Unknown to most herring fishermen, HIAB has endorsed a ‘Herring ITQ demonstration fishery’ for this coming season.

It appears that most herring fishermen have not been consulted.

The Union certainly has questions:

As herring is a quasi-ITQ fishery anyway, what will th...

The Union and Native Brotherhood have been calling for a Licensing Policy Review to ensure that license policies support Active Fishermen. 

At the same time, others have been working to entrench quota (sharing the benefit) costs into all fisheries.

A small group of peopl...

Is everything really okay in your fishery?

The fleet is aging - as are fishermen.

Value retained by active fishermen is declining, while export value is increasing.

Few young people are choosing fishing as a profession- it is too costly to buy in, catches are uncertain, a...

Problem:  Commercial Fishermen need access to more fish

 Solutions:

• More enhancement facilities to produce salmon in areas where we can harvest them –

• use them as production facilities – fill all hatcheries to capacity (government needs to renew its commitment...

Problem: Young people are not seeing fishing as a career.

Retiring fishermen cannot sell licenses/quota at a reasonable income for retirement.

Solutions:

• Attract young fishermen by lower costs to get into fishing.

• License banks (like NNFC or NFA) where new fish...

Problem: all fisheries need better resource management

Solutions:

Resource management needs to

reflect the interests of

communities, fishermen, tendermen and shoreworkers

• Open and transparent meetings

• Meetings need to be near the communities they are impacting

...

Problem:  Fishermen are not united – there are few strong fish harvester organizations left.

Solutions:

• Provincially mandated fishermen’s organizations

  • Different Atlantic provinces have different legislation mandating fish harvesters organizations

  • BC'...

Problem:  Active fishermen are not represented.  Investors are represented - who may have different goals than active fishermen.

 Solutions: 

• Seafood Alliance purports to represent 95% of license holders. It represents the interests of investors not active...

Problem:  First Nations and commercial fish harvesters need to work together to benefit ALL commercial fisheries.

Solutions:

• Need to develop an agreed upon a common Coastal Fisheries Strategy with First Nations/Communities/Owner-operators/NNFC/Native Brotherhood/othe...

Problem:  enforcement of habitat regulations and predator threat control need to occur  

Solutions:              

• Habitat restoration (fisheries / forestry renewal)

  • Community e...