Fisheries Committee on June 1st, 2006

[Peter Stoffer, NDP, Sackville—Eastern Shore, NS]

I'm trying to wrap my head around this. If DFO did this willingly, along with provincial assistance, to assist the gravel extraction companies to get access to the gravel, they did it for economic reasons, I assume. But if they did this and two million fish were killed, I'm wondering what the economic value of two million fish would be to B.C.

[Dr. Marvin Rosenau]

Well, they're pink salmon, and pink salmon don't have a huge economic value in the province of British Columbia. Pink salmon—Mr. Cummins can probably enlighten us a little bit more—are maybe worth a couple of bucks a fish, as opposed to sockeye.... If this had been a sockeye population that was impacted, you wouldn't have heard the end of it.

But pink salmon are an important ecosystem component. They provide food, nutrients, and they're part of the nexus of ecosystem linkages and webs. But they're still salmon, and at some point in time they may have a very large economic value, which they don't right now.

[Frank Kwak]

Could I also add that although the pink salmon don't have economic value from a commercial fishery perspective, from a recreational fishery perspective they're a very valuable fish, because these fish are plentiful and very easy to catch. You can take any six-year-old child down to the river and he can catch pink salmon.

To an awful lot of people a salmon is a salmon. It's only people who fish salmon all the time who want to catch a sockeye salmon or a chinook salmon. A guy who fishes three or four times a year with his children is just thrilled to be able to go down to the river and catch pink salmon.

So pink salmon recreationally have a tremendous value, and the fishing stores and suppliers sell lots and lots of tackle for pink salmon fishing.

[Peter Stoffer, NDP, Sackville—Eastern Shore, NS]

So the reality is this is the loss of millions of dollars of possible economic opportunity.

[Dr. Marvin Rosenau]

In terms of actual numbers of pinks, we figure there are probably the redds—the spawning nests—of about 10,000 females, and there would have been another 10,000 males, one for each female. So it was basically the destruction of a population of about 20,000 fish. That is our rough gross estimate.

I'm not an economist, so I'm a little hesitant to say what the economic value is, but whatever 20,000 pink salmon are worth is what, in effect, was impacted.

[Peter Stoffer, NDP, Sackville—Eastern Shore, NS]

In all your years of experience in working on the Fraser, have you ever heard of a DFO employee saying that DFO should be charged?

[Dr. Marvin Rosenau]

This is the first time I have heard of it. My jaw dropped when the C&P officer said, “If it were my area, I would start an investigation.” Then, as part of the further conversation he pulled out the relevant sections of the Criminal Code. I think it was sections 336 and 122.... I could find the numbers for you. Basically, we were thinking that when a DFO officer is suggesting senior managers should be investigated, there's a problem here.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerald Keddy]

Thank you, Mr. Stoffer.

Mr. Lunney, you have five minutes.

[James Lunney, Conservative, Nanaimo—Alberni, BC]

Mr. Chair, I apologize for being a little bit late for the meeting. I missed a good part of the beginning of the presentation, so I may also be a bit redundant. If I missed something, please excuse my questions.

Coming back to this extraction of gravel, I have been looking at the pictures that were provided. It's quite a lengthy area, and you mentioned about six areas. My copy is not easy to read. I was asking Mr. Cummins to point out where this big bar was. It looks to me like quite an extensive area of gravel along the river here.

My question is this. Even where I am, on Vancouver Island, they're concerned about siltation out in Tofino and so on, with things filling in, and certainly on the Fraser we're worried about water levels. If we're going to maintain the river levels without losing Richmond and Delta, we have to extract gravel somehow to maintain the river flow.

I was curious about your comment, if gravel's going to be removed, about doing it properly. I don't think you're saying we shouldn't extract gravel. I just wonder, is what we are doing at the wrong time? Did they do it at the wrong time? Or did they do it the wrong way? Could you describe what the right way is to extract gravel?

[Dr. Marvin Rosenau]

First of all, the gravel agreement was based on a UBC study that took bed elevation measurements, in other words, a bathymetric profile, from 1952, and then compared it to 1999. This is based primarily on a PhD thesis by Dr. Darren Hamm, of the department of geography.

There was an enormous amount of to-ing and fro-ing in terms of the accuracy and precision of this particular study over the period of those years. In my view, a PhD study, while being academically important in providing guidance, is not sufficient to provide actual management of precise locations and volumes of extraction.

Again, we will go over to the Vedder-Chilliwack, which is immediately adjacent. Gravel extraction occurs there every two years. There is a very clear protocol, in that every other year the river is measured in terms of gravel inputs, the hydraulic model is undertaken, and you have a very precise measurement. Here, it's like, well, we had 50 years of data, and gee, what's the right number? We're going to start taking large volumes of gravel out as a function of that?

The other thing is that the gravel extraction sites are high-grading gravel bars. It is easy and cost-effective, from the gravel operators' perspective, to get out there and basically take a scorched earth approach.

