heard this story before...?
cohen commission… coles notes…
3 Replies
Category Archives: Uncategorized
Wild salmon catch — is it worth it?
sockeye catch San Juans
for last year are posted on the Department of Fisheries and Oceans website.
Grand total in 2010 of salmon caught commercially: 6,777,763
With 5,774,694 of those being sockeye.
This is a cumulative weight of 17,757,562 kg. With a little over 15,000,000 kg of that being sockeye.
Grand total value of all salmon… $53,567,127
With sockeye making up a little over $44,000,000 of that.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _
Seems we’ve improved from the 2009 season (see popular post: ). Rough averages suggest we jumped last year to an approximate value of $8 per salmon…
Or, roughly, $1.30 a pound or so — on average.
_ _ _ _ _
On the sockeye front, the catch statistics suggest total sockeye landed = 5,774,694 with a landed weight of: 15,025,525 kg or approx. 33,000,000 pounds.
The total value of sockeye = $44,192,198
That’s about $1.33 per pound.
_ _ _ _ _
This fits in roughly with averages over the last few decades.
My question: Is it worth it?
_ _ _ _ _
And this is directed in so many different ways…
What does it cost these days for the operating costs of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans? What are the operating costs of the 100+ “salmon team” alone — including stock assessment, management, admin, etc.?
What does it cost to relocate, or shoot a starving bear rooting through some villages’ garbage because the local salmon runs disappeared?
What is the true value of what is required on the salmon habitat front — both protection/preservation and rehabilitation?
What does the Department of “Fisheries” & Oceans and the Department of Justice pay these days in court costs to argue that the First Nations fronting numerous challenges in relation to fishing rights — don’t actually have any rights, or had little involvement in trading fish and salmon pre-contact, and so on, and so on…? (mainly, it appears, to protect commercial and other interests — as why argue it otherwise?)
The Lax Kw’alaams band, located near Prince Rupert, claim a constitutional right to fish, not only salmon, but also halibut, herring and other species, commercially along the north coast.
The federal government maintains that aboriginal right to fish for food, social and ceremonial purposes does not extend to the right to sell fish.
The case has been winding its way through the legal system for five years. In 2006, the Lax Kw’alaams sued the federal government in B.C. Supreme Court, arguing their historical reliance on fish and centuriesold trade in fish oil gave them a modern right to a commercial harvest.
_ _ _ _
The old economic vs. environment argument starts to wear pretty thin when it comes to the value of commercial salmon fisheries.
This isn’t meant to paint those who still commercially fish with a bad brush. I know many who do — or did…
It’s more to ask the hard questions.
The Department of “Fisheries” & Oceans is aptly-named. It harkens of a bygone era and so does much of the culture within the institution (the “mustache” crowd as many folks have dubbed it). There are many good folks within the organization, with good intentions.
However, maybe a parallel could be drawn with sports teams that finish last. Maybe lots of good players and management — but often have adopted a losing culture, or an outdated culture.
How many senior managers, administrators, and asst. deputy ministers and otherwise within that organization were there in the heyday of high salmon prices and catches in the 1980s and otherwise?
For over a hundred years that organization has existed — and how many complete restructuring initiatives, re-culturing, or complete overhauls have happened?
Say… compared with other older organizations like General Electric, or Bell, or CN Rail or otherwise.
Most everything about the “management” of wild salmon is structured around who is going to catch them… from the Pacific Salmon Treaty and the Pacific Salmon Commission, through DFO.
And yet… up and down the coast of BC massive changes have occurred over the last few decades in every small (once) fishing-focused villages and towns. As the fisheries closed due to dwindling runs, canneries shuttered, dock pilings rotted, trollers turned into pleasure craft, bears starved, and the like — the Department of “Fisheries” simply became more concentrated in Vancouver and Ottawa.
Less regional offices, less regional staff, less stock assessment (because the stock just aren’t there to assess…), less habitat protection and monitoring, less enforcement — yet more and more and more paper.
MORE paper then one could ever imagine.
