The
report is found here: https://engage.gov.bc.ca/app/uploads/sites/426/2018/11/Wild-Salmon-Strategy-Options-Paper.pdf.
Goal
1 – Increase the Abundance of Wild Salmon in BC
You say billions have been spent on salmon restoration.
I don’t agree. Take the current $100 Million from DFO announced in Dec 2018.
Wilkinson’s news releases are short on details and long on generalities of
expenditures, for example, science and fish farms. These are not direct
spending on increasing wild salmon. So, no, this is not $100M for wild salmon.
Having said this, putting
money into fresh water habitat restoration is the number one need for
bringing back wild salmon.
1.1 Protect critical salmon habitats from
loss or degradation.
Yes, protect habitat from loss or degradation before
it happens so money doesn’t need to be spent on restoring habitat not yet
destroyed. Do convince DFO to make the Fisheries Act clear in this regard – the
HADD provisions for example.
I would not spend cash on creating a list of
provincial waters, as this takes cash away from habitat restoration. Similarly,
I am not convinced that using scarce dollars to create a BC fisheries ministry
is worthwhile, compared with putting money directly into salmon. But say more
and I could be convinced, as it supports BC taking over salmon restoration/enhancement/governance/marketing
in the long run.
(Since I wrote this, I came upon a study in my many
deep piles of salmon research that did a comprehensive look at all salmon bearing
waters in BC, and thus is a place to start in the enumeration process. I have
alerted the Secretariat that I have the report, in a photocopy, and will show it
to them in due course. It is called: Opportunities for Salmonid Enhancement
Projects in British Columbia and the Yukon, 1983. It included escapements,
increases with enhancement and cost information. The Co-Chairs were: AF Lill
and A Tautz).
1.2 STRATEGY Invest in the restoration of critical
salmonid habitats that have been
lost or degraded.
Yes, this
is the most important need for cash to bring back wild salmon. Put $15M into the
Pacific Salmon Foundation (PSF) annually for freshwater habitat restoration.
They leverage money 4 to 7 times and thus a decade of investment equals $600-
to $1050-million for salmon. The biggest infusion of cash ever for wild salmon.
Ask DFO to put the same amount in as well, but don’t wait for them to come on
board. BC has authority to do freshwater habitat restoration.
Yes,
to opportunity 1.
Yes,
to op 3, though less to estuaries, other than prime ones like the Fraser. Put
money into the PSF.
Yes,
to op 4, get people involved with doing restoration in their own areas. They
will do it, particularly local sport fishers.
Yes,
to op 5. Try to remove dams where feasible.
Yes,
to op 6. Culverts are a major area where work is needed. Memory suggests 70,000
with electrical potential problems and construction that impedes salmon rising
beyond them. This will take years and big dollars.
1.3 STRATEGY Increase the production of juvenile salmon
under controlled conditions.
Yes,
to increased numbers of fry. Use epigenetics to keep them as near to wild as
possible. Use netpens of diploided and triploided sterile salmon, particularly
chinook for SRKWs, to put more fish in the sea, and fish that do not go back to
rivers, can’t mate. They return to netpen sites for harvest for our Indigenous
peoples. It makes no sense to cut our numbers if our global partners don’t;
that is shooting ourselves in the foot. (Since I wrote this, I now have the
current PSF Salmon Steward which recommends what I have suggested: netpens.
See: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/1044167-winter-2018).
Yes,
to op 1. It is the crux of the matter on this strategy. Review the really
stellar things already done, like the chum spawning channel on the Big Q and
the coho channels in the trees of the Taylor River above Sproat Lake. The San
Juan River has lots of flat land that could have the same type of restoration
as the Taylor. Any river with flat areas can provide ops.
Yes,
to op 2.
Yes,
to op 3. Are you aware that DFO’s Salmon Enhancement Program has been beggared
over the decades because it is put in the Conservation and Protection Budget
for annual budgeting purposes? This has led to it being a bargaining chip in
the annual national process, and thus being beggared. Let’s tell DFO to put it
elsewhere so this does not happen.
1.4 STRATEGY Consider predator, exotic and invasive
species management programs.
Yes, to a
targeted seal/sea lion cull. The PSF work shows that they eat chinook and coho
fry in the Strait of Georgia at 40% and 47% respectively.
Yes, to
having our Indigenous peoples do river swims and eliminate Atlantic salmon and
progeny. John Volpe’s work shows that of the Van Isle rivers he swam, that 97%
have adults and fry. This is shocking and has to stop.
1.5 STRATEGY Actively engage First Nations in the
protection, restoration and enhancement activities associated with wild salmon.
