You will recall the distribution of halibut in sa国际传媒 with 88 per cent going to commercial fishermen and a meagre 12 per cent going to the public. And you will know that the DFO upped the sports take to 15 per cent this year, but closed the fishery in-season, when the season has been Feb. 1 to Dec. 31, in most past years.
The commercial sector has taken the DFO to court to get back the three per cent.
The sa国际传媒 Wildlife Federation and the Sports Fishing Institute were granted responder status and put together a 24-page brief. This is the first time sports fishers have been represented in this way - because it costs a great deal to hire a lawyer.
The problem started in 1991 when DFO granted the public's common property resource of halibut as individual vessel quota to the commercial sector, resulting in the 88/12 split. This created a cartel of 435 licences against 300,000 sport fishermen - the latter of far greater socioeconomic value.
This led to many problems: over time more and more commercial quota holders decided not to fish but lease out their quota for big-buck fees of six figures; as time went by, more and more quota holders retired and thus leasing comprised, by 2006, a whopping 79 per cent of all commercial fishing; now some quota holders are willing their quota to their beneficiaries. However, a public resource should never have become an asset that virtually no holder fishes, nor an instrument that survives death.
You will recall DFO's term "market mechanism" to describe how sport fishers would buy/rent quota for halibut over the 12 per cent.
Since 2003 there has never been a practical way to institute the transfer. For example, if you want to fish halibut, you must find a quota owner, if you can, then you need to buy a specific amount - when the fish you catch could be any weight - and even if you could "determine" that you were going to catch a 20-pound chicken, it would cost you: $5.30/pound x 20 lbs = $106 per fish. A 100-pounder is an outrageous $530.
The SFI will hold an open-house meeting tonight at 6: 30 at the Sheraton Four Points in Langford. Uncommonly, we are on the DFO's side regarding the three per cent issue, and asking for 20 per cent (Washington was 44.85 per cent in 2011; Alaska, 30 per cent of their total allowable catch).
The 2008 in-season shutdown of the sport sector's halibut fishing was seen as: "the final nail in the coffin of the halibut allocation policy first announced by Fisheries Minister Robert Thibeault on Oct. 27, 2003." He committed to no in-season-shut-downs for the sport sector. DFO also stated it had legal and monetary problems with being the mechanism of halibut quota transfer.
The brief argues that: commercial quota holders cannot reasonably hold that the 12 per cent "ceiling" would carry on for all time; that promissory estoppel, if applied, would also apply to the minister's promise to never institute an in-season closure for the public; and the three per cent decision, was not unreasonable, in fact it was not enough.
The U.S. National Research Council recommended fish-it or lose-it for commercial quota.
