Early in February this year, the ACS wrote a letter to DFO in which we expressed serious concerns over the restructuring of the SFAB and the reorganization of at least a few local SFA Committees. DFO responded to our concerns; you may read their response here.
Within DFO’s response is the statement, “Reorganization of the local committees is being considered as recreational fisheries on southern Vancouver Island have evolved and grown over recent decades.“
The ACS has replied to DFO’s response to point out
- How the SFAB is devolving to primarily represent the secondary (commercial) sector, in contradiction to the founding Terms of Reference.
- That despite the changes to the recreational fishery in recent decades, it has in no way “evolved and grown”.
- The reallocation of the recreational fishery has been occurring in a largely behind-the-scenes manner, often without public consultation and generally ignoring information collected and agreed between DFO regional members and recreational fishery advocates.
This latest ACS letter may be read in entirely here.
In your reply of March 02, it is noted that “… recreational fisheries on southern Vancouver Island have evolved and grown over recent decades.” The ACS believes that this is not true. Angler effort and catch have plummeted over the past several decades. Statistics prove this out. One only has to check out local boat launch and angler boat moorage facilities to see the precipitous decline in effort around southern Vancouver Island.
The reallocation of our catch to another user group has been accomplished by the plethora of restrictions on our Chinook fishery over many years. These include, but are not limited to, reduced annual limit from 20 to 10 (without consultation), four month retention closure from April through July, reduced daily limits and maximum size restrictions and closed areas under the guise of protecting Southern Resident Killer
letter from ACS to DFO re: SFAB restructuring plans
Whales (SRKW) whose population is stable.