Missing salmon fan fishing feud

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The disappearance of hundreds of thousands of sockeye salmon from west coast fishing areas is fanning the flames of a heated dispute between commercial fishermen and Native communities developing a new commercial fishery.

Federal fisheries officials halted all fishing on the Fraser River after 100,000 prized sockeye failed to reach spawning grounds on schedule.

No one knows where the fish have gone. But that hasn't stopped commercial fishermen, Native communities and government officials from laying the blame on each other's feet.

"Everybody is taking their stab at finger-pointing," said David Moore, a spokesman for the Shuswap Nation Fisheries program. "But nobody knows what's happened...The biggest culprit at this time is lack of information."

One thing is clear: low fish counts are dealing some hard blows to the industry. Shortfalls recorded in several surveys show the salmon decreasing between 50 and 85

per cent.

While it's still possible the missing fish might turn up in later spawning runs, many of B.C.'s commercial fishermen are pointing the finger at a new Native commercial fishery.

B.C. Natives entered the commercial fishing market this year under a $7 million fisheries department development program. This follows a court decision ending a 100-year-old ban on Native commercial fishing.

But the experimental program has been opposed by the province's non-Native fishermen, who have filed a claim in the B.C. Supreme Court to have Native fishing declared illegal.

In court documents, Michael Hunter, president of the Fisheries Council of British Columbia, estimated the missing catch at more than a million fish, worth $13 million in lost revenue.

Non-Native commercial fishermen have staged protests and resorted to hidden-camera videotaping to bolster their claim dwindling stocks are due to Native over-fishing.

But Native leaders deny the claims and say the blame should lie with what they call federal fisheries department mismanagement.

"Those fish were never there," said Robert Clifton, president of the Native Brotherhood of British Columbia. "Many of those fish were caught along the coast as they migrated shoreward due to the El Nino effect."

Clifton said the El Nino effect - a periodic change in ocean wind currents - created extended harvest opportunities for coastal fishermen who ended up catching most of the missing sockeye.

Patrick Chamut, B.C. fisheries department regional director, said the shortfall can't be blamed on the Native fishery. The Native commercial and food fishery may have underestimated its catch, but predictions for the salmon run may have been mistaken for this year. Native and non-Native poaching and unexplained salmon deaths may have also taken a toll.