Look at the — an entire year extension and multi-million dollar budget expansion — largely due to paper (reports, emails, briefing notes, meeting notes, meeting minutes, Minister’s briefings, and so on and so on).
Teams of people blasting through PAPER… and more PAPER… and still… more PAPER.
Go look at the meeting schedules of DFO staff, or look on their website, or phone one of the employees and ask.
Meeting after meeting, after meeting…
meaning…
More PAPER.
When problems occur… what’s the solution… hire more people to produce more PAPER. Or get rid of people and load up the remaining folks with more paper…
It’s like the 4 P’s of Marketing recreated… People Pushing & Producing more Paper.
WHY?
For a $1.30 a pound?
_ _ _ _ _
There’s about 1.57 lbs in a litre of fuel. That means that at about $1.30 per liter of gas right now (more for diesel, but cheaper for marine fuel), that translates to roughly 87 cents a pound.
How many pounds of fuel does it take to catch a pound of salmon?
_ _ _ _ _ _
I came across a note the other day for a conference on building Resilient Communities in the face of climate change. The note suggested:
fish circle
Resilience Theory is a discussion about how communities and societies will adapt to climate change. We understand that we must mitigate climate change and adapt, or we will be in a very difficult place…
And yet, we don’t change our ways of “managing” salmon, or at least our relationship with salmon, to account for these same sorts of changes coming rapidly down the pipe.
When it comes to wild salmon in BC… we’re already in a “difficult place” and have been for years. Go ask… again… all the old fishing villages up and and down the coast. Go ask all the First Nation communities that have depended on yearly salmon returns for eons…
(or add up the costs of the fifth major ‘commission’ in less than two decades on how to better look after salmon)
If one reads through Pacific Salmon Commission and DFO documents — for example on Fraser Chinook — various ‘targets’ for ideal number of spawners (“escapement” they call it — which harkens to the time of counting spawners based on what “escaped” fisheries) are based on numbers derived in the 1980s.
I’m thinking there’s been a few changes in the habitat of Fraser Chinook since the 1980s and that they face a suite of challenges a little more dire than… say… the average water temperature in the Fraser River in the 1980s and earlier.
How has our ‘management’ of salmon changed to account for the dramatic changes occurring as a result of climate change? Some changes we won’t even know until there on top of us.
Look at ocean acidification on the Pacific coast… it has happened at a rate 50-times faster than any scientific models predicted. It’s there, and it’s getting worse.
Dead zones, etc.
Theories change, climate changes, cultures change, organizations change, nature changes… maybe it’s time for change in how we guide our relationship with wild salmon? Fundamentally change…
And what is a “department” anways…?
Free dicitonary online suggests it is: ”
A distinct, usually specialized division of a large organization, especially:
a. A principal administrative division of a government.b. A division of a business specializing in a particular product or service. [e.g. “fisheries”]An area of particular knowledge or responsibility; a specialty. [e.g. “fisheries”]
And see, running with this definition is exactly why salmon aquaculture was ruled by Canadian courts to revert back to the Federal government and the Federal department of fisheries and oceans from the Province of BC — because aquaculture was basically deemed a “fishery”. And under the division of powers in Canada that must be managed federally.
Thus, do we maybe need a new “Department”?
A ‘department’ of “fish and habitat conservation”.
Because it seems that the goals of keeping “fisheries” afloat can run directly in the face of conserving fish and habitat. And, therefore, we have a federal “department of conflicting mandates” (just as the anti-fish farm lobby consistently suggests…)
What would we call this specialized “department” if all salmon fisheries are curtailed?
“department of oceans”? (granted some other fisheries would still continue)
$8 per fish; $1.30 a pound… is it worth the risk?
What happened to Rivers Inlet sockeye?
So let me ask you this: What happened to Rivers Inlet sockeye?
Rivers Inlet is a large inlet located on mainland BC a little ways north of Port Hardy off the northern end of Vancouver Island.
do you see the irony in this map?
