Local Salmon Management: How it Could Work
by Alexandra Morton
 Dear Honourable Minister Shea: I am hoping the Fisheries and Oceans Canada will embrace the concept of the aquaculture industry as a fishery and take concrete steps to bring it in line with other Canadian fisheries.
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According to Judge Hinkson net-pen salmon rearing is not legally "farming" but rather a fishery, because these artificial salmon populations occupy space otherwise utilized by wild fish and the ocean passes through the facilities. Thus wild fish enter the pens and waste leaves the pens. As such this fishery must be regulated similar to the other fisheries where issues such as by-catch are addressed.
Science can be an awkward tool, but even if you do not accept some of the sea lice science and its prediction of decline of wild salmon that migrate through the aquaculture fisheries, you could look at your department's own enumeration numbers and the global response to marine aquaculture. I think that it is only reasonable to say there are serious problems that need concrete solutions. The time for splitting hairs is long past. We are in crisis here.
The DNA our salmon need to survive is running out.
In 2002, when we saw the drastic decline of the 1st louse-infested generation of Broughton pink salmon, senior ex-DFO scientist Dr. Brian Riddell recommended removal of all salmon farms from the area to allow the stock to rebound (www.fish.bc.ca). His second option was the extensive fallow of the major juvenile salmon migration route and this was enacted. I co-published a paper on the very significant decline in sea lice during this treatment and senior DFO scientist Dr. Beamish co-published that this cohort of wild salmon survived better than any generation of salmon ever recorded.
Both the federal and provincial governments should have recognized that Riddell’s recommendation illuminated a path to a viable solution for both the wild and the farm salmon, separate them. But the ensuing politics took us away from this moment of clarity and into the mess we are in now. Not a single aquaculture facility has been removed from this migration route. Today nearly every wild salmon migration route of the B.C. South coast is supporting aquaculture fisheries and the wild fisheries are failing. Some people would like to blame the commercial fishermen for this, but they have scarcely fished in the past few years.
The reason I went to court is because Marine Harvest is in the process of making a deal wherein they would be allowed to increase the number of fish they are allowed per site. This deal called CAMP, is not supported by local First Nations and calls for large application of a drug not approved for use in the water, as well as, expansion of the very sites that I and others have published extensively on. Fallowing every other year makes no biological sense to wild salmon which inarguably must go to sea every year. When people casually say the science is conflicting, they are not exactly stating the truth. No one is publishing that young wild salmon outside salmon “farms” are not infected with sea lice and no one is saying that wild salmon populations running through aquaculture fisheries are doing well relative to the rest of the eastern Pacific.
Scientists in Norway and Scotland ask me if we can read over here and are in disbelief that we in Canada are stuck one square one of the issue of sea lice.
I read your recent statement that salmon “farms” are important to coastal economies. As someone living in two of these communities, I think you should confirm this before acting as if it were true. Even if you do not accept that wild fisheries bring in more dollars to BC through the 1.6 billion dollar wilderness tourism industry alone, I think one could say the aquaculture fisheries alone are not enough for coastal communities to survive on.
Minster Shea I don’t believe wild salmon are doomed. We have had some spectacular successes in recent years – when the culture fisheries were not present. As well in the Broughton, humpback whales, pilchard, Pacific white-sided dolphins and sand lance have all made comebacks. Euphausiid blooms are increasing annually. This is not a dying eco-system, it is damaged, but shows every sign of capability to be restored.
Judge Hinkson ruled that the large populations of Atlantic salmon being held in BC waters constitute a fishery. Whether or not the province appeals this decision you now have the authority to place observers at the aquaculture facilities as they offload their harvested fish and on the pens at night where lights are used to examine the by-catch issue. I receive many reports of black cod in the pens and I have seen herring and capelin in the pens. Minister Shea, you now have sole authority to allow DFO officers to board the aquaculture facilities and monitor the herring spawn.
