Tag Archives: seiners

Rivers & Oceans

Fishing communities welcome B.C. intention to reform licensing and quotas

Editor’s note: Fishing was one of Cortes Island’s major industries. The museum records the names of 28 boats and 40 individuals active during the 1970’s. Government regulations changed that. According to  the study SET ADRIFT: THE PLIGHT OF BRITISH COLUMBIA’S FISHING COMMUNITIES, 71% of the people working in the province’s commercial fishing industry lost their jobs. “What remains in the commercial fishery is not a vibrant and healthy fleet, but a fleet ravaged by consolidation.” DFO licensing practises “diverted the fish away from the populous small-boat fleet and delivered the resource into the hands of a venture capitalistâ€Ķ”

By Hope Lompe,  Canada’s National Observer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

Fishing communities, harvesters and advocates are welcoming British Columbia’s intention to work with the federal government to reform the purchase system for fish licences and quotas for B.C.’s commercial fishing industry.

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Rivers & Oceans

Who gets to fish for B.C. salmon in the future?

National Observer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

The West Coast’s commercial salmon fleet is clearly in the midst of transformative change.  

Ottawa has shuttered approximately 60 per cent of B.C.’s commercial fisheries since 2021 and last month launched a licence buyback program to lure fish harvesters to exit the industry to protect plummeting salmon stocks. 

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Finances, Indigenous Nations, Rivers & Oceans

Sweeping reductions to BC’s commercial salmon fisheries

By Matt Simmons, The Narwhal, Local Journalism Initiative reporter

For Kevin Carpenter, a Heiltsuk gillnetter from Bella Bella, fishing has long been a way of life for him and his community.

“I started on boats when I was like five or six years old,” he told The Narwhal on a call from Prince Rupert.

In fact, he said he was preparing his boat for the fishing season a few weeks ago when he heard an announcement that would send him and the entire commercial fishing community reeling.

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Rivers & Oceans

Four Decades Of Gillnetting On Cortes Island

There are more than more 40 names on the Cortes Island Museum’s list of fishermen from the 1970’s. Some were wives, who worked alongside their husbands. Others may have been deckhands. The names of 28 boats are given, though not how many were working in any given year. Now there are two.[1] In this week’s radio program (podcast below), the owner of one of those 28 fish boats describes close to four decades of gillnetting on Cortes Island.

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