Here’s a slide from a presentation by Rick Routledge at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver:
- Rivers Inlet — once #2 in BC sockeye catch
Yeah, Rivers Inlet used to be #2 in BC sockeye catch. Although there was a time in the early 1900s when the Skeena was higher… but those runs zonked sooner than Rivers and Smith Inlets.
In the same presentation, Routledge has this slide:
- Rivers Inlet
I do find it curious that since there was no data for “escapement” (potential spawners that reach the river) prior to 1951 — and as such we still call this a sockeye “returns” graph. But then, I suppose, a sockeye caught at the mouth of the inlet is still a “return”…
Key message here… a lot of fish were caught in Rivers Inlet in the early 1900s.
A similar slide to a DFO report in 1998 by McKinnell and company: . (here we are looking for a “cause” again… separate from ourselves)
The numbers don’t really seem to match up between the slides… For example, the big catch year in 1926 shows almost 2 million fish caught in Routledge’s graph and maybe about 1.7 million in the DFO produced graph…
-
- Graph comparison
But gee whiz… what’s 200,000 to 300,000 fish caught in the heyday anyways…?
(or maybe it’s just the skewing due to scale…)
But why was there never a judicial inquiry into the collapse of Rivers Inlet sockeye — once the #2 commercial sockeye producing area?
And might those two huge years of catch in the 1970s have anything to do with the crash?
_ _ _ _ _ _ _
Hmmm…
so what do we have here?
Well… let’s consider a couple of things…
Firstly, if we take both of these graphs back far enough into the 1800s we would see a trend like this:
familiar trend?
And I think this may look familiar to many people.
It’s sort of a similar trend to many industrial fisheries around the world over the last 100-years or so…
For the economists out there it also sort of resembles the tax curve…
e.g. taxes are good for awhile but eventually they start to have negative returns and we see this classic mound shape…
Or for the cooks out there: the salt curve… A bit of salt is good, better to a point, then there are quickly dwindling returns on the taste front…
Or salmon cannery production… one cannery is decent, production goes up, profit goes up…
Rivers Inlet cannery (early 1900s?)
…throw in a couple more canneries
another Rivers Inlet cannery
…and eventually things plateau, populations start declining, production declines, profits decline… and CRASH!…
Was it worth it?
(and unfortunately, we can’t cut the costs of production by outsourcing to a place like China or otherwise… the classic economic solution)
_ _ _ _ _ _
Secondly, there is a classic western-science based assumption in all of this…
The idea that no one else was harvesting fish — commercially or otherwise — prior to the mid-1800s.
The common colonial concept of: the Latin expression for “no man’s land”; nobody here – nobody there.
Terra nullius & Mare nullius
Mare nullius is the ocean equivalent — “nobody was using the ocean…”
Almost every graph one looks at in the ‘science’ world shows this bizarre assumption that no salmon were being harvested prior to contact.
Why is that?
We know that entire cultures harvested millions upon millions of salmon. The bulk of First Nation cultures of BC are basically built upon the backs of salmon.
Some research suggests that the First Nation harvests of salmon pre-contact may actually have been higher than average commercial catches in previous decades.
So, why is there no big research agenda directed at finding just how many salmon were being harvested pre-contact? (appears it was done sustainably as the cultures thrived…)
Or how many salmon were being harvested by First Nation communities at the same time as the cannery boom? (granted most communities were forced from their fishing grounds and through this process basically formed the present landscape of the First Nation reserve system…)
Why is this not on the Cohen Commission research agenda?
Oh right… because we’re only looking at the 2009 Fraser River sockeye crash and nobody wants to admit that overfishing is one of the biggest culprits… because that would mean it’s our fault, us humans… much easier to blame ocean conditions, climate change, and so on and so on.
Sort of like the insurance industry that has outs with ‘acts of god’… for things like building on the floodplain of huge rivers and having dikes fail that were built to withstand the 1 in 100 flood year. (certainly wasn’t our fault for building in the floodplain in the first place… because really, how much comfort is there building in a place called “delta”?)
