in Coles Bay) Stingsilda from my state of the art Daiwa 275, anodyzed aluminium reel into the twinkling school of just-hatched herring, perhaps 1.5 inches long.

I looked across the water to Bamberton, that later I was to get to know well, fishing planers and wire line. On the Malahat ridge was a horizontal white line coming down the wall. A puff of wind hit my face, and I realized it was a storm blowing in. When the line hit sea level, several waterspouts disappeared up into the clouds.

At max speed, 3 knots, I knew I was in serious trouble it I stayed half a mile off shore, and with the waves building to one foot, following me, then two, then three, my hat blew off into the sea, I beetled shoreward. By the time I reached Dyer rocks, the waves coming up my stern exceeded 6 feet tall and the wind had climbed to 40 knots.

In my little boat I was some afraid, so I watched the waves crash down on me and try to steer straight out of them, without going through the wave in front of me before my stern was lifted high and over the wave coming at me, then under me. I turned to look for the beach, and directly in front, having come from nowhere, was a tugboat, straining to keep a four hundred yard long boom of logs, presumably lifted from the beach, from being dragged back onto the beach, and  perhaps the tugboat two.

This was, at that time, the scariest experience of my limited ocean captain experience. I had no choice but to turn sideways to the 7 foot seas in my nine foot boat, with 112 inches of freeboard. I really didn’t think I was going to make it all the way to out run the boom and tugboat. Each wave was a new introduction to death.

But I did finally out run the tug, and went flying by him at 3 knots, both of us eyeing one another with the wild expression of “Where the F#*$%&*@#$ did you come from?” I manoeuvred between the dock next door and the 20 foot rock on our side, and from seven feet high was dropped hard on the granite. Waist deep in foam, I yanked the boat the waves almost deposited on top of me, up on the logs thrown high by a previous storm. After several expletives, I was able to clip the line from the nose ring of the bow to the beach rock. Up to my chest in water, 25 pounds of Evinrude kept me steady, heading to the rock steps and up the bank to safety.

I left my rods, reels, tackle boxes, gas can, oars and the etceteras in the boat and retired to a  night of rain and shrieking Sitka spruce lining the seawall. In the morning, all the logs had been moved like toothpicks, and the beach was rearranged. When I got to the boat line – no boat in sight – I dragged it out of the gravel. There on its end was the ring to the bow, the screw having been pulled free. But no SS Guppy II.

I never did find the boat, only scraps of fibreglass. The boat had been pounded into nothing over night from a gargantuan 250 pounds into pieces too small to find. My tackle box had been thrown high into the cliff bushes. My rods, reels, the contents of my tackle box had disappeared, along with the oars and gas can. I found one metal dodger sticking out of the beach but that was all. Arrgh Billy.

Conservation and Protection – Budget Shortfall - DFO

Last time, I ended on the note that BC has the greatest need for fisheries officers in Canada, but has little more than 20% of the staff it should have. See: http://onfishingdcreid.blogspot.ca/2015/03/conservation-and-protection-branch-dfo.html.

At one officer per 24,000 citizens, this implies about 180 officers. But during the Cohen Commission into Fraser River sockeye collapse, C&P BC put forward a dozen Issue Papers on lack of funding, made 30 recommendations for change, and summarized an $18.1 million funding shortfall to perform its duties.

There is another issue: erroneously putting the Salmon Enhancement Program budget in the BC C&P budget (BC is the only province that has had such a program until the 2015 announcement of $4 million for Atlantic Canada), where it is a bargaining chip that tends to whittle down both SEP and C&P budgets when competitively presented with the entire Canadian C&P budget. To reach average national funding would require another $29 Million for BC.

And if SEP funding was presented in its own standard object, C&P BC would also need $14.6 million to replace the funding lost by the disaggregation. So that is $18.1 + $29 + $14.6 = $61.7 Million more needed for C&P BC.

These are 2011 figures, and SEP is about $20M now. However, I am told that the C&P BC shortfall and the problems have only grown worse in the intervening four years. All of these figures are on the Cohen record, and you can read the half inch of documents I scoured at the archived site: http://epe.lac-bac.gc.ca/100/206/301/pcobcp/commissions/cohen/cohen_commission/LOCALHOS/EN/INDEX.HTM. Do keep the reference as the site cannot be found by Googling: Cohen Commission.

Here are the shortfall items in the C&P budget – and this means required every year, not just once.

Salaries                                                                        $1.3 M.

Williams funding – for a credible enforcement program on the Fraser.         $1.8 M + $500,000 for vehicles.

PICFI – intelligence lead enforcement.                      $720,000

Industry funded positions – commercial ground fish related, and subject to a legal challenge, 1200 investigations                                                  $600,000

Aerial Surveillance Flights – inland, Fraser River, 800 reduced to 250 hours           $250,000

Canadian Sanitary Shellfish Program – patrols          $760,000        

Waste Water Treatment Program – to monitor the plants                                          $134,000

Aquaculture – an effective compliance program        $2.5M + $1.5M capital

Isolated Post Allowances                                           $50,000

Relocation of Fishery Officers                                   $225,000

Crown housing – for isolated locations                      $100,000

IT upgrades                                                                 $150,000

Rigid Hull Program Fuel                                             $200,000

Species at Risk Act – for credible protection             $300,000

Mid-Shore Patrol Vessels – 40 new staff. Note they require special training, such as using guns.     $2.3M - $4.3M

South East and North East BC – regarding need from the Old Man decision, for habitat, $2.4M.

