Fraser River Sockeye Fisheries and Fisheries Management - Cohen ...

made via tagging and experimentation to quantify and determine the factors responsible for thelosses. It would be advisable to distinguish between the two possible definitions (monitoringerrors versus deaths), and the authors should emphasize that the past ‘en-route’ loss figuresprovided for 1980-1991 (Fig. 21) are at best, crude guesses that may not represent deaths duringthe in-river migration.LGL Response: we have added a sentence describing our findings regarding catch andrelease fisheries to the non-retention section of our executive summary. The sentencesrelated to “en-route losses” should remain because one of the unintended impacts of inrivergillnet fisheries could be greater “en-route losses” resulting from fish that encounterfishing gear but escape capture.Page 20: The catch estimation methods for FN fisheries are described based largely on thevarious old reports by ESSA staff (Alexander, 1998 to 2002a). The authors conclude from thoseand other recent summaries of survey coverage and monitoring activities (Tables 8-10) thatmany estimates are reliable, and particularly for recent years. This conclusion is not entirelysupported by recent DFO investigations, and the major changes underway to rectify the apparentdeficiencies of catch monitoring operations. The authors should note that fishing activities andcatches were accounted for via an excessively large number of procedures including trainedobservers, fishery officer checks, hails, voluntary reports, creel surveys, over-flight sightings,landing records, and etc. Some data are recorded directly on paper forms, while others arereported by phone or electronically logged. The catch reporting software program MERCI(http://www.essa.com/tools/MERCI/index.html) developed by ESSA has been used by DFO andFirst Nations since 1998 for some in-season catch reporting. MERCI is being replaced by theCREST data entry and extraction program to provide more details when fully implemented. Theset of monitoring procedures used currently is termed the Lower Fraser Fishery Monitoring andCatch Reporting (FMCR) program. Recently, some DFO staff noted that this program has notbeen modified to keep up with some fishery changes, and provide the data needed to addressemerging issues associated with potential ecosystem impacts, conservation objectives, andmanagement problems. The major issues of concern include (i) the inaccuracy of some catchestimates for lack of adequate monitoring, (ii) some FSC harvests are not routinely monitored,(iii) the lack of special monitoring operations for drift gill-net fisheries, (iii) the insufficientresolution (time/area) in catch records which precludes the formulation of detailed fisheriesagreements for some bands, (iv) the lack of standardized monitoring and reporting proceduresacross commercial and EO fisheries targeting the same stocks/species, (v) the fact that overflightsurveys cannot determine how much fishing occurs in periods of poor visibility or at night,(vi) there is no mandatory release and effort validation for many FSC and EO fisheries. Some ofthe major problems and potential solutions have been highlighted in DFO discussion papers bySigurdsen (Sigurdsen. (no date provided). Catch Monitoring in First Nations Fisheries in theM-16