I've said that right now a big section of the north arm of the Fraser River is closed, so we can't fish there during prime fishing season. They're proposing to close the south arm as well, and then force us into the middle, between the two closures, so everybody will have to fish there.
We should adapt the American policy of a bubble zone, which they have in Canada now. We used to be at 400 metres, now we're at 1,000 metres if killer whales are involved. You can't have a static closure for three months hoping that whales might show up there to feed, and keep us out of there, and then have us move 1,000 metres away if there's a killer whale. The eight whale monitoring associations out there have only reported one sighting of the southern resident killer whale, on September 13, 2024. There hasn't been a sighting at the north arm since 2019, when they closed it. There was one sighting in 2024 during our fishing season in September down at the south arm. Up to this date, there's been one sighting of killer whales up by Keats Island, which is in the Howe Sound area, and they were transient killer whales, not the southern resident killer whales.
Yes, we want to protect the whales, but we should move to that bubble zone and not have static closures. That's what we're trying to get across to DFO.