Greg Taylor: Holding DFO to Account on Endangered Chinook - Watershed Watch - Updated Nov 19, 2020

Go read the Watershed Watch take on dangerously declining chinook salmon [the rest are not doing well either]. They have much to say that is useful: https://watershedwatch.ca/greg-taylor-holding-dfo-to-account-on-endangered-chinook/?mc_cid=1f4d80c698&mc_eid=5777c92bcd.

Here is my comment on their short document, as in do read what they have to say.

DFO and the SFAB set the annual rec take, It is now so low the industry is having trouble surviving. ENGOs should have a member of theirs who also fishes attend SFAB meetings and get the information that is used each year. If the rec fish were stopped that would be up to a $2.52B loss for the economy. The solution here is to immediately put out 12 ocean netpens of 2 million chinook fry each, each of which is diploided or triploided and fin clipped. The most important from immediate killer whale (SRKWs) food is the Cowichan because they circle the Strait of Georgia for a year or more before going offshore.

Netpen fish cannot spawn, do not return to rivers, but to the saltwater site of the netpen, where an Indigenous fishery could mop up the returnees, with the excess for others. This would save the SRKWs and put fish that can be distinguished by the missing adipose fin, for retention. There is no damaging of genes because they cannot spawn. But DFO needs to be pushed because they tried putting 35M Vedder chinook, that will return in four years. That means SRKWs go south for 4 years with no food. The netpen approach puts fish in the water right now. Also, along with the Robertson Creek and Cowichan stock, the Nitinat should be used too. At the terminal end the sexless returnees should be picked up in big buckets by helicopters, and, go directly to an already-identified SRKW pod (reduces the transit time from pick up to drop off) and drop them in front of them so they have food as of this September and every year hence from the netpens. If we don't do netpens, because DFO has been managing salmon into extinction for 50 years, it will just finish the job with their too little too late approach, and the SRKWs will die, too.

The BC govt needs to start a new program under the Wild Salmon Secretariat directly aimed at habitat restoration and get on with the job that DFO has failed to do. Delivered through the Pacific Salmon Foundation who leverages cash 4 to 7 times, a sizeable restoration program for in river work by those 300,000 sporties who believe in bringing salmon back, along with our ENGO allies.

Note that the $142M cash from DFO and BC pretty much is utilized for such big, expensive, longterm projects, that virtually no money is going to the endless list of small, inexpensive projects required across the province to get sporties/ENGOs in streams with their gumboots on, where the bulk of all restoration work is needed. And thus immediate rehabilitation of at peril salmon stocks.

As well, fish farms need to come out of the water. I list shows 320 on-land farms already around the world, so this is easy, not hard. And my list of global press now approaches 500, as in the enthusiasm for on-land is unmistakable.
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Now an update. The WWS's take on fall 2020 spawning is here: https://watershedwatch.ca/greg-taylor-an-overview-of-2020-salmon-returns/?mc_cid=e211356752&mc_eid=5777c92bcd.

It is not easy reading, with runs very low across the province.

DFO SRKW Measures 2019

DFO has come up with measures for protecting southern resident killer whales (SRKWs) in 2019. They include draconian sport fishing closures, among other things, and are summarized in a PDF released in April 2019. I have sent the Excel Spreadsheet PDF to members of my sport fishing list, but I can't find a way to load it to this site. If you want it, send me a note/leave me a comment at the bottom of this post and I'll send it your way.

In summary, the problem is this: DFO has managed both salmon and killer whales into extinction for the past 50 years. Now, faced with public outrage, it is closing sport and commercial fishing for chinook, to try and save extinction level killer whales with extinction levels of chinook. It's the wrong approach, just ensuring that both become extinct.

See my post on what needs to be done: http://fishfarmnews.blogspot.com/2018/05/dfo-salmon-and-killer-whales.html. Basically it is: fresh water habitat restoration and a dozen netpens of 2M marked, sterile chinook each for at least 10 years.

Now, in the note that goes along with the current PDF, DFO says it is taking ‘a precautionary, science-based approach to the protection and recovery of SRKW.’

The problem is that DFO talks about science, but it refuses to use it, as well as the precautionary principle unless it suits their purposes. See this:  https://fishfarmnews.blogspot.com/2019/02/evidence-and-science-based-decisions-at.html.

In other words, don't expect DFO to do the precautionary thing, and expect it to close sport fishing, as SRKWs plummet to extinction, and then, from their point of view, both problems are solved.

Here is a brief summary of the PDF:

Slide 8: 

Prey - solutions include:

·      * Area-based fishery closures

·      *   Mobile (bubble) closures/fishery avoidance zones 

*   * Sanctuary – hmm?

Slide 9 - Technical Working Groups (TWGs):

-        *  Salmon habitat rehabilitation - this sounds good, but if you are looking to get some money to do a project, it has to be new technology with innovation. I told DFO that what is needed is people to get their gumboots on and do some freshwater habitat restoration. DFO has not responded. I said this to them: https://fishfarmnews.blogspot.com/2019/04/salmon-restoration-and-innovation-fund.html.

-       *  Salmon enhancement - this sounds good, but no details as yet. Are we talking sterilized fish? Or marked fish, so a fishery can mop up returnees, but not wild fish? And, are we talking epigenetics?

-      *  Chinook-predator interactions

-      * Forage fish management - does this include stopping the herring roe fishery that DFO says is hunky dory, but there are lots of documents around, that I have seen, preceding the documents it is now using to say things are swell, that point out the stock now fished is the last one left, and nowhere near as big as it used to be.

DFO says answers are to come in June, 2019

Slide 12: 

* Critical habitat 

*Proposed Enhanced Management Areas 

* Key Foraging Areas

In our area: All of Juan de Fuca, including Laperouse and Swiftsure banks, past Victoria and the islands to the mouth of the Fraser. Either closed or no-go zones.

Slide 14: Context: Prey Availability.

*Recognition that long-term rebuilding of Chinook will be key to SRKW recovery

*Reduced fisheries. This sounds good, but the proof is in the pudding, for example, DFO could close fisheries and let chinook bring themselves back rather than enhancement and freshwater habitat restoration. With climate change and fish farm effects, it is unlikely that the stocks will come back.

Slide 16:

Scenario A Closure of sport fishing in 20-4 and 20-5 and Swiftsure Bank.

Slide 18:

Scenario B: Closure of sport fishing in Scenario A as well as extended areas adjacent to Swiftsure Bank (SB), including SB.

Slide 24:

Fishing, small boat measures, includes voluntary measures like turning off depthsounders when not in use. Mandatory 400m approach distance, and go-slow measures with in 1000m, along with no-go areas, including SB.

Do send DFO your thoughts on its approach. The email to mail to is: DFO.SRKW-ERS.MPO@dfo-mpo.gc.ca. 

Note that I have figured out the sport fishery brings in $2.52B for fresh- and salt-water in BC. This is far bigger than the figure DFO uses. Here is how I figured it out: http://fishfarmnews.blogspot.com/2015/05/salmonfishing-revenue-towers-over.html.

Towns like Port Renfrew, Bamfield and others are going to go bust under DFO's plan. Please send in some critical comments. Remember, it is netpens of sterile chinook that will solve the problem as soon as possible, while habitat restoration goes on, which is a long term project. We need both things, as well as epigenetic enhancement of chinook stocks ASAP, for example, the Nitinat chinook, along with Conuma, Robertson Creek and Cowichan on Van Isle. Then DFO should do some enhancement of Fraser streams, like the proposal for Willow Creek.