Yes, and
yes to funding Indigenous work. I have seen their river crew on North Van Isle
and they look good and have purpose in their lives.
And yes,
to funding their work in remote areas, for example, the Wannock chinook in
Rivers Inlet. The Owikeno sockeye have been decimated and the Clayoquot Sound
Kennedy Lake sockeye were wiped out by commercial fishing in the ‘90s, but with
22 fish farms, they have never come back. And let’s support them by having the
PRV salmon processing companies sterilize their processing water.
GOAL 2: Support and encourage greater community
engagement with wild salmon
Yes, I
have read that poll (BC residents consider salmon are as important as Quebecers
think French is important) and agree that the Liberals are in deep trouble if
they continue beggaring wild salmon in BC and if they actually build the
Trans-Mountain pipeline.
2.1 STRATEGY In collaboration with DFO, engage
communities more directly and
deliberately in the stewardship of their adjacent
resources.
I am
dubious of DFO in Ottawa being a productive partner. I would engage communities
in a way that if DFO does not come along easily, that BC does it. Plan for this
eventuality, right at the beginning.
Yes,
to ops 1 and 2. Of 2, make it clear that this is a made-in-BC Wild Salmon Strategy.
Yes,
to op 3. Put together a cheaper model than a corporation or registered charity
for towns/groups to set up and run their programs. As it stands, these are
expensive, have annual audit requirements, need for complex bylaws, boards and
etc.
Yes,
to op 4, curriculum material taught in schools, so all kids understand salmon,
and thus nature.
Yes,
to 5, and note my comment in 3.
Yes
to 6, a tax/charge for harvesting opportunities spent in the local areas. A
direct link from one to the other in each area.
Yes
to 7, and a few technical people that citizens in local level
restoration/enhancement work can access. Keep the focus on restoration, not
more staff.
2.2 STRATEGY Seek ways to advance a positive and
collaborative federal-provincial-Indigenous Peoples framework to better support
the stewardship and management of BC’s marine, freshwater and terrestrial habitats
important to wild salmon. This framework must include the active and effective
engagement of resource users and fishing communities.
Rationale
– I am glad that you recognize that BC has authority for freshwater, as that is
the crux of the issue. Thus, this is a made-in-BC
Wild Salmon Plan.
Rationale – I am glad that you recognize that “the
members of the Wild Salmon Advisory Council caution governments not to put structure before function.
The top priority and focus must remain on actions to assure salmon abundance.”
Op
1. I am dubious that a tri-level agreement will be functional. Place more
emphasis on BC, BC public, BC Indigenous people.
Op
2. My calculation is that sport fishing revenue in salt- and fresh-water is
$2.52B, far in excess of the figure we commonly use, so keep that in mind. I am
dubious of the BC fisheries body, until the freshwater habitat restoration
needs of wild salmon is achieved. Don’t waste time and money on bureaucratic
structure that should be spent on salmon.
Op
3. I say no. Canadians don’t identify with BC salmon and should be left out of
this. This is a BC program for BC. The only use for ‘Canadians’ is selling
something for money to DFO.
2.3 STRATEGY Create mechanisms to ensure that all
active commercial fish harvesters are able to participate in decisions made
about BC’s fisheries resources.
Yes,
we want to eliminate ‘slipper skippers’, Jimmy Pattison groups, and provide a
structure like the Sport Fish Advisory Board for commercial participants.
However, this one seems like a red herring to me, as if I were a commercial
sector member, I would have lobbied until there was such a body connected to
government long ago.
2.4 STRATEGY Create collaborative structures of
governance that recognize aboriginal rights and respond to Indigenous Peoples’
FSC and economic interests with respect to wild salmon management
Please
note that this item has caused acrimonious relations between the First Nation
and Sport sectors, particularly on the Fraser River approach waters, for a very
long time. It is a perennial subject in Sport Fish Advisory Board annual
reviews of fishing opportunities.
I
don’t see a problem with direct sales within First Nation sites. This has been
going on informally for decades, the Tseshaht in Port Alberni, for instance.
Op 1. I think that this one takes a back-burner
position and does not get in the way of bringing back wild salmon. I see this
as taking some long term selling to the sectors and public of BC, and would be
disappointed for it to cause a stumbling block for the entire project/process.
Having said that, I am happy that BC Indigenous peoples will be involved in
monitoring the Broughton Archipelago fish farms, a subject that directly
compares with this one. Let’s see some positive results from that so that the
public has a reason to think that a similar process here may also see some
benefit, before committing to it.
