'They just got everything wrong'

By Aaron Beswick/Editor

A story on the front page of last week's Pen has Boyd Lavers worried about his livelihood.

In the story, a veteran small boat fisherman and angler from Hawkes Bay blamed the decline of salmon stocks in River of Ponds and the Torrent River on seiners. They also went after the fishing method for perceived declines in capelin, mackerel and herring stocks.

"Sure they're entitled to their opinion, but they're making comments on something they don't know, making comments that could end my career and I find it very upsetting," said Mr. Lavers, owner of the Port Saunders based 65 foot Brayden and Georgia. "As far as I'm concerned, a purse sein is the most non-destructive form of fishing you can get."

Seins are used for catching mackerel, herring and capelin. They form a long net which hangs vertically in the water - when a school of fish is found, the net is set in a circle around the school of fish until they are surrounded and can't escape. With a purse sein, the bottom of the net is hauled up, forcing the fish close to the surface. At this point the fish are pumped aboard the boat alive with a pump originally designed for moving large amounts of tomatoes.

"When we set on bunch of fish, the fish are still alive. If they're not the right kind we just let the sein go and the fish go free," said Mr. Lavers. "If it's capelin we take a dip net and do a count to see what the male versus female count is, if there aren't enough female, then we let them go. It's selective fishing and the fish come ashore in top quality."

Mr. Lavers also drags for shrimp and fishes turbot with gillnets.

Three young Port au Choix fishermen - Donald Spence, Dean Offrey and Brad House - shared Mr. Lavers' opinion. The boat owners, all under 32 years old, see the seiner fishery as one of few bright lights in their industry.

"They just got everything wrong," said Mr. Spence of the two Hawkes Bay men, who also spoke against seining on CBC Radio's Fisheries Broadcast last week.

"The reason they haven't seen capelin roll ashore in recent years isn't because of seining - there are more capelin on the go now than we've seen before - it's because capelin can spawn in depths from two fathom of water to 30 fathom. They pick their depth to spawn according to water temperatures, so with changing water temperatures they've been spawning in deeper water. We find our fish with temperature gauges."

There are 11 seiners in fishing area 14 and 25 on this province's west coast. Mr. Offrey has been seining for 14 years and said in that time he's never found a salmon in his catch.

"We can't catch salmon with a sein - salmon are a fast fish while a school of capelin is like mud," said Mr. Offrey. "By the time we've got the capelin circled, if there was any salmon in there, they're gone."

The three men see the seiner fishery as being managed to protect the long term health of capelin, mackerel and herring stocks. They also contend that their boats regularly carry fishery observers, are often boarded and inspected by Department of Fisheries and Oceans officers and their catch is subject to dockside monitoring.

"The sein has a future, we make a good living at it and there are more fish every year," said Mr. Spence. "Each of our boats feeds five families, plus offloading crews and truckers. Would you have me go back to lobster fishing and starve?"

Mr. Lavers, meanwhile, offered his opinion on why salmon runs have declined in the Torrent River - deforestation's affect on the river and the cod trap.

"The last big haul of salmon I know that came from that way was out of a cod trap leader. There were cod traps set not to catch cod, but to catch salmon."

"The sein doesn't touch the bottom or tear it up, doesn't take bycatch like a gillnet - it's the best there is," said Mr. Lavers. "In seven years of seining pretty well all around the island, I've seen one salmon caught. An angler on a river destroys more salmon in one day than I have in seven years with a sein."