DFO, Salmon and Killer Whales

The Sport Fishing Institute sent around a note – link at bottom – this past week asking for sport fishers to send a letter to DFO on the closing of sport fishing to put more chinook in the tummies of Southern Resident Killer whales. So, I wrote a letter to Dominic LeBlanc and also put it on one of my sites: http://fishfarmnews.blogspot.com/2018/05/dfo-salmon-and-killer-whales.html. Please write your own.

It is a cut to the chase piece that notes the problem is long term intransigence by DFO for both salmon habitat restoration and protecting killer whales. It is below. Immediately below is my second note to LeBlanc:

Hi Dominic (Letter also sent to Justin Trudeau, Andrew Weaver, Elizabeth May, Adam Olsen, Martin Paish, Chris Bos, Rebecca Reid, Sport Fishing Institute).

I sent a letter to you this past week noting that the chinook/killer whale problem is not going to be solved by closing sport fishing in selected areas. I have written on fisheries policy for 25 years, and the answer is: significantly increasing habitat restoration funding and netpens for chinook.

In the past four days, since posting the letter to my Fish Farm News and Science site, it has had an unprecedented response: 8,500 pageviews so far, virtually all from Canada. I used to write letters for ministers in the BC government, and know lists of issues are kept, and preparing responses is a meticulous, time consuming and costly activity. 

If 8,500 responses had been received, it would have shut down the branch preparing them for months. That is how big a response BC has to your ill-conceived plan that will solve nothing, other than make British Columbians angry. My plan will solve the problem. Please read it again.

After buying the Kinder Morgan pipeline with BC taxpayer money, you need a significant win in BC or you will be shut out in the next election. You will recall that BC was the balance of power in the last election.

DC Reid

Here is the first letter:

Hi Dominic et al

I want to tell you that it is greatly disappointing that after 40 years of DFO managing BC salmon into extinction, here we are today, with you eliminating recreational fishing in areas of the Salish Sea/Juan de Fuca Strait for killer whale food, when the real solution is for DFO to have been doing freshwater habitat restoration and hatchery epigenetics work at a rate that would have seen salmon stocks stay at the same level as in the 1960s.

What you are doing now is with almost extinction levels of Fraser chinook, feeding almost extinct killer whales that DFO has not been doing enough for over the decades, and finally, when it won’t save the whales, eliminating a sport fishery, and they will likely become extinct, anyway. Note that from the east all we hear from DFO is how 500 right whales are on the brink. Note that 76 BC orcas are only 15.2% of your eastern right whales.

Note the attached shot of a 1960’s morning’s sport catch from the Nahmint River, a small drainage in the Alberni Inlet. Where are the Nahmint and dozens of other chinook runs today, DFO?

Two things are required immediately: far greater money spent on freshwater habitat restoration, and netpens of chinook.

Freshwater Habitat Restoration

I think $100 million needs to be invested each year for the next 10 years to catch up. If you look at what $1.5 million did to the Clay Bank on the Cowichan River, it shows that money doesn’t go very far. I suggest you give the money to the Pacific Salmon Foundation because it leverages money 4 to 7 times, and the public, particularly students and sport fishers do most projects.

I spent more than a week’s time figuring out from DFO’s patchwork of data/reports (because DFO doesn’t have a final number) that there were, before escapement, 73 million salmon in the ocean. In perspective, this is 99.8% of all the salmon in Canada. Your eastern Atlantic salmon are a measly .2-to .4-million, or .2%.

In my estimation, there are four major problems that have lead to the downward spiral of wild BC salmon: lack of freshwater habitat restoration, DFO, in-ocean fish farms and climate change. We can change every major problem except climate change. 

Netpens

I recommend an immediate establishment of a dozen netpens of 2 million chinook fry each. Use Robertson Creek and the Nitinat hatcheries for Juan de Fuca Strait, and Cowichan – a river that has had a large turnaround in the past few years – for Strait of Georgia. That means 24 million fry each year for the next ten years. The point is that it has to be done quickly to save the killer whales, and though it is 4 years to adults, if we wait, it is those years plus 4 years to adults. 

Pay attention to the issue of triploiding for netpens and epigenetics for an increased Salmon Enhancement Program in the specific rivers. And pay attention to the work done by the South Vancouver Island Anglers Coalition, Sooke netpen operation using Nitinat stock, now releasing its second crop. Funding comes from members, mostly anglers. And a seal cull would help.

Finally, after buying out Kinder Morgan, you liberals are in deep trouble in BC, on two major issues. You need to do something major quickly, and a recent poll shows that BC holds salmon as dear as Quebec does French.

Thanks

DC Reid

See: https://www.sportfishingbc.com/forum/index.php?threads/important-note-from-sfi-bc-sviac-re-fishing-regs.70431/.

Laws and Policies to do with Pacific Salmon

This article brings together many strands of law and policy to do with Pacific salmon. Consider it a source when you are looking for information.

