Native seal kills on the Fraser raise questions

The fishing grounds of the Sto:lo Nation stretch from the waters below the Port Mann Bridge all the way up the Fraser Canyon, to a stream called Sawmill Creek. Native fishers like Ken Malloway will be harvesting sockeye, a highly prized salmon species, until the end of August. Then it will be chum-salmon season, before the fishery closes until next spring, when the chinook will come. Harbour seals are also out on the river, competing with the fishers for salmon.

“They rip the fish off our nets,” Malloway told the Georgia Straight. “I’ve been encountering seals in my nets since I started fishing over 40 years ago. It’s getting worse every year now. There’s more and more seals, and they’re getting more
and more bold.”

Last year, Malloway recalled, one seal got caught in his net. He disposed of the marine mammal with a shotgun. “Our people are going to protect their fish and their gear from seals like we always have,” he said.

In a notice released last month, the Chilliwack office of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans advised fishers that under the Fisheries Act it is unlawful to shoot or destroy seals without a special permit.

Glen Kostiuk, DFO’s conservation and protection supervisor for the Fraser Valley, explained that officials are not investigating anyone for shooting seals, nor are they aware of any recent incidents. The notice, according to Kostiuk, was issued to remind people about the safe handling of firearms, after fisheries officers and the RCMP ran into people on the river with guns.

“If it’s a nuisance seal, the department can issue a licence,” Kostiuk told the Straight. “But that’s mainly if seals are in fishways and killing a lot of fish that are heading back to, like, a hatchery, that sort of thing, or if it’s a fish farm that they’re attacking and ripping the nets up, or getting in and destroying a whole bunch of fish.”

Malloway couldn’t recall whether First Nations fishers have ever asked for permits to kill seals. But, according to Ernie Crey, a fisheries advisor to the Sto:lo Tribal Council, it is time to do so. Malloway and Crey were among those present when an RCMP officer met with Native fishers at the Cheam Indian Band community hall, east of Chilliwack, on July 31 to discuss the DFO seal notice.

“They [RCMP] said they would consider each instance or each case by itself,” Crey told the Straight by phone on August 1. “In other words, the police are not out there on the river trying to seize every gun, and they’re not trying to prevent each instance where a fisherman might have to shoot a seal. That’s how it was put it to us.”

Crey added, “We’re going to take this issue a bit further and ask the DFO to start issuing us permits.” He said he was authorized by Native participants at the July 31 meeting to start discussions with the department on this matter.

According to Crey, DFO regularly issues such permits to fish-farm operators. “In other words, they get a permit to protect their fish, their profit, because they’re selling the fish,” Crey said. “We’re out there, we’re trying to feed ourselves and our families, but DFO is not giving us permits to protect our fish from seals.”

Crey acknowledged that shooting seals “does happen from time to time”, and that it’s done by both aboriginal and non-Native sport fishers.

Getting permits to shoot seals is different from a harbour-seal cull, Crey maintained, although government-sanctioned culls have happened before, and seals have been harvested for their pelts.

According to notes prepared by UBC researchers Marcelo Vasconcellos and Tony Pitcher for a 2002 UBC Fisheries Centre report titled “Information Supporting Past and Present Ecosystem Models of Northern British Columbia and the Newfoundland Shelf”, more than 200,000 seals were killed in B.C. between 1913 and 1969.

Harbour seals have been protected in both B.C. and U.S. waters since in the early 1970s. Vasconcellos and Pitcher cite estimates that the population of this species has increased by about 12.5 percent every year thereafter.

Vancouver-based DFO spokesperson Diane Lake told the Straight that, according to a department assessment made in 2000, there are about 1,600 seals in the Fraser River. Lake said that until applications have been made the department can’t comment on the Native fishers’ plan to ask for permits to kill seals.

Conservationist Peter Hamilton doesn’t need to wait to see these applications, arguing it doesn’t matter whether it’s First Nations fishers who are involved.

“It’s humans that created the imbalance in the fishery, and if people start to try to control wildlife, it leads to other imbalances in the ecosystem,” Hamilton, founding director of the Vancouver-based Lifeforce Foundation, told the Straight.

He says there are nonlethal ways to deal with seals, like seal bombs, firecrackerlike explosives that scare away the animals.

“There are many predators that the salmon are confronted with, and you can’t just start killing all the predators,” he said. “Are you going to shoot the orcas too, because they’re eating the salmon? I’ve seen orcas go up to gill nets and pick the salmon off just like the seals.”

Crey is aware that some conservationists will be upset by the fishers’ plans. “Here’s how I put it to people: we have a responsibility and a right to feed our children and elders,” Crey said. “DFO shouldn’t be managing the fishery to feed the seals and let us go hungry. I understand that [conservation], but we have other priorities.”