_ _ _ _ _ _
A key point here is that people are an intimate component of the salmon cycle — pretty much always have been; always will be.
And yet, when it comes to research agendas… judicial inquiries… salmon think tanks… and otherwise — we so often want to focus on the other ‘reasons’ for declines: ocean conditions, marine survival, juvenile migration, gravel condition, nursery lakes, etc.
(oddly enough though, we often don’t even focus on some of these basic components…e.g. DFO only really looks at 2 sockeye nursery lakes in the entire Fraser system)
Seems, we just don’t want to look in a mirror… and look back.
Might a look in the mirror clearly demonstrate the reason why Rivers Inlet sockeye have gone the way of the North Atlantic Cod?
Or why so many other BC sockeye and other salmon populations are on a similar path, or already well down that path…?
(Pretty much the only reason the Skeena River has sockeye anymore is because of massive enhancement and human-made spawning channels in the Babine system — which accounts for approximately 90% of the total Skeena return)
Is there an example of any wild animal population anywhere that is subject to industrial economic models over the last 100 years that has survived to tell a tell of plenitude and plenty and true long-term sustainability?
If we know that the decaying carcasses of spawned out adult salmon are key food for future generations of salmon; are key ingredients for the health of the surrounding environment (e.g. forest); and are key to the health of us-humans — then why do we continue to follow the route that we do?
Rivers Inlet canned salmon
All the fish in these cans means that consumption of nutrients is largely limited to humans in places a long ways away from the salmon’s natal stream… and what percentage of the sockeye runs to Rivers Inlet are represented in these cans — 80%, 90%, 98.5%…?
This means less nutrients for everything around and in the stream… which in turn means a dwindling cycle…
Why are we so damn blind to the impacts of the last 125 years (approx. 30 salmon life cycles)?
Doesn’t really matter where you look, the population trends of wild fish and humans over the last 150 years or so… tend to be on disparate angles.
humans and fish
I’m just not so sure the mystery is all that great…
Yet we continue to spend small fortunes on “research agendas” and “action plans” and “inquiries” to prove something we probably already know… e.g., we took far too many fish in the heyday, and now we’re paying the price.
The cod story is not a mystery… so why is the sockeye story expected to be much different?
And now the question is how many ‘interventions’ are we going to continue to muddle with? (stay tuned for next post)
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Update from April 14th.
Related… came across this in one of Raincoast’s reports:
page 15
Warning: skewed graphic content?
Fitting quote…
Language is the means of getting an idea from my brain into yours without surgery.
~Mark Amidon
_ _ _ _ _
Hence, why it is pretty important to make best efforts to: mean what you say, and say what you mean.
As famous writer E.B. White suggested:
No one can write decently who is distrustful of the reader’s intelligence, or whose attitude is patronizing.
Or as , professor emeritus at Yale University and design expert, suggests in one of his fantastic books Envisioning Information:
Lurking behind chartjunk is contempt for both information and for the audience. Chartjunk promoters imagine that numbers and details are boring, dull and tedious, requiring ornament to enliven. Cosmetic decoration, which frequently distorts the data, will never salvage an underlying lack of content…
Worse is contempt for our audience, designing as if readers were obtuse and uncaring. In fact, consumers of graphics are often more intelligent about the information at hand than those who fabricate the data decoration. And, no matter what, the operating moral premise of information design should be that our readers are alert and caring; they may be busy, eager to get on with it, but they are not stupid.
Clarity and simplicity are completely opposite simple-mindedness. Disrespect for the audience will leak through, damaging communication.
_ _ _ _ _ _
Fitting post from Mr. Godin today as well — especially surrounding this highly contentious BC salmon farming issue:
If you ever have to say ‘lighten up’ to someone, you’ve failed twice. The first time, when you misjudged an interaction and the other person reacted in a way you’re unhappy with, and the second time, when you issue this instruction, one that is guaranteed to evoke precisely the opposite reaction you’re intending.
I’ll add “I was joking,” to this list, because it’s an incredibly lame excuse for a failed interaction.