You may find the Wild Salmon Policy, 2005 here on DFO’s site. We all want DFO to be doing this policy, something they have been remiss about for a very long time: http://www.pac.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/fm-gp/species-especes/salmon-saumon/wsp-pss/index-eng.html. And the Cohen Commission also called for getting on with the habitat policy extant even longer, since 1986, in his recommendation 41: http://www.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/cohen/report-rapport-eng.htm#r1. 

Curtail Chinook Fisheries

Right off the top, let me say that I think it is not that far fetched that DFO will curtail the sport fishery for chinook on the grounds they feed orcas and there are not enough of them. Brian Riddell, PSF, may have a more informed opinion on this as he led a recent several-day meeting on orca issues.

I would say two things: DFO has consistently over the decades not done enough freshwater habitat restoration and salmon numbers have been declining to the point where the commercial harvest was pretty much non-existent in 2017. By comparison, Alaska, that forbids fish farms, and does ocean ‘ranching’ had a huge commercial haul of 243 million salmon.

In my opinion the big areas of decline are the Fraser, Broughton Archipelago with Kingcome Inlet and Clayoquot Sound.

Second, with science backing the argument, a half dozen environmental non-governmental organisations (ENGOs) are telling DFO to stop the fishery. I give donations to about a dozen such bodies in BC. An example is the Georgian Strait Alliance. Here is my response to ED Christianne Wilhelmson text to me on the orca/chinook issue. I have left out her original comments to save space:

1. Net pens would put current chinook eggs already in hatcheries, like the Nitinat, Quinsam and Cowichan, into saltwater net pens in spring, where after three weeks of feeding, they are sent off. This is six months, not five years. Followed up by more eggs produced next year. Net pens are not difficult to make, use or maintain. I suggest you do one.
2. I have watched killer whales thrash kelp beds to feed on the fish that flee, and watched a sealion tossed into the air in Brentwood Bay. I would say that a preference for chinook is more about their being present 12 months of the year than other reasons. If the other four species, currently present for 2 months a year or every two years, were present year-round, I doubt that chinook would be seen to be 90% of their diet.
3. The real problem here is DFO – in Ottawa. I have watched them dwindle salmon away for 40 years and have lots of correspondence and stats from earlier decades on the issues. The fault is directly theirs. Even if chinook fishing were terminated, DFO would dwindle them to zero, just as they did east coast cod – and it would be far easier without the complaining commercial and sport sectors. We really need $100 million in freshwater habit restoration every year for a decade to turn things around. At least we have the Pacific Salmon Foundation. Note that one particularly good project is the coho channels put in the Taylor River above Sproat lake. There should be more of such projects, and they depend on flat land, tree protection and consistent water.
4. Climate change is now a factor, and thinking needs to include solar power, water pumps, cooling and oxygen. Cabling logs will help many watersheds shed logging damage gravel. I have rejected dams high in watersheds on several grounds: they are costly to build and maintain, are destructive of wild land, could be commandeered for run of river power and have a limited life.
5. Terminating sport chinook fishing would cause a steep decline in revenues/employment from this source. I went through the stats and came out that the fish resource, including freshwater, is far higher than the $1B figure we always use. I calculate it at $2.52 Billion and can show you how I calculated the figure – it was published in the PSF’s quarterly magazine. A huge decline can be expected from the saltwater portion, resulting in job losses, and below-value boat sales. No one needs a boat if you can’t fish. My current annual servicing bill, for example, is $4000, only a portion of my annual expenditure. Moorage is $3000, and so on.
6. Thanks for the names of the scientists. Note that the PSF’s Salish Sea project may return coho and chinook numbers to 1990s levels – but, yes, a long-term outcome, when we need an immediate answer.
7. We need to feed killer whales now, by actually giving them fish – hake, pollack, sablefish – or injecting nutrition into their veins, if possible.
8. There are no genetic issues with diploid or triploid chinook as they are sterile, and I don’t buy the argument that they would eat the food of wild fish, because there are no wild fish, and thus the feed is not being eaten.
9. I would say that chum are far more important to our forests than any other species – their large size, and large numbers. 30 years of river fishing in the fall has shown me their carcasses.
10. By all means reach out to the sport sector, and do it soon. Consider them an ally not an enemy.

Just so you know, my first degree is in biochemistry, my third degree in public administration followed by finance and heavy-duty number crunching in Treasury Board Staff, BC Min of Finance. That’s where I get the abilities to come up with figures that don’t exist. For example, fish farm sewage in BC can be conservatively estimated at $10.4B, and they kill 5.76 billion forage fish to bring in one harvest in a BC sized industry – they don’t save fish, they kill fish. Both figures took me a long time to figure out.

Fix Fish Protection Laws

Here is an article I wrote that brings together much about laws that needs change to improve things for salmon. It is slanted toward fish farms, as that is the blog I put it on: http://fishfarmnews.blogspot.ca/2017/04/the-strictest-laws-in-world-wrong.html.