As you can see on that figure, there are only a half dozen gravel bars between the confluence of the Harrison and the Agassiz-Rosedale Bridge, where the real zone of gravel aggradation takes place. Because those gravel bars are slow-growing, very long-lived, and they don't recoup very quickly. Once they're gone, they're gone.

These guys have gone in over the last two or three years, taken those gravel bars, and all of a sudden there's no opportunity, so they do these dirty and nasty ways of getting gravel out, as we saw on Big Bar this winter. The question of flood protection is unequivocal; we need to have flood protection. Going in and doing it with such loose information I think is a disservice to the habitat and a disservice for flood protection. It just doesn't make sense.

[James Lunney, Conservative, Nanaimo—Alberni, BC]

I'm still trying to understand what you mean by doing it properly. If you're trying to remove gravel from this area, is it the time, the season, the wrong place?

[Dr. Marvin Rosenau]

The season may be correct.

[James Lunney, Conservative, Nanaimo—Alberni, BC]

They have to do it when it's low flow.

[Dr. Marvin Rosenau]

Not necessarily.

We try to do riffle dredging, which is basically taking gravel out of riffles. These gravel bars have very high habitat value. In effect, all these high habitat value bars are being high-graded. We tried to have gravel taken out of the big riffles in the adjoining areas during the summer when there are no fish in the middle of the river, turbidity is very high, and the background turbidity addition would not cause any fish habitat impact. Of course, there's a cost associated with it.

The cost of doing it properly is high. The gravel operators don't want to do it. On the Vedder-Chilliwack, where there's true gravel removal for flood protection, you get lots of negative bids. In other words, the gravel operators have to be paid to take gravel because the city needs that gravel, needs the flood profile, and needs the protection. The fisheries' guys aren't going to object to it. So somebody has to actually pay to have these guys take out low-quality gravel or low-quality sediments because they have to get the flood profile.

On the Fraser, there's never been a negative bid. The operators refuse to take gravel where it's going to cost them, and the city, the province, and the federal governments have never ponied up to the bar to say they would pay $100,000 to get the gravel out for flood protection. It has always been, what's economics? There has been a “no net negative” in terms of economics.

[Frank Kwak]

If you look at Marvin's last slide, there is a proper way to take the gravel out.

Marvin, do you have it there?

[Dr. Marvin Rosenau]

Yes. If this had happened at Big Bar, nobody would have complained. There wouldn't have been one complaint. This happened at Minto Channel, Harrison Bar, in 2000. It was a clean operation. Gravel was taken out. I, as a biologist, didn't like to see gravel taken out, but flood protection is predominant, and they did it right. But in 2006, at Big Bar, they didn't do it right.

[James Lunney, Conservative, Nanaimo—Alberni, BC]

So the cost of this type of operation with a Bailey bridge--

[Dr. Marvin Rosenau]

Actually, it's a conveyor belt. It's not even a Bailey bridge; it's a conveyor belt.

[James Lunney, Conservative, Nanaimo—Alberni, BC]

And again, I support it's site-dependent in terms of the reach and flow and all of that.

[Frank Kwak]

That's right, but this is the same reach as the other one at Big Bar.

[Dr. Marvin Rosenau]

It's the same size of channel, though, the same relative flow. This might even have been a little bit more flow, but it's costly to....

In this particular case, all of the vehicles and all of the excavators were barged across to the island--

[James Lunney, Conservative, Nanaimo—Alberni, BC]

Rather than a causeway.

[Dr. Marvin Rosenau]

That's right, and all of the gravel was taken to the conveyor belt. The conveyor belt moved the gravel across to the mainland and then all the vehicles and the excavators were barged back to the mainland so there was never any impact within the wetted perimeter.

And 2006 is an even year, so pink salmon would have been incubating in the gravel during even years in the Fraser River gravel reach.

[James Lunney, Conservative, Nanaimo—Alberni, BC]

I want to go back to the pink just for a minute again. The pink are a two-year salmon, as opposed to others that are for a longer life cycle, and they're hugely prolific compared to other species, being on the lower end of the food chain, as I understand it. And I know there are concerns about pink obviously, along with all species of salmon, but I recall that with the controversy about pinks and sea lice and so on, when there was a concern about returns, that there was such an abundant return of pinks that they were something like ten cents a pound.

We respect the value, and certainly, as you say, they are valuable fish, but in this stretch of river, is this a prime pink spawning area or are there other areas upriver and throughout the entire Fraser basin where pink also spawn?

[Dr. Marvin Rosenau]

This past year and 2005 seemed to have a bit of a crash, as opposed to 2003, which may have exceeded 20 million fish, which may have exceeded 30 million fish throughout the whole watershed. In 2005 they were far less abundant.

Within the gravel reach, which is in effect from just above Mission to Hope, is the most densely spawned salmon spawning area in all the province, and we think that it may have exceeded 10 million fish in 2005. So these rich gravel beds are the basis of the habitat in which pink salmon spawn in this particular part of the Fraser River.