Op 3. Yes, to a transparent, effective completion of Cohen
recommendations. DFO has already written off the subject as completed. They
need to know that BC does not agree. We want concrete results: appropriations,
dollars to function and FTEs (full time equivalents, ie., actual people) for each
of the 75 recommendations that Cohen made.
Op 4. We need more information to make a reasoned response to this one:
Pacific Salmon Commission renegotiation of the treaty between the USA and
Canada.
GOAL 3:
Protect and enhance the economic, social and cultural benefits that accrue to
BC communities from wild salmon and other seafood resources.
The BC
Stats Report has the best stats – see table below. They are the
government’s own current stats. (An updated report comes out early in 2019).
Notes:
1.
Commercial employment has been cut in half to 1400
since fish farms have been in the province. Fish farms don’t create employment,
they replace jobs that they eliminate with their environmental damage.
2.
Sport employment is the highest in the table at
8400. You want to back the sport sector.
3.
Aquaculture employment is only 12.2% of total
employment.
4.
Aquaculture GDP contribution is tiny compared with
the other salmon sectors. And fish farms are only 90% of the figure, or, in
other words, only contribute $55.7 million to GDP. This means that the lion’s
share of revenue of $469 million goes back to Norway to be distributed to
shareholders. Fish farms don’t bring revenue and jobs as they claim. The claim
is false. And the environmental side is even worse. I have references for the
following figures: the sport sector, salt and fresh water brings in $2.52 billion
revenue; fish farms kill 5.76 billion forage fish to bring in one crop in BC;
the sewage cost is $10.4 billion; GDP effect is only 9%. It makes no sense to
have fish farms in the water.
3.1 STRATEGY: Encourage
initiatives and champion regulatory changes that will enhance
economic opportunity for commercial fish
harvesters, vessel owner-operators, their local communities and economies.
Put a $10
fee on saltwater licences and as there are 300,000 licences annually, this
means $3 million. Put this money into freshwater habitat restoration.
Yes,
to op 1.
Qualified
yes, to op 2. I don’t see DFO being a committed member, given their lack of
results in the past 40 years. Be prepared from the outset to go it alone as a
made-in-BC plan. In my opinion, the Standing Committee as well as the Senate
committee are light weights and badly informed, particularly on fish farm
issues.
Op
3. Include the sport sector in this agreement, or there will be trouble. The
Sport Fish Advisory Board has a long-term issue with Indigenous people,
particularly with the Fraser allocation of fish.
Op
4. This sounds good, but I would have to see results before believing it.
Op
5. Yes, to getting rid of ‘slipper skippers’ and Pattison Group types buying up
quota, thereby eliminating local business. And let’s stop the herring roe
fishery for a decade to bring back wild salmon. It also makes sense to foster
Indigenous harvest for public sale, like herring roe on pine boughs, clams,
prawns and so on.
Yes,
to op 6. The items you note sound good: “Options may include: innovative
fleet development such as licence banks; the diversification of access; the development of
new and underutilized species; and
innovative programming including loan funds and community quota.”
Yes,
to op 7. Let’s foster the individual, individual businesses and those who are
direct harvesters.
3.2 STRATEGY Support activities that encourage new
entrants, particularly next generation Indigenous and non-Indigenous youth,
into the commercial and recreational fishing sectors.
Rationale
– yes. But do this after money has been spent and there are results from wild
salmon restoration funding, or there will be nothing for new entrants to do.
This is a down the road objective.
Yes,
to op 4. The others depend on salmon being brought back, but this one funds
people to do freshwater habitat restoration, the most important item in the
whole report. The rest of the items are dependent on the salmon resource being
healthy.
3.3 STRATEGY Support processing and value-added
opportunities that help to retain
more of the landed value of the resource at the
community level.
This is a good idea but will require advertising and
marketing fostered by the province. The seafood sector is growing almost
exponentially on a global level – I follow the global fish farm/seafood
industry, receiving 30 global press newsletters each week – and it is time to
stake out a territory and execute to claim our niche. I can help with this if
you wish.
Qualified
yes to op 1. Make a point of fostering different kinds of seafood, for example,
seaweed, aqua algae feed and insect meal. Additionally, on-land shrimp is a
huge global business. Vietnam expects to exceed $8B in exports and is a world
leader in shrimp farming. We can beat them because many consumers don’t believe
that Asian product is safe to eat. We also have transport advantages over much
of the rest of the industry, for example, Ecuador, trying to ship into Canada.
Yes,
to op 2. It makes sense to do the ‘value added’ work of consumer foods. Have
someone follow the seafood press: Undercurrents, Ultrafish, Seafood News, Fish
Farming Expert and so on, for ‘value added’ information. The UK does a lot of
this. So, follow the UK in the global press.