I think the way forward is to treat these facilities for what they are, just another fishery. Indeed, the judge did not seem certain who actually owns these salmon when they are in the ocean. We have ample evidence of impact of aquaculture fisheries on wild salmon and now herring. When other fisheries are even suspected of causing decline of wild salmon populations they must be reduced or even closed. No one asked the lodges in my area if they could live with the Coho closure they were simply told they could not catch Coho. In the case of the aquaculture fishery, they should similarly be closed until wild populations rebound and then a balance struck between the two fisheries.
This is the only way the industry will mature into a responsible ocean user. Provincial Minister Cantelon has stated that farm fish have a right to be in the ocean. I don’t think that is legally accurate.
Minister Shea, you have an army ready to work for the restoration of wild salmon. The Streamkeepers throughout the province of BC are people who are very knowledgeable about their local rivers and salmon stocks. I think we could restore BC wild salmon by a simple plan wherein we use the best available science to follow the fish and simply give them access to the sea and to spawning areas. Large expensive hatcheries are not the answer, we now know we will not have wild salmon unless we adhered to their own biological laws and allow them to choose their own mates. Salmon need the diversity of BC’s myriad of freshwater courses, not a handful of indicator streams, to survive climate changes.
Salmon have demonstrated they can survive the presence of humanity and they stimulate abundant economic activity wherever they occur. I know many say wild salmon are no longer viable and we need “farms.” However I see it the other way. These “farms” are heavily fishing stocks that will fail. The “farms” require enormous amounts of energy and plant protein in addition to the wild fish to make fewer fish. These “farms” rob the natural systems that make wild fish of many species, with enormous and unregulated by-catch. Marine Harvest and Mainstream are failing on the world market, plagued by disease they appear to be spreading and it would not be socially responsible of you to ask Canadians to accept irrevocable losses to benefit foreign shareholders of an unstable industry.
You could encourage people to form local councils made up of residents with DFO as an advisor to each group. The public has already proven their willingness to work for the restoration of one the world’s most valuable fisheries all they need is your encouragement. Please see an outline as to how this could work. The key to sustainable wild fisheries worldwide is local management. These councils would have to be made up only of residents. Residents benefit from all the economic activity in their area and as such are the best positioned to make truly sustainable decisions.
Wishing you vision and strength,
Alexandra Morton R.P. Bio.
Echo Bay, Sointula
Local Salmon management- how it could work
Alexandra Morton R. P. Bio.
wildorca@island.net
Guiding principles:
1 -Wild salmon use and benefit from a chain of habitats, any broken
link undermines the entire effort
2 –We let the salmon do the work
This document is a work in progress and the result of a meeting held at Salmon Coast Field Station fall 2007 of many people who depend directly on wild salmon of the Broughton Archipelago area as well as several biologists. For the purposes of this document the word “salmon,” is defined as wild salmon. By this I mean salmon that reproduce naturally in rivers and would be self-sustaining if this project stopped, as opposed to hatchery salmon or spawning channel runs. While I would like to use existing spawning channels to boost numbers, this plan would use the smaller creeks of B.C. to give the fish their essential diversity to survive climate change. The backbone of this plan would see every wild salmon pair as a valuable unit. We would make every effort to receive each returning wild adult salmon with habitat that would perpetuate these, the most successful fish. They are our key to restoring salmon runs
I. Local Fishery Governance
A.) Form local eco-region councils. The best fish stewardship models appear to be the ones that are local, because the locals not only need the fish, they also benefit from the other industries. In this way differences may be hammered out rationally. Clearly it does not work when out of town environmentalists are pitted against out of town corporate and government interests. We have all sat through endless government processes with all stakeholders at the same table and have seen no progress. The key here is: “local” and dependant on the fish.