Do read the Hakai magazine on weakening of laws, followed by a discussion of the HADD (harmful alteration, disruption or destruction of fish habitat) provisions, Section 35 of the Fisheries Act. 

Here is DFO’s take on HADD before and after 2012, when Harper weakened the law for his business buddies: http://www.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/pnw-ppe/changes-changements/index-eng.html. The downside on this one is that after LeBlanc came to be minister, it came out that DFO didn’t want to go back to the original laws, as its interest is business, not fish.

And do remember that changing the laws makes no difference if there is no enforcement presence or willingness to charge infringers. DFO does not have enough Conservation and Protection (C&P) presence in BC. This is from former director, Randy Nelson, whose book Poachers, P9olluters and Politics should be on your winter reading list: http://www.harbourpublishing.com/title/PoachersPollutersPolitics. It is very entertaining for anyone who fishes and also shows just how difficult a job being a CO is. If your wife is not willing to go along with your zeal for catching bad guys, because of its inherent danger, you had better look for another occupation.

Returning to the article I wrote, included is a stand alone document, that takes a major portion of attention as it is the individuals, taken collectively, that should be number one on our list, the Royal Society: http://fishfarmnews.blogspot.ca/2012/02/key-document-royal-society-of-canada.html.

Then carry on down the list I have put together: http://fishfarmnews.blogspot.ca/2017/04/the-strictest-laws-in-world-wrong.html.

Note the ecojustice list of problems with HADD provisions and taking DFO to court over putting PRV farmed salmon in the water. And West Coast Environmental Law, item 12, has good legal argument: http://fishfarmnews.blogspot.ca/2016/04/fixing-fisheries-act-west-coast.html. 

And item 10 is Jeff Mathews’ take on 17 ways our fish laws have been weakened, written for the Huffington Post: http://fishfarmnews.blogspot.ca/2015/05/seventeen-ways-government-is-helping.html. 

There is a lot more there, but you can peruse it at your leisure. You will find links to every document.

Elizabeth May and Fin Donnelly

Both of these BC MPs have contributed to the call for changes to laws that protect salmon and other fish species.

In December, 2016, Fin put together Bill 228 for bringing fish farms out of the water. The Liberals voted it down, although, in BC, 70% voted for it, with just the ministers voting negative. BC Liberals realize that if they don’t stand with salmon, they won’t get re-elected.

Here is Fin’s bill, and commentary on his text: http://fishfarmnews.blogspot.ca/2016/12/bill-c-228-trudeau-liberals-stand.html. The gist of this is that actual jobs in the fish farm industry are about 10% of what they claim. 

This past week the fish farm associations came out with the recommendation that Canada triple fish farms to bring employment to ’19,000'. My usual rule of thumb is that if you multiply such estimates by 10%, you will have the realistic number, in this case, 1900 jobs across Canada. Both east and west coast are against the negative effects on wild salmonids represented by fish farms.

Just yesterday, Elizabeth May came out with her recommendations on what to do to revamp the Fisheries Act to bring with it proper protection for salmon/habitat. You may find her text here: http://elizabethmaymp.ca/uncategorized/2016/11/30/elizabeth-mays-submission-in-response-to-the-review-of-changes-to-the-fisheries-act/. And she has a PDF near the beginning.

These are her November 30, 2017 recommendations on HADD and so on, made to the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans on the ‘gutted’ Act.

And on Harper’s rewriting of the Fisheries Act in 2012, she says this: “It is not based on evidence or sound public policy analysis. In fact, it came from industry lobbying – word for word. To my knowledge in the last forty years of evolving environmental law, this is the first time in Canadian history that laws have been literally dictated to government by industry.”

Read the rest of her note. I pass now to her bullets to wrap this up:

• Repeal changes to the federal Fisheries Act found in spring 2012’s omnibus budget bill C-38.
• Remove the exemption of the Fisheries Act in the C-38 changes to the National Energy Board Act when pipelines are involved, as well as removal of the Species at Risk Act and Navigable Waters Act.
• Strengthen the Fisheries Act to:
• Require evaluation of threats to fish stocks and include provisions to protect fish stocks and the marine environment;
• Make protection of critical stocks and habitat mandatory;
• Require that the management and conservation of wild fisheries take precedence over aquaculture, wherever there are conflicts;
• Increase penalties for contravening the Fisheries Act;
• Improve public participation in decision making, under the principles of the Oceans Act, in particular engaging coastal communities in local fisheries management;
• Implement the Wild Salmon policy;
• Transfer the promotion of aquaculture to Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada and restore DFO’s role in protecting coastal eco-systems from the threat posed by open-pen aquaculture; and,
• Make fish-friendly flood control an aspect of climate adaptation.

The only thing I would add to May’s list is that we need adequate C&P funding and the department’s willingness to charge and follow through to conviction. Otherwise, there is no point changing the law, other than to affect the front end which is when projects get vetted for environmental reasons.