And you should set up on-land fish farms, as they are now the big business side of the
industry. In the USA the big four coming on stream are: Atlantic Sapphire,
Nordic Aquafarms, Aquabanc and Whole Oceans. At 218,000mt, they are two and a
half times the size of the BC industry and have the consumer interest in
environmental protection. They may well put the BC industry out of business,
unless it moves to on-land. Furthermore, the PE Fund is aiming at an additional
260,000mt of global output, and my list of on-land fish farms has far greater
on-land output: 260 different global farms: https://fishfarmnews.blogspot.com/2016/05/152-different-on-land-fish-farm-systems.html.
With Indigenous people, and fish farm employees
looking for the security of a land job, as in-ocean are wound down, put up a
33,000mt on land farm on northern Vancouver Island, to get into this nascent
global market. Consider whether the Kuterra plant could be redesigned as part
of the decision to build. It may save money to repurpose a plant, rather then
build from scratch.
But,
do note, that op 2 for traditional product only works after wild salmon have
been brought back.
Yes,
to op 3. There is existing friction with DFO handing out tickets to sport
anglers transporting more than their own fish to a facility. Also, to
investigate the transport to and from processing facilities, get in touch with
several remote sport lodges, for example in Haida Gwaii, because they already
do this. It is common that sport tourists get their fish processed while at the
lodge, and then the lodge transports them to Terminal 2 at the Vancouver
Airport for pick up. Any other processing is arranged for sport tourists and
then shipped to them from the processor already processed into cans, smoked, frozen
fillets and so on, anywhere on the globe. So, there is good experience already
doing this.
Yes, to op 3. Look back at op 2 for details.
3.4 STRATEGY Support increased opportunities for fishery-related
tourism
Rationale
– please, please use the word ‘sport’
fishing rather than recreational fishing. The latter is a DFO phrase and it
belittles the industry. And your stat of $1.3B as revenue is incorrect. The
salt- and fresh-water sport revenue is $2.52 Billion. I recalculated this
figure and it was published by the Pacific Salmon Foundation in their quarterly
report.
This is
how I calculated the $2.52 Billion revenue figure: http://fishfarmnews.blogspot.com/2015/05/salmonfishing-revenue-towers-over.html.
Yes,
to op 1. I can help you do this. Note my calculation above. I have heavy-duty
number crunching skills from having worked for BC’s Treasury Board Staff. I
will stack my skills up against anyone. And I will be crunching the new BC
Stats Report when Agriculture releases it in early 2019. If the method has been
changed, I will be pointing out every place they have strayed from the 2012 BC
Stats Report.
A
qualified yes to op 3. Problems are the amount of cash, and if problems occur,
then the province has them on its back.
A qualified yes to op 4. Creel surveys have been
fraught with problems over the decades between sport and DFO, including
Indigenous people. But stats make it easy to manage salmon numbers more accurately,
and make it ‘management by BC,’ not the feds.
And other figures can be calculated, like the value of
a chinook or coho when caught in the sport sector. If memory serves me
correctly, the figure for one sport chinook was, in the mid ‘90s, $62.
3.5 STRATEGY Increase the overall value accruing to
BC’s seafood and seafood products
in the global marketplace.
Rationale
– yes, I agree, and have made many points in the strategies above that apply
here. The global market for seafood is exploding, and there is room for both
wild and farmed salmon – particularly farmed on land, as consumers no longer
want salmon that comes with environmental damage. There are transport
advantages in North America for on-land, and around the world, smoked, canned,
frozen, fillets. And, right now is the best time to get in on the on-land
market: it is proven, cost effective, and consumer supported.
Also,
consider putting together a BC stamp
for putting on products sold globally, as seal of approval and quality.
Yes,
to op 2. I can tell you how to do this.
Qualified
yes, to op 3. The issue is: ‘where can we make the most money, and jobs?’ Is it
best to have BC processing for part or whole of the processing? For example,
there is a global market for headed, gutted, fresh salmon. Do we make more
money, doing this part of processing and shipping product, or can we make more
money by value adding to canned, fileted, smoked, prepared meals, school
lunches, vacuuming packing and so on, as is currently done around the world. It
is an economic issue and the economists at BC Stats can figure this out.
Re
op 4: if you get in touch with the remote sport fishing lodges, you would be
able to figure much of this out. Also, if you have a staff person put together
a list of the parts, and ask each of them, what could we do to help you, I
would bet you would get good feed back.
Re
op 5: there would be in-season bottlenecks.
Thanks
for all this work. Let’s move forward with a BC plan to save BC wild salmon.