1.) Council membership would be exclusively residents who depend on and work
with wild salmon and would remain open to all these residents i.e. no fixed
membership
2.) Local First Nations would be the only government on the Council
3.) Council must be volunteer except for the administrators working fulltime to
keep the funds for the fish work
4.) The council would have two outer rings:
a.) biologists that could be called on for advice
b.) the interests inhibited by wild salmon
5.) DFO scientists and others would be available to the Council for consultation,
and permits
II. Get teams on scene – Nothing replaces just getting out there and seeing it!
A.) Do inventory on all salmon bearing watercourses historic and current
1.) Form small effective teams to visit streams on continuous rotation to
assess:
a.) condition, production and capacity
b.) do fry out-migration surveys
c.) do adult salmon enumeration
2.) These teams would ideally have 1 -2 fulltime paid staff, graduate students and
interested First Nation and other local volunteers – this would not be a make
work program,
B.) Information would be organized in databases that can be easily accessed and shared
within and between Councils of various watersheds/archipelagos
C.) Use above information to:
1.) write a prescription on each creek for small efficient works with the goal to give
every wild salmon access to spawning grounds and rearing habitat no matter
how small the system
Use low impact techniques ie boulder/gravel/woody debris placement historic logging dam removal, etc
a.) monitor spawning activity so that areas wild
salmon are attracted to remain undisturbed and are benefited
2.) identify what is broken and what is working with each system
D.) Place fishery boundaries where and when they are effective. If low water
traps fish, throw the signs up immediately and keep a presence with the small
roving team. Every spawning pair of salmon must be seen as extremely valuable
a.) Develop distinctive signage
b.) Produce brochure to explain why and how these unexpected closures benefit
the people
c.) visit the summer social events to make the summer visitors aware
E.) Pick up the herring enumeration that DFO is dropping
1.) Initially hire the ex-DFO enumerators to train the local teams for seamless
data stream
2.) Explore potential for reinstating historically spawned areas
F.) Place watchmen in small cabins at the mouth of the biggest rivers, with First
Nation permission, to monitor runs and to educate people about not stepping on
redds, guard against poaching, respond to calamity etc.
G.) Work with the heli-fishers and others to keep track of where salmon are moving
through the systems, to reduce cost
III. Regarding existing salmon projects:
A.) Work with everyone with river restoration projects already underway
B.) Use Spawning Channels only to restock neighboring rivers; see them as a tool
not an endpoint because they degrade genetic diversity
1.) these channels could be used to propel fish through the local areas in hopes
that some percent will stray into the streams near the channels and thus
reinstate high diversity
C.) Repair ladders giving access to additional habitat
D.) I would close most hatcheries, as hatcheries have not been shown to produce
self-sustaining salmon populations which is the goal of this proposal
Use the manpower, infrastructure and funds to work with the wild salmon to ensure maximum yield from the natural ability of these fish to choose mates to the best advantage of their offspring.
V. Research
A.) Use research to engage in Adaptive Management
1.) a common fatal management error is failure to calculate trends
a.) can result in wasted decades of unsuccessful strategies
B.) Work with universities to design the monitoring program to produce a
database available to students for analysis, thus we get it going and run
volunteer university students through it as a research and educational tool
a.) track dispersal of the enhanced stocks (spawning channels) through the
system
b.) measure wild fish response to habitat work
c.) chart enumeration of each area against coastwide numbers to determine
local vs eastern Pacific issues
d.) measure evolutionary response of wild salmon to climate change
C.) if management and research were closely coupled we cannot predict what
projects would come up and we could review and host them under varying
relationships to the benefit of both.
D.) Unlock the records held in BC hatcheries and use this information to
understand disease patterns and challenges
E.) These Councils would have access to all fish records on aquaculture projects
to understand the dynamic between all the fisheries
VI. Follow, do not simply shelve, the recommendations of these Councils
A.) Instead of treating the process as the result, actually follow the
recommendations of the Councils and allow these Councils to run the
programs. Keep everything locally managed. This could lead to problems, but
we already have problems so this would not be new. IF everyone on the
Council benefits from wild salmon AND lives in the community where the
other economic activity exists we would see self-regulation, benefit to local
communities, and economic activity to the benefit to BC and Canada. If instead
all stakeholders sit at the inner ring of these councils, it will be more of the same
stalemates and economic decline of communities
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