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Search:		Recreational Halibut Fishery could be ended mid summer 2011 In 2011, recreational halibut anglers could face the very real prospect of having their fishery end mid-summer. I’m not kidding. Indeed if DFO insists on holding the recreational sector to a 12% share of Canada’s allocation under the halibut treaty, anglers had better not plan on going fishing later than July. Ironically, this won’t be because there is any shortage of halibut. It is because the recreational sector will have been held to an arbitrary 12% share in order to protect the private property rights government has given to 436 commercial quota holders. If this was only about competition between recreational and commercial harvesters it would be bad enough. What is infuriating is that most of the quota holders never set foot on a fishing boat. They are what the 140 or so active skippers call “slipper skippers”, fishlords with the power to make everyone else sharecroppers. Although government maintains the fiction that halibut licences are “vessel based”, no one in DFO actually checks to see whether this is true. The slipper skippers joke that the only vessel you need is a 2 by 4. After all, 2 by 4s float! When commercial halibut quota fisheries were established in 1991, a share of the annual harvest was parcelled out to 435 licence holders and their 435 boats. At that point, the process seemed fair since all the quota holders were active fishers and the shares were based on past performance. The quota system ended the annual “gold rush” approach to the fishery and contributed to greater safety for the harvesters and better prices for their fish. It seems perverse that having accomplished its original objectives, the quota system is now undermining the economic basis of both the commercial and recreational sectors. What is even more infuriating is the Conservative government inability or unwillingness to do anything the remedy this colossal imbalance. Remember, the original 88/12 allocation decision was made by Liberal Fisheries Minister Robert Thibault in the final years of the Chretien Government. Yet despite that fact, successive Conservative fisheries ministers insist on supporting the policy. And while I can almost forgive East Coast Fisheries Ministers Loyola Hearn and Gail Shea their inability to understand the importance of the recreational halibut fishery to British Columbians and the BC economy, I cannot understand why North Island MP John Duncan is so willing to sacrifice the interests of 100,000 recreational halibut anglers in order to support 436 commercial quota holders? Duncan’s stance is even more troubling because he serves as a special adviser to Fisheries Minister Hearn when the Conservatives were elected in 2006 and had an early opportunity to overturn the Liberal policy. But actions speak louder than words and it seems clear that Duncan feels that the recreational halibut fishery is unimportant to his constituents both as a social pursuit and as a significant employer on Northern Vancouver Island. There is a solution. Recreational anglers who are told that they can’t go fishing next year because the sport share has been exhausted might want to remind Mr. Duncan that the problem could be solved in a minute if the Minister Shea would simply exercise her much acclaimed absolute discretion under the Fisheries Act. She could make a lot of people happy in both the recreational and commercial sectors if she simply reallocated some of the slipper skipper quota to the sport fishery and the remainder to the active commercial fleet. I doubt there would be any public outcry about the fact that a bunch of “fishlords” were losing something most of them got for nothing in the first place. So there you have it. The question is whether recreational halibut anglers will seize the day and press John Duncan to save the halibut fishery. He is a powerful MP and a member of cabinet. He is influential in the corridors of Ottawa. We need to press Mr. Duncan to use that power to find a solution for BC halibut anglers. For more information please see SFIBC.com General Articles All Categories   Article Topics Date 1. Vancouver Island's Esperanza Inlet Halibut, Salmon, Vancouver Island May 2012 2. Fly Purple Peril Flys May 2012 3. Trolling for trout Trolling, Trout Apr 2012 4. Fly Blue Note Flyfishing, Flys Mar 2012 5. Fly Kalumlow Flyfishing, Flys Mar 2012 6. Fly Skeena Scar Flyfishing, Flys Mar 2012 7. Fly Polar Express Flyfishing, Flys Mar 2012 8. Sturgeon fishing in Vancouver British Columbia Sturgeon Mar 2012 9. Strategies for Catching Sturgeon Sturgeon Mar 2012 10. Fly Copper Gammarus Flys Mar 2012 11. Fly Alley Alevin Flys Mar 2012 12. Fly Hilton Boss Flys Mar 2012 13. 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