2010 Gulf Trollers Association Annual General Meeting

The GTA AGM will be held Friday March 19 at the Best Western Dorchester Hotel in Nanaimo beginning at 1030 hours. Highlights include:

• Tagging and Electronic Logs
• PST Mitigation Funds
• Outlook for the 2010 Area H Fisheries
• 2010 Fraser River Sockeye Outlook
• What's Happening at the CSAB
• 2010 Demonstration Fishery Proposals

See you there!

Prime Minister Harper announces Judicial Inquiry

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has announced the appointment of The Honourable Bruce Cohen, Justice of the Supreme Court of British Columbia, as a Commissioner to conduct an inquiry into the decline of sockeye salmon in the Fraser River.

As Commissioner of the Inquiry, Justice Cohen’s mandate will be to investigate and report on the reasons for the decline of sockeye salmon in the Fraser River. He will make recommendations for improving the sustainability of the sockeye salmon fishery in the Fraser River, including, as required, any changes to the policies, practices and procedures of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans in relation to the management of the Fraser River sockeye salmon fishery. The report resulting from the Inquiry will be submitted to the Government on or before May 1, 2011.

For more details read PM Harper's announcement.

The terms of reference for the inquiry are broad enough to give Justice Cohen the ability to look into any and all possible causes of the disappearance of 90% of the expected 2009 Fraser River sockeye return. You can find the terms of reference here.

US to compensate BC Fishing Industry

The US government will hand over millions of dollars to compensate the B.C. fishing industry for dramatic cuts to salmon fisheries. For the full story read the Globe and Mail article.

2008 Area H Troll Johnstone Strait Chum Demonstration Fishery

In May 2008, 70 per cent of the respondents to a poll conducted of Area H licenceholders indicated their preference for an individual transferable defined share demonstration fishery for the 2008 chum season. Of those who supported the individual transferable defined share demonstration fishery, 88 per cent were in favour of allowing for the transfer of shares between and among the seine, gillnet and troll fleets.

In the ensuing months, the Area H Harvest Committee worked with the DFO resource managers to design such a demonstration fishery. The Area B Harvest Committee participated in the process because the Area B licenceholders also supported both a transferable defined share demonstration fishery and inter-fleet transfer.

To adopt a piece-based quota fishery required that a preseason estimate of run size be made with the opportunity to provide for inseason adjustment if the projected abundance proved to be either lower or higher than actual returns. Having historically managed the Johnstone Strait Chum fishery on effort rather than abundance, required that DFO take a risk averse approach in forecasting run size that would see the initial estimate of run size at the low end of the range of possible returns (with a corresponding low ITQ allocation). In addition, there was a reluctance to entertain inseason adjustment because of the difficulty in determining a reliable estimate of run size prior to the end of the fishing season.

It was therefore proposed that Areas H and B consider as a compromise, a transferable effort-based fishery (the Area B Harvest Committee rejected this approach because of the challenge of managing the small but high-impact individual time allocations i.e. as an example, it was proposed that each Area B licenceholder might receive 126 minutes of fishing time). This concept had been considered in prior seasons by the Area H Harvest Committee as a method of accommodating the different requirements of ice and freezer boats by affording each the flexibility to use their allocated boat-days as they saw fit. An ice boat, for instance, might fish in three boat-day increments (delivering after each) while a freezer boat would be more inclined to fish continuously for an entire six to nine boat-day season.

Facilitating the transfer of boat-days between licenceholders should also allow those interested in extending their season to do so by acquiring boat-days from those licenceholders who are involved in other fisheries or, for some other reason, are unable or not interested in using their own boat-days (for 2008, approximately 450 boat-days will be made available to the 89 Area H licenceholders). As well, extending the time over which the harvest is conducted should enable higher value to be obtained for the fish than would be the case if all the fish came onto the market at the same time as has been the case in the past. Facilitating the transfer of boat-days also presents an opportunity to address the record high operating costs (fuel and crew, for instance) by enabling licenceholders to pool their boat-days and send one vessel to do the job of two or three. Beyond the direct financial benefits, the transferable effort-based fishery should afford a basis for evaluating share-based management and transfer while abundance-based forecast models are developed to replace the effort-based management models that have been used historically.

To assist with the matchmaking of those looking for boat-days with those holding available boat-days, Tom Kasmer has offered to make available the Quota Exchange (http://www.itq.ca) at no cost for the 2008 fishery. Click here for a document prepared by Tom explaining how you can place a listing and how you can be automatically notified when a listing of interest is entered.

Guidelines for the 2008 Area H Johnstone Strait Chum demonstration fishery can also be found here.