All right. The presentation is about licensing as it relates to the recovery of salmon, Pacific salmon at risk, and improved economic performance through licensing.
This is informed by about 15 years of research in the Fraser River and other major salmon rivers in British Columbia. I've also provided as evidence a document called “River to Plate”, co-authored with a lady from the University of British Columbia about 10 years ago.
The first page refers to the Canadian Science Advisory Secretariat's recommendations to COSEWIC regarding declining stocks of Interior Fraser steelhead, an anadromous form or a sea-run form of rainbow trout that is ubiquitous throughout the major rivers and lakes in British Columbia. The stocks are under serious threat of extirpation. They're following a long line of similar Pacific salmon problems we've had, particularly in the Fraser River but elsewhere as well, with Interior Fraser coho, Cultus Lake sockeye and, most recently, chinook salmon. This pattern has been repeated in industrialized fisheries around the world. The problem with these declining stocks or weaker stocks is that they're choking off our marine mixed-stock fisheries, creating financial liabilities, social disruption and industrial chaos for sure.
I'm going to refer you further into the deck. In the middle of the deck there's a page called “Observations of a Steelhead Technician”. I've spent 40 years as a certified fisheries technician working with Pacific salmon throughout British Columbia. I'm zeroing in now on Thompson River, and here are your Fraser River steelhead. These are summer steelhead. They arrive from September through December. Their historic timing is believed to be fished out. They were a victim of bycatch in gillnet sockeye fisheries off the mouth of the Fraser River as these steelhead were returning to spawn.
After the sockeye populations declined, our commercial fisheries shifted to chum and pink salmon, and as the emphasis shifted to chum and pink, so did the bycatch impacts on the remaining populations of interior Fraser steelhead.
We've moved to selective known stock fisheries in rivers so we can release steelhead, coho and chinook salmon that aren't productive or endangered, and we found those most effective in allowing us to get enough fish on the spawning grounds. We've had more difficulty in the marine mixed-stock fisheries because we simply can't tell which river they're going to, which stock they belong to.
I've observed significant Thompson River steelhead and Interior Fraser steelhead, in the purse seine fisheries in Johnstone Strait, as they're moving down the coast of British Columbia heading to the Fraser River and their spawning grounds. I was seeing 100 plus fish in the holds of the purse seiners. This was followed up by one of the certified third party observers, J. O. Thomas, who does observing for the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. He also observed significant Thompson River steelhead in these chum seiners. He also reported 30% to 90% plus non-reporting, with the fishery either not reported or sold as coho.
We've tried hatchery augmentation in the past, back in the eighties. We just found that the natural populations were seeding the habitats that were available, and we weren't getting anywhere with hatchery augmentation. It just didn't help to restore the stocks.
I'm going to refer you further into the deck now to an overlay graph of the catch and escapements of Interior Fraser steelhead contrasted with those for the chum salmon fisheries where steelhead have been found as bycatches in the last 25 years.
The blue line that you see across the top of the graph is the catch and escapement of Thompson River steelhead. The bar graphs along the bottom are the catch and escapement of chum salmon. The green circles point to where the years of low chum fisheries were getting sufficient or more steelhead returning to the spawning grounds. The red circles show that during peak mixed-stock fisheries of chum salmon, we're getting less Thompson River steelhead to the spawning grounds.
What's particularly interesting about this graph is that, as you look towards the end of the term on the table, you can see that the orange line is the aboriginal fishery in the lower Fraser River. There were concerns expressed in the late 80s and early 90s about the aboriginal bycatch of steelhead in these chum fisheries, but because of the aboriginal fisheries strategy, the Sto:lo nation and lower Fraser first nations that were killing these fish in their gillnet fisheries were pushed into using beach seines. You can see that the orange line at the bottom right-hand corner of the graph is almost flat—less than 100 fish in the last 10 years. That's because they were using selective beach seines and releasing the steelhead.
Interestingly enough, you can see during that same time frame that the number of steelheads started to recover for a while, and you can see that the sport fishing catch increased.
The problems with Thompson River steelhead are complex, but we have to learn how to reduce our fishing impacts if we really want to recover these stocks. The licencing of in-river fisheries is helping us to reduce that impact while still having economic opportunities from these fish.
I'm now going to refer you to a cartoon further on in the deck entitled “Growing Selective Known-stock Fisheries”. These kinds of fisheries have been practised for more than 25 years, and they're becoming an active part of our modern commercial fisheries. It's very difficult to target the strong stocks and avoid the weak stocks when you don't know what stocks you're catching. Under the Department of Fisheries and Oceans' Pacific integrated commercial fisheries initiative, we've voluntarily bought out and transferred licences in river, and we're able to then target the stocks of fish that are productive and avoid the ones that are less productive.
The next page is entitled “Economics of Surviving Climate Change”. The species and life history diversity of Fraser River Pacific salmon and steelhead—that is, the local populations—protects the vitality of Pacific salmon so that it can survive climate change.
It's much like Canada geese. We have 12 different races of Canada geese that breed in the Arctic, all the way down into southern British Columbia and the Prairies. They're all different races. In the Fraser River, there are more than 30 distinct life history traits or races of pacific sockeye salmon, and we currently only manage for four because it's too difficult manage—