Juan de Fuca Electoral Area director Mike Hicks has joined a chorus urging federal Fisheries Minister Hunter Tootoo not to further restrict recreational chinook-salmon fisheries near Vancouver Island.
Hicks said even the rumour of a possible closure can have a huge impact.
“If you’re a doctor in Calgary right now and you’re going to book a fishing trip in Sooke, you’ll say: ‘Are you kidding? They’re closing it,’ ” Hicks said.
“That’s what the rumour is going to be everywhere.”
Hicks was responding to media reports that the Department of Fisheries and Oceans is considering closing Juan de Fuca Strait to chinook fishing for the rest of May, June and July.
The South Vancouver Island Anglers Coalition is warning its members that due to predictions of low Fraser River sockeye returns this year, Fraser First Nations want to harvest more chinook for food, social and ceremonial purposes.
The coalition said that providing more chinook to Fraser First Nations would be an extraordinary reallocation not based on conservation.
“Any chinook saved by closing our fishery would simply be caught in the river net fishery — no more would get to the spawning beds,” says the association’s website, which urges its members to write to Tootoo asking him not to close the fishery.
Tootoo’s department has been reviewing the feedback on management and conservation approaches, said Jeff Grout, DFO regional resource manager for salmon.
He said a decision likely will be forthcoming in June.
“For the Juan de Fuca fishery, that would see some restrictions on the size of fish that could be retained and also whether they are hatchery or wild origin,” Grout said.
Hicks said many of his constituents would be devastated by additional restrictions on the recreational chinook fishery in Juan de Fuca Strait.
“Our community is 100 per cent supportive of the guiding principle of our salmon fishery allocating stocks in a priority basis towards number one, conservation; number two, First Nations fishery for food, social and ceremonial purposes; and finally, number three, all other user groups,” Hicks says in his letter.
“We are, however, dependent on you to safeguard our recreational access to the ‘all other user groups’ and, in this case, access to the surplus Fraser River chinook stocks,” the letter says.
“Salmon fishing on Southern Vancouver Island is not only vital to the economic sustainability of our region, it provides an essential recreational outlet for the thousands of children and families that make this area their home.”
