Lots of reasons south coast salmon are in trouble
Letter to the Editor
Bruce Leaman, with DFO on The Broadcast talked about salmon on the South Coast in trouble. Some of the problems are fish farms escapes, also a disease called sea lice caused by the fish farms and warm water and low water.
When I was a boy going to school in Lushes Bight, I knit a salmon net 20 fathoms long in the night after my homework was done, had no time in the day busy at wood and water.
I got a few to eat and to sell at 15 cents per pound.
In 1954 I moved to Deer Lake to seek my fame and fortune, in other words, to better myself.
I was an avid trout fisherman, and Deer Lake was a good place for trout.
Later in life my next-door neighbour, who was an avid salmon fisherman, persuaded me to try salmon fishing. I went with him; it took a couple of days before I hooked my first one, then I was hooked. It was better than sex.
In them days you could keep four salmon a day from May 24 to Sept 15. In 1976 the call of the ocean was too great, so I retuned to my roots to become a commercial fisherman. Mostly cod, turbot, etc. There were many small boat fisher people who made a living at the salmon and lobster, and some would go up the Labrador Coast for salmon when the lobster was over.
About the same time as the cod moratorium was called the salmon was in trouble and the commercial salmon fishery was shut down and now, 34 years later, it is in more trouble than ever before because the government in Ottawa, which manages the ocean, did not try to find out what caused the collapse or try to fix it.
Our salmon stocks are just about over, and we are not doing anything to stop it. The proposed marine park for the South Coast, the one thing that could protect some salmon rivers, is at a stand still all because the aquaculture organization is too powerful and is always promoting jobs.
Well, we cannot keep providing jobs until there is nothing left, where will we get jobs then? While I haven’t caught a salmon for 50 years, I am still concerned about their future.
We owe it to our children and grandchildren and be like my grandparents, who took what they needed and not what they wanted. I have always done that, and I have done very well, and I can die with a clear conscience
Things that are impeding the return of the salmon is the mergansers, a duck that lives in the rivers. I have killed them with their stomachs full of salmon eggs, also the cormorants that are in the mouth of the rivers and will kill the smolt as they return to the ocean.
The seals are also in the mouth of the rivers to feed on the mature salmon returning to the oceans and they are better at it than us.
(Ret.) Capt. Wilfred Bartlett