Tag Archives: (mis)management
Federal Liberals continue to destroy BC fisheries… it’s starting to look like the NFLD fishing moratorium
There are about 2,000 licensed commercial fishing licenses held by BC fishermen (pc governments now call them harvesters). Using that figure and adding in 2 crewmen (many fishing boats have more) means over 2,500 harvesters will lose their jobs… The sad part is that reducing the wild salmon fishery has its precedence on the east coast. Some might remember back in 1992, the federal government of the day established the Newfoundland 
cod fishery moratorium. It was a cruel and duplicitous statement to call it a moratorium as 30 years later, and the commercial cod fishery remains closed. Cod have considerably recovered but are being caught by fisherman from Iceland, Greenland, Denmark, and a swarm of foreign-flagged fish factory trawlers just outside the 200-mile nautical limit. Codfish are also being consumed by a 5 million strong seal herd, which has quadrupled in size since the collapse of the seal fishery. >click to read< 18:38
How Newfoundland’s wild fisheries have gone from plentiful to pitiful – How did we get here?
The headline in the daily paper at the end of January 2019 had said it all: Cod recovery still far off: DFO. In the case of cod, the same factors that had contributed to a hopeful comeback — thriving capelin and warming waters — had since swung in unfavourable directions. Fewer capelin prey and changing environmental conditions did not bode well for cod. Now, in 2021, the prognosis for the cod population, capelin and the environmental 
conditions remains no better. How did we get here? DFO science shows several factors are predominantly to blame for declining cod and capelin populations, including: natural causes, especially lack of capelin prey in the case of cod; high predation, particularly from fish (more so than seals), in the case of capelin; and warming ocean waters, among other environmental factors. >click to read< 08:26
FISH-NL describes price of cod as ‘scandalous’ and another example of FFAW conflict; renews call for province to allow in outside buyers
The Federation of Independent Sea Harvesters of Newfoundland and Labrador (FISH-NL) says the 2017 price of cod recently negotiated by the FFAW is an insult to the province’s inshore harvesters, and renews its call for the province to allow in outside buyers. “That price is scandalous,” says Ryan Cleary, President of FISH-NL. “It’s an insult to already injured inshore harvesters. The FFAW expects cod will save harvesters from shellfish declines, but then the union agrees to a price that will starve our fish harvesters as fast as DFO mismanagement.”The high price of cod this year is up 5 cents a pound. The 2017 price per pound paid to harvesters for Grade A cod has been set at a high of 83 cents, and low of 20 cents. In 2016, the Grade A price paid was 78 cents a pound, with 20 cents as the low mark for Grade C. read the press release here 19:45
Editorial: Halibut population is wobbling
Mismanagement of bycatch — fish caught by accident while boats net other permitted species — is an offensive waste most recently highlighted by a May 30 story in the Seattle Times. The Times’ focus is on the (tinyurl.com/p9vr49l), but the issues involved are familiar to most commercial fishermen. Longstanding bycatch rules are based on distrust of fishermen and somewhat logical, but obviously counterproductive, notions about how to discourage “accidental-on-purpose” behavior. Read the rest here 19:17
Is NOAA studying river herring to death?
If you’ve been following the (mis)management of river herring over the last few years, you may not even be surprised at the latest shenanigans of the NOAA fisheries officials: a delay tactic in the form of a “working group.” Read more here 10:57
