The Sports Fishing Advisory Committee (SFAC) met on Nov. 9 with a record turnout of almost 70 people in attendance at the Chapman Creek Hatchery.
One of the major concerns addressed was the lack of any fisheries officers on the Lower Sunshine Coast. A motion was made by SFAC member Dave King to reopen the Madeira Park office and appoint a fisheries officer who would serve the region.
The motion received a great deal of support from the other members at the meeting. Several people spoke out to say that the three fisheries officers in Powell River are too far away to handle the Lower Coast.
SFAC member Rob Rowe said that because of this, poaching has become rampant in local waters.
“I’ve made a dozen or more calls about a boat moored in Tillicum Bay,” Rowe said. “They would show up on a day when there was a low tide and come home with six to 10 sacks full of clams and oysters and big double coolers with a handle at each end. I opened them once by their van – filled with rockfish. The joke among them is that why bother to buy a fishing licence anymore. Nobody’s going to check anyway.”
On another front, SFAC chair David Burnett raised the issue that Fisheries and Oceans Canada now expects hatcheries like Chapman Creek Hatchery to do their own assessments on the adult salmon returns in their creeks.
Burnett said he was informed of this only last month, but that the additional work is way out of the hatchery’s budget.
“Everything we do as a hatchery going forward, the onus is on us to say who is harvesting the fish, and how are we going to assess it?” Burnett said. “It’s a lot of work.”
To take the pressure of collecting this data off the hatcheries, a motion was put forward that the Integrated Fisheries Management Plans planning committee utilize Internet Recreational Effort and Catch and First Nations harvest data as part of the assessment tool for production.
Many at the meeting were concerned about decreasing numbers of fish in the Strait of Georgia, which has been detrimental to sport fishing.
“I’ve been fishing here for about 20 years and there are lots of guys here that have been fishing a lot longer. For me, I’ve seen a steady decline all around, every year,” SFAC member Mark Janot said. “I judge it by the beach – you used to come in there first thing in the morning and they’d be at your feet, all over the place … You’d see fishermen lined up. That was almost 10 years ago and you just don’t see it anymore.”
A motion was made to put together a working committee under the Sports Fishing Advisory Board (SFAB) with the objective of opening a dialogue with the District of Sechelt council to create better sport fishing opportunities on the Sunshine Coast.
These motions will be brought to the South Coast SFAB meeting in Nanaimo on Nov. 28 and 29. The chairs – including Burnett – from all the communities on the South Coast will meet with representatives from BC Conservation and tour operators to report on what is happening in their respective communities.
