We All Should Be Ashamed At What We Have Done To The Salmon Fishery

By Ben Meisner

When the Federal Fisheries suggest that this could be one of the worst years on record for returns of Sockeye salmon and many other species on the west coast of BC, I can’t help but shrug my shoulders.

When I first came to this province I was awe struck by the size of some of the fish. Spring salmon that reached 70lbs just boggled my mind. I became very interested in the resource because I thought how important it was to try and retain it. I couldn’t believe that a fish 1 inch long could head out to sea, travel much of the world’s oceans and then return to exactly the river at which it was born. I still marvel at what Mother Nature has created.

I took off 19 months of work in the early 80’s to try and persuade government that the Kemano completion would mean a serious decline in the Sockeye stocks that travel the upper Fraser. I was labeled as basically stupid, how a lay person could even suggest that. Perhaps the difference between the others and myself is that I cared and still do, but to a lesser extent.

When I first came to Prince George there was one Federal Fishery officer for the region. Now we have a flotilla of them and the resource continues to die.

A couple of years ago I stopped at a road check on my way to run up as far as I could on the Skeena River with my friend Doc. On the way there , we encountered a road block and I watched in horror as an Albertan was getting a ticket for an old pink salmon  that he had thought was a spring. He had carefully packed the fish on ice, and trust me, this was no bright, fresh Pink, but rather and old, “humpy”.

Going up the Skeena,  I counted 87 nets, some right across the Skeena, numerous ones had fish in them that were very old. I phoned the Feds from my satellite phone, no one came up the river to check.  The Fish cops were still on the road block.  On the way home,  I saw  them getting those same Albertans who would dare take a pink thinking it was a spring , not a thing had happened. We had given that Pesky Albertan a ticket, while the Federal Government stood idly by and did nothing about the bigger picture.

I know that the Fed's are powerless to do much, they stand around with their hands in their pockets and they do have families to feed, but the salmon cry out for our help and we do nothing about it.

Oh we run out here and there and give someone a ticket for fishing with a barbed hook, when right beside them, fish are being removed in large quantities from the river without any regard for the number or the affect on the future runs.

We don’t have to look very far to see who is responsible, all of us, we who sit around and watch the carnage take place, those fishermen of the high seas who pillage the resource so that they can get rich in the near future, and indeed the aboriginal population who while they may have title and right for ceremonial and sustenance purposes, take a resource that is dying before us. The sport fishermen is tossed a bone, He can keep maybe one, or none, but he retains the right to be there, sold out for a couple of days fishing without looking at the bigger picture.

I have watched, I have fought and now I am watching what I kept preaching for the past 35 years. We can blame global warming, we can blame , aboriginal fishing, we can blame the drift nets from the high seas, in the end it is man who has taken this precious resource and destroyed it , you and I and all of us collectively.

We should be ashamed of ourselves.

I’m Meisner and that’s one man’s opinion.

Email | Print | Facebook | Twitter | Digg | Del.icio.us