One more: Raising your voice while you say, “You’re just going to have to calm down!” (And I’ll add librarians yelling at kids to be quiet…)
It’s completely valid to come to the conclusion that someone else can’t be a worthy audience, conversation partner or otherwise interact with you. You can quietly say to yourself, “this guy is a stiff, I’m never going to be able to please him.” But the minute you throw back instructions designed to ‘cure’ the other person, I fear you’re going to get precisely the opposite of what you were hoping for.
(Generally speaking, the word “oh” is so neutral, it’s a helpful go to pause while you wait for things to calm down.)
_ _ _ _ _
Oh…?
_ _ _ _ _
Might something akin to this occur with the current PR-campaign by the BC Salmon Farmers Association, or tar sands PR campaigns, or otherwise?
For example, the “bcsalmonfacts” TV commercials that ask the question along the lines of: “do you believe everything you’re told?”
Doesn’t seem to be all that different than TV commercials these days advertising cars as good “environmental choices” and promoting the fact that fewer greenhouse gases were released in the making of the commercial because they put the car on a treadmill of sorts and sprayed it with a hose to make it look like it was raining.
Well, sure, producing the commercial might have saved a few ounces of greenhouse gases, but what about the amount that that same car is going to produce over its lifetime?
_ _ _ _ _ _
Advertising and PR (and the prime time nightly news and campaigning politicians) that market to folks as if they are the lowest common denominator will (most likely) eventually have things blow up in their face.
All the more complicated… throw in a pile of finger pointing, stabbing and jabbing — attacks on the other sides “science”, credibility, “facts”, and just simple attacks; and… well… many folks just zone out. At least the folks in the middle or maybe even on the fence.
For others that have an impassioned opinion on either side, fires are simply fueled, logs are thrown on the blaze, and the inferno of “who’s more right?” burns through the night. (just like a marriage or family member argument that burns for years because one person is sooo much more right than the other person… and vice versa).
Calm, measured, listening, middle-road approaches — with questions of clarification, attempts at balancing and limiting assumptions, and conversations that seek clarity and understanding (and maybe even agreeing to disagree on some things)… might garner much stronger, lasting results?
Or, is that just pie-in-the-sky idealism?
Salmon take the stand…
Click image to see entire cartoon.
never to be seen testimony
Ah… yes… finger pointing at its finest.
.
BP Chairman and President, Transocean President & CEO, and Halliburton’s chief health, safety and environmental officer are sworn in for Congressional Hearings over the sinking of the Deepwater Horizon oil drilling platform and resulting spewing oil well that is threatening a large portion of the Gulf of Mexico.
"Not our fault!"... high five buddy!
.
And let the finger pointing begin… “so help us god”.
As these three clowns sat there and pointed the fingers at each other on who was to blame… various initiatives were underway in the Gulf to try and deal with the issue.
burning off spewed oil
fishery shut down... but work available
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
As the CEO of BP CEO Tony Hayward has explained to the media that the impact of the continued spill would be/are ““… (click to watch video — I will save my scathing rant on these comments as my inside voice)
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.(images from CNBC website)
dead fish from Gulf coast
Yeah… modest indeed – you clowns.
Folks should be going to jail; there are dead workers, dead sea life, and dead coastal communities to come.
random intersections…
Some sanity-seeking thoughts as I sat at the lake the other day enjoying the sun:
this is actually being discussed...
Believe it or not, some folks are discussing this as a possibility. Who knew that salmon could follow traffic signs?
.
Maybe this is part of the problem?
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
As the Cohen Commission into Fraser Sockeye Declines gets rolling:
.
Day one...
.
.
so what?
.
hope is a verb with its sleeves rolled up.
Here’s a nice way to close. Some emotion gets added in at the end. Will comment more…
The discussion has gone from hatcheries to love of salmon, to emotions, to diversity in our workforce and research, and so on. Nice shift. Nice close…
Powerful stuff
A Pulitzer Prize winning photo-journalist tells incredible stories through her photos at a TED talk. Good luck not saying “wow”…
the public inquiry blind date.
