Nonprofit conservation groups are angry with the Canadian government over its reaction to a video the groups produced that they claim shows fishermen violating the law by discarding dead protected species from their boats.
The groups, SkeenaWild Conservation Trust, Watershed Watch Salmon Society and Raincoast Conservation Foundation produced the video, which has prompted Canada’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) to launch an investigation.
But while the groups are complying with DFO demands to turn over the raw footage they used to create the video, the groups issued a joint statement saying that by using the video to target the offending fishermen, instead of meeting with the groups to create better laws, the DFO is missing the point.
"DFO and the big processors have set these guys up to take the fall," said Greg Taylor, a former fishing company executive, now with SkeenaWild. "It's just plain wrong. Our objective in releasing the video was to improve the fishery so that future generations have some salmon left, not punish a bunch of hard working guys who are working for Jimmy Pattison.”
Taylor was referring to the Jim Pattison Group, one of many large companies the nonprofits argue are working with the government to make the fishermen “scapegoats.”
The nonprofit groups shot the footage on three separate boats in the Area 6 seine fishery west of Kitimat, British Columbia. Regulations state that certain protected species, such as chum and sockeye, if caught, must be returned to the water “with the least possible harm.” The video, according to the groups, shows fishermen discarding the protected species “dead or nearly dead.” The groups claim this practice is part of what causes thousands of protected fish to turn up dead in fisheries and processing plants.
The problem, however, is not the fishermen, the groups contend, but a lack of effort by regulators and the larger fishing and processing firms to seek out rules that don’t punish the fishermen.
"Having a few fishermen charged, and their lives disrupted because they happened to be the first ones in line when we showed up with our camera is not going to fix the broken management system that let this fishery get so far out of control," said Aaron Hill, an ecologist with Watershed Watch. "All three of the boats we filmed mishandled fish, and now DFO and the Jim Pattison Group are trying to paint them as 'just a few bad actors'? It's outrageous.”