The sum is the $18.1M quoted above.

Three comments:

1.      Yes, the rigid hull inflatables, purchased because of loss of patrol vessels, had zero dollars for fuel. Even if they had fuel, would you want to go out in a rigid hull on mid-BC waters that includes open ocean? I once crossed Calvert to Cape Caution at nine knots on a conflicted sea. Ugly.

2.      The IT amount does not include the money needed for the Citrix computer system upgrades, nor the radio system that needs $11M.

3.      The emails/notes for the Aquaculture program present a DFO (in Ottawa, not BC) as dysfunctional as British Columbians believe it is. Just read them. C&P was not allowed to contact the Province’s program when taking over this responsibility. Staffing ricocheted from 55 to 12 positions for more than a year, ending at 12. C&P was told that compliance was 100%, but on one of the first missions, where a fish farm noted one dead sea lion in a net, C&P found 55 dead sea lions. Skuna Bay, a Grieg Seafood offshoot into ‘organic farmed salmon’, was subsequently prosecuted for 65 dead sea lions and paid an ‘education’ fine of $100,000.

During the third session of Cohen taped testimony, Trever Swerdfagger, who was the C&P 

Assistant Deputy Minister for a short period, seemed visibly contemptuous of the proceedings. Go look and reach your own conclusion. Among other things, C&P BC needs more money.

Conservation and Protection Branch - DFO

I reviewed Randy Nelson’s book Poachers, Polluters and Politics in 2014. It is about the activities of the Conservation and Protection branch of DFO. You should read it. He spent his career there and was the director for many years. It is a difficult profession that takes fortitude to put up with the problems and dangers in enforcement of salmon, habitat, fisheries, and related investigations. It takes a wife who buys into such a career.

Pick up the book from Harbour Publishing or Amazon.ca. For my review, see: http://onfishingdcreid.blogspot.ca/2014/10/poachers-polluters-and-politics-by.html.

There is more to say, more than just this article and I will return to the subject again. I have reviewed a half inch worth of C&P documents submitted to the Cohen Commission on the crash of Fraser sockeye in 2009. The documents are on the Cohen record, among the half million pages DFO sent along for review. So they are all public documents that you can read.

Find the Cohen website here: http://epe.lac-bac.gc.ca/100/206/301/pcobcp/commissions/cohen/cohen_commission/LOCALHOS/EN/INDEX.HTM. Do keep the reference as this is now an archived website and cannot be found by Googling: Cohen Commission.

The branch has many duties: waste water treatment plants, aquaculture enforcement, ground fish, sport, commercial and First Nations fisheries, small craft acquisitions, Pacific Integrated Commercial Fishing Initiative, Coast Guard marine fishery enforcement officer program, fisheries management, habitat inspection and enforcement, operational budget and policy responsibilities, vehicles, air patrols, First Nation Treaty obligations, species at risk investigations, mid-shore vessels, offshore vessels, conservation requirements stemming from the Old Man River Decision, radio and security needs, Williams Report responsibilities for Fraser sockeye enforcement, and etc.

Its summary document for Cohen made more than 30 recommendations. It stated: “Fisheries Officers are the main enforcement presence in coastal waters. The RCMP has a small marine unite, the Coast Guard has eliminated their small enforcement presence, and the province has very little access to marine waters, while other Federal agencies don’t have dedicated marine capacity.”

In Issue Paper 10: “C&P staff respond to as many occurrences and violations in Pacific Region as the rest of the country combined, with 1/3 the staff!” And: “Pacific has more First Nations [200], more recreational fishers [300K in saltwater], more aquaculture, more habitat work and more complex commercial fisheries than the rest of Canada.” And,” if the Salmon Enhancement Program were removed from its budget, $14.6 M more would be required just to keep funding in line with the other 4 regions.”

The rest of the responsibilities include, “the largest river bar fishery in the world, the most First Nations, the most without treaties, the largest number of Integrated Fishing Management Plans, the most species at risk [SARA],  the most habitat impacts through logging and mining, the most placer mining, the most occurrences/violations of any region.” The Pacific Cost also has one third more vessel traffic than the entire east coast.

As the Pacific area is the largest, one would expect that the most resources were spent in BC. Not so. By region, the numbers of Fishery Officers per citizen are: Newfoundland: 1 to 4,600 citizens; Maritimes: 1:6,000; Gulf: 1:8,000; and Pacific: 1:24,000. In other words BC has the least funding per citizen. Compared with other areas, Newfoundland, for example, has roughly five times as many Fishery Officers as BC. Stated the other way, BC has only 20% of the Fishery Officers that it should have.

More next time.