DFO: Outlived its usefulness...??

DFO has had a busy year in 2011. First, they spent some time and energy screwing the saltwater recreational sector over the halibut quota issue. DFO then moved on to screwing the saltwater recreational fishery and fishing tourism industry in Port Alberni by allowing the gillnetters and seiners to pillage the returning sockeye run. To add insult to injury, DFO allowed extensive openings right before the lucrative and important July long weekend. After the commercials cleaned out the Inlet, the tourists and fishermen left in droves...the negative impact felt on the Port Alberni tourism economy was large.

DFO then moved onto screwing the Skeena steelhead, its sportfishermen, and related tourism industry by allowing more extensive gillnet openings. Worse yet, selective fishing measures were not required for the earlier openings thus impacting an already below average early steelhead return.DFO didnt care or flinch one bit as questions about this were raised. The IFMP was ignored and gillnetting was  sanctioned to double the preseason estimate....and they havent even formally finished yet. For every gillnet opening in mid-August thousands of steelhead will be negatively impacted.

How, in the year 2011, do we allow an industrial activity to kill upwards of 30% of a return of fish just as bycatch in fishing for other fish? It is absolutely criminal behaviour by an agency that purports to know better...and actually tries to tell international marketing schemes such as MSC Certification, that it does an excellent job of managing BC's fisheries. DFO defined the term 'smoke and mirrors' through a long history of saying one thing to the public while allowing a completely different story to unfold on the water.

Now, we learn DFO has rescinded longstanding selective measures on the central coast where gillnetters are fishing for depressed chum and sockeye. The fishery impacts probably the best known steelhead race on earth: the vaunted Dean river fish.
Again, it is absolutely criminal mismanagement that allows fisheries of dubious economic contribution to negatively impact individual fish that are worth thousands of dollars each to sportfishing related businesses and the tourism economy in general.

Are we so stupid as a society to continue to allow this happen again and again? I know the answer is: NO. No, we are not going to sit idly by and allow a morally bankrupt bureaucracy piss away one of the most unique resources in the world.

It is time to seriously consider taking a run at and dismantling the agency known as DFO. It would involve reaching out to the broad constituency of conservation, sportfishing, and sportfishing tourism related sectors in order to apply as much political pressure on the federal government as possible.
Maybe a large enough contingent arriving at the Cohen Commission hearings with a demand to eradicate the completely lost agency would work. Face it, DFO cannot be fixed...they are institutionally bereft of moral compass and damaged beyond repair.

Time for a change...now.