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

Marine Fisheries.The majority of the harvest of Fraser sockeye in marine FSC fisheries is taken by purseseine gear in Areas 12 and 13. DFO reports that most of the seine catch is validated bycertified observers on board the fishing vessels or by monitors at the landing sites. Thegeneral approach for estimating FSC sockeye catch by seine vessels is to sum up theobserved catches and report the total catch on a daily basis. Catch estimates for FSCgillnet and troll fishers are seldom verified and are thus less reliable than estimates forseine vessels. Reports of sockeye caught by gillnet and troll vessels are submitted by theFirst Nation Bands either weekly or monthly.Overall, we rated the accuracy of catch estimates for marine FSC fisheries to be “Good”for seine fisheries and “Fair” for gillnet fisheries. No estimates of precision are availablefor any of the marine FSC catch estimates, thus the rating of “Unknown”. The overallrating for reliability was “Medium”, which reflects the combination of highly reliablecatch estimates for seine harvests and the uncertainty associated with catch estimates forgillnet vessels.Fraser River Fisheries below Sawmill.Virtually all of the sockeye harvested in Fraser River FSC fisheries below Sawmill Creekare caught using gillnets and catch estimates are reported after each opening. Below theMission Railway Bridge, most fishers use drift gillnets. Above Mission, fishers use bothdrift and set gillnets but the majority of the catch is taken using set gillnets. The qualityof the catch monitoring programs in the lower Fraser River improved substantiallythrough the 1990’s, in part because of funding through AFS programs. Theimplementation of the Tsawwassen First Nation Treaty in 2009 resulted in furtherimprovements in the coverage, accuracy and reliability of the Tsawwassen catchestimates. Catch estimates for drift net fisheries conducted above Port Mann rely onreports obtained from a fixed set of landing sites. These landing sites probably capturethe majority of the catch but not the entire harvest.Detailed reviews of the methods used to estimate sockeye catch for set-net fisheriesconducted between Mission and Sawmill Creek were conducted from 1998-2001(Alexander 1998; 2000a; 2001a; 2002a). Alexander (2002a) concluded that the methodsused in 2001 (a combination of net counts from aerial surveys and interviews at landingsites) were valid for estimating sockeye catches for these set net fisheries. The precisionof the 2001 sockeye catch estimates was ±18% and a small to medium positive bias in the30