scooter
04-28-2008, 01:12 PM
PUBLICATION: The Telegram (St. John's)
DATE: 2008.03.11
SECTION: Provincial
PAGE: A4
SOURCE: Transcontinental Media; The Northern Pen
BYLINE: Aaron Beswick
DATELINE: Conche
WORD COUNT: 381
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Salmon solution suggested; Mayor says small quotas would deter poaching;; salmon federation disagrees
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On July 8, a convoy of law-enforcement officers sealed off Conche by road and water and searched homes, seized boats and motors, cars and an all-terrain vehicle.
Ten residents were slapped with 52 charges for doing something they and their forefathers had done for more than a century.
They were netting salmon.
Mayor Gerry Bromley shakes his head in disgust.
"They're making criminals out of some hardworking fishermen," he said.
"This illegal fishing - I won't call it poaching - I see it as a revolt against them taking away the culture of rural Newfoundland and giving it to the tourists. Then they wonder why rural Newfoundland is dying."
Bromley said when the salmon fishery closed in 1992, fishermen weren't told the rivers would be opened up to catch-and-release fishing by anglers.
He considers catch and release an insult.
"As far as I'm concerned, someone who beats a salmon to death that has gone up the river to spawn is creating a greater offence than someone who nets a few salmon. They take an animal that is pregnant and abuse it for pleasure," he said.
"I firmly believe that this has been responsible for a number of Newfoundland fishermen catching salmon illegally. They look at the situation and say to themselves, 'If there's enough salmon for people to beat them to death on the rivers, then there should be enough for a few fishermen.'"
Bromley said small community quotas rotated annually between small boat fishermen, with the salmon sold locally, would help deter poaching.
But according to Don Ivany of the Atlantic Salmon Federation (ASF), that's a dead issue.
"Stocks are at a very vulnerable state," he said.
"Returns to Newfoundland rivers were down 10 per cent to 55 per cent in 2007 - it's not a pretty picture. They aren't just down here, they're also down in the United States, the Maritimes and Europe."
Ivany said scientists are baffled as to why salmon stocks continue to decline even after the large-scale commercial fishing of their migratory routes near Greenland ended and the inshore fishery was closed in Atlantic Canada.
"What we do know, based on the data we have, is the rivers are producing fairly good numbers but there's high mortality in the oceans."
Possible culprits include:
Cold water from the expanding Labrador Current and other changes caused by global warming affecting the food supply.
Changes in caplin migration.
An abundance of seals.
Last year's heavy ice cover in spring.
Ivany suspects a combination of factors is driving stocks down.
"There is a problem occurring on a very large scale in the ocean - that's a reason for alarm."
While the ASF doesn't support the opening of an inshore salmon fishery, it does support catch and release by anglers.
That support, Ivany explained, is the result of peer-reviewed scientific studies that say that 95 per cent of salmon caught and released continue upriver to spawn.
"When practised properly, fish have an excellent chance of surviving catch and release," he said.
DATE: 2008.03.11
SECTION: Provincial
PAGE: A4
SOURCE: Transcontinental Media; The Northern Pen
BYLINE: Aaron Beswick
DATELINE: Conche
WORD COUNT: 381
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Salmon solution suggested; Mayor says small quotas would deter poaching;; salmon federation disagrees
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
On July 8, a convoy of law-enforcement officers sealed off Conche by road and water and searched homes, seized boats and motors, cars and an all-terrain vehicle.
Ten residents were slapped with 52 charges for doing something they and their forefathers had done for more than a century.
They were netting salmon.
Mayor Gerry Bromley shakes his head in disgust.
"They're making criminals out of some hardworking fishermen," he said.
"This illegal fishing - I won't call it poaching - I see it as a revolt against them taking away the culture of rural Newfoundland and giving it to the tourists. Then they wonder why rural Newfoundland is dying."
Bromley said when the salmon fishery closed in 1992, fishermen weren't told the rivers would be opened up to catch-and-release fishing by anglers.
He considers catch and release an insult.
"As far as I'm concerned, someone who beats a salmon to death that has gone up the river to spawn is creating a greater offence than someone who nets a few salmon. They take an animal that is pregnant and abuse it for pleasure," he said.
"I firmly believe that this has been responsible for a number of Newfoundland fishermen catching salmon illegally. They look at the situation and say to themselves, 'If there's enough salmon for people to beat them to death on the rivers, then there should be enough for a few fishermen.'"
Bromley said small community quotas rotated annually between small boat fishermen, with the salmon sold locally, would help deter poaching.
But according to Don Ivany of the Atlantic Salmon Federation (ASF), that's a dead issue.
"Stocks are at a very vulnerable state," he said.
"Returns to Newfoundland rivers were down 10 per cent to 55 per cent in 2007 - it's not a pretty picture. They aren't just down here, they're also down in the United States, the Maritimes and Europe."
Ivany said scientists are baffled as to why salmon stocks continue to decline even after the large-scale commercial fishing of their migratory routes near Greenland ended and the inshore fishery was closed in Atlantic Canada.
"What we do know, based on the data we have, is the rivers are producing fairly good numbers but there's high mortality in the oceans."
Possible culprits include:
Cold water from the expanding Labrador Current and other changes caused by global warming affecting the food supply.
Changes in caplin migration.
An abundance of seals.
Last year's heavy ice cover in spring.
Ivany suspects a combination of factors is driving stocks down.
"There is a problem occurring on a very large scale in the ocean - that's a reason for alarm."
While the ASF doesn't support the opening of an inshore salmon fishery, it does support catch and release by anglers.
That support, Ivany explained, is the result of peer-reviewed scientific studies that say that 95 per cent of salmon caught and released continue upriver to spawn.
"When practised properly, fish have an excellent chance of surviving catch and release," he said.