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

initiation of the AFS Agreements in 1992 through 2008. Total sockeye catches havebeen close to or less than the defined allocations for these lower Fraser First Nations inmost years. The only notable exception is the 2006 Sto:lo harvest that exceeded thedefined allocation by approximately 72,000 sockeye. The primary reason for thedifferences between allocations and final catch estimates is uncertainty in the in-seasonestimates of the total allowable catch.Table 11 and Table 12 also provide several examples of the uncertainty associated withthe split between FSC and Pilot Sales fisheries for years before 1998. For example, thevery low FSC catches for Tsawwassen and Musqueam in 1993, 1994, 1996 and 1997,and the low FSC reports for the Sto:lo Group in 1995-1997, are not realistic. In each ofthese years, some of the sockeye caught in sales fisheries were likely used for FSCpurposes. In all years with Sto:lo Agreements after 1992, the defined sockeye allocations(averaging 497,000) were substantially higher than the reported catches for most yearswithout Agreements (averaging 246,000). However, the reported FSC harvests for yearswithout Sto:lo Agreements tend to be larger than the reported FSC harvests for years withAgreements. If we exclude the years prior to 1998 when FSC catch was likely underreported,the average FSC catch in years without Agreements (246,000) was 1.3-foldlarger than the average of the reported FSC catches for years with Agreements (188,000).37