BeatRoute Magazine BC Print Edition July 2018

CITY
GOING GREEN IN THE BIG BLUE
A LOCAL FISHERMAN ON KEEPING BC FISH IN BC
DAYNA MAHANNAH
“Wake up, make coffee, eat, fish.”
That’s the order of the day for
Kingsley Bryce, commercial fisherman.
Even trite industry politics, the odd
storm, or low salmon projection won’t
tarnish the simple foundation of a
day at sea. At 23 years old, Bryce is
designated captain of the NERKA#1, a
family heirloom and the 40-foot boat
he and his brother make a living on.
“I call him the deckhand, but,
because we’re brothers, we blur the
Photo by Timothy Nguyen
Commercial fisherman Kingsley Bryce sells the tuna he catches locally, including to Vancouver restaurant Tacofino.
lines there a bit,” Bryce laughs, crosslegged
on the edge of the dock at
Fisherman’s Wharf near Granville Island.
After recently wrapping up the salmon
fishing season, he’s just arrived in town
to drop some goods off at the market.
Bryce is now prepared for summer
and a “green ’n’ clean” tuna fishing
season, which scraps the conventional
methods used in his salmon fishing
practice. Taking a more environmental
route, he’ll use hooks instead of nets,
employ a more “discriminatory”
attitude towards the catch, and refrain
from decimating entire groupings of
fish. In this way, the bycatch (nontargeted
species caught in the wrong
place at the wrong time) is minimized
to two or three for an entire season.
Tuna tend to be a more plentiful catch
than salmon, which average 25 a day,
nearing 100 on a good day. A stellar
12-14 hour day tuna fishing can yield
300 fish.
Bryce’s salmon is sold to a buyer
and hits the international market.
The tuna, however, is processed in the
lower mainland and sold locally – on
Granville Island, in sushi restaurants,
and to his most loyal customer,
Tacofino. In an earlier conversation
over the phone, Bryce asked a simple
question: “How often do you see locally
caught fish being sold locally in the
lower mainland?” His family business,
Natural Gift Seafoods, is changing
the answer to that by offering local,
high-quality albacore tuna to their own
corner of the world.
Concerning their regular commercial
salmon fishing practices, Bryce sees
misconceptions from the general
public. “We’re not as evil as you think!”
he says. “The sense I get from a lot of
people is they think we’re taking the
oceans for every last fish they have
when really, we’re very highly regulated.
Our salmon fishery on the west coast
of the island is allowed to take just
under 1 per cent of the entire estimated
population of Chinook salmon, so that
helps me sleep at night.”
Consumers can take responsibility
for their side of things, too. “At your
local seafood shop, request fresh, BC
produce, and at your sushi restaurants
as well. Definitely pay the extra couple
of bucks for wild salmon instead of
farmed.”
During the off season, Bryce
migrates to North Vancouver from his
hometown of Nanoose Bay. “A small
retirement community gets kinda
tiring for a 23-year-old after a while.”
In the winter he skis, hikes, and takes
his friend’s boat out for – yep – winter
fishing.
But Bryce sits on the youthful end
of the spectrum in an industry where,
a few years ago, the average age of a
Canadian tuna skipper was 58. “I’m
looking for friends!” Bryce laughs.
“There’s quite a few job opportunities
if you’re hardworking and got a couple
screws loose.” A lot of younger workers
in the industry get their start through
family ties, but it “doesn’t mean it
always has to be.”
Such an occupation has its
drawbacks – for the last five years,
Bryce has worked six months at a
time with a total of two weeks off
throughout.
“It’s a lot of hard work,” he says. “But
if you want to escape the hot weather,
you have all winter free to go skiing
or head off somewhere tropical. You
can make a good chunk of change in
a short amount of time.” Even on day
at sea when the fish aren’t biting, the
downsides don’t tilt the scale. “There’s
not a whole lot to do and you’re out on
the ocean, so it’s not a bad place to be.”
Check out Kingsley Bryce’s family
business website, naturalgiftseafoods.
com. For more info about the BC fishing
industry, visit bcsalmon.ca.
14
July 2018