Yesterday I received a letter from the Cohen Commission (public inquiry into declines of Fraser River sockeye salmon) that my application for “standing” with the Commission was denied. I’m not surprised; however, the mystery continues on how the Commissioner is defining the: “substantial and direct interest in the subject matter of the inquiry” required to be granted standing.
About a month ago I sent an email to the Commission asking for clarification of the “substantial and direct interest”. The Department of Fisheries and Oceans was automatically granted standing so, I figured, there must be some sort of definition or bar to be met.
The response I got (and posted on the Commission website):
In advance of an application for standing, the Commissioner will not issue rulings on what constitutes a “substantial and direct interest”.
I wasn’t looking for a “ruling” just a definition.
In the letter that I received yesterday from the Commission lawyers it states:
On the basis of the material you have provided, it appears to Commission Counsel that you may not have a “substantial and direct interest in the subject matter of the inquiry” as required by the Commission’s Terms and Conditions for the Commissioner to grant you standing.
Carefully worded… “may not”; however, if I want to take issue with this ruling I need to make an appointment to go before the Commissioner in Vancouver next week and let them know by Monday — even though I just got the letter last night. (I live in Prince George, 800 km north of Vancouver).
The mystery here is that folks have been asked to demonstrate “substantial and direct interest” with no definition for what that means. Sure, there are guidelines for making the application — but still no definition. Sure, I can go argue my case next week in Vancouver on my own cost; however, what the hell would I be arguing?
Nobody knows this mysterious definition, or at least what factors must be met to prove “substantial and direct interest”. If I was to go argue my case next week it would be like a blind date. I don’t mean, in the traditional sense of going on a date with someone you’ve never met. I mean a blind date as going with a blindfold on.
Or worse, like an exam or test of sorts where I have no idea what the questions are.
One generally hopes that when a bar is set — that you actually have an idea of what that bar looks like so you don’t run smack dab into it… especially in the dark. I don’t generally like to drive with my eyes closed — yet this process of demonstrating a “substantial and direct interest” was a bit like driving in the dark.
Prime Minister Harper in his press release announcing the Commission stated:
“It is in the public interest to investigate this matter and determine the longer-term prospects for sockeye salmon stocks.”
In the public interest, yes. But, open to public input… that’s yet to be seen. Granted the offer is open to send letters into the Commission — yet no explanation of what or how that may be weighted in the review.
I’m trying to remain optimistic that the Cohen Commission will not be another “here we go again” (the actual name of a salmon inquiry in the 1990s) — A $20 to $30 million process with recommendations that gather dust until 2020 like the recommendations of the Royal Commission conducted in the 1980s.
I get the fact that the “substantial and direct interest” is there to try and limit testimony from every busybody with an opinion on the matter — however I’m still not clear on why the bar to be met has not been explained. The “public” part of this inquiry appears to be that apparently the public is welcome to sit and watch the hearings…(and flip the bill).
If you’re curious about what the potential bill might be — there are guidelines on the Commission website on what lawyers for individuals (or organizations) granted standing might charge. The maximum is $350/hr for a lawyer with 20 years experience. The maximum is a 10 hour day — except for hearings days. These costs will be covered by the Commission if assistance for funding was applied for.
Currently, there are nine lawyers hired by the Commission plus the Commissioner. Apparently there has also been scientific advisers hired by the Commission — yet this has not been posted on the website.
Start doing rough tallies… nine lawyers and a Justice and lead scientists, that’s somewhere in the range of $8,000 – $15,000 per day on the low end just for wages on the Commission. Factor in Fisheries and Oceans staff and lawyers, lawyers for those granted “standing”, all of the administrative assistance the Commission will require. Facilities, offices, hearings…
Interim report by August of this year — final report by May of next year. Let’s say 15-20 days a month times 15 months (if there are no delays)…. As the contestants on the Wheel of Fortune say: “big money… come on big money”. I think there are many folks hoping it’s worth it — and fundamental changes come as a result.