If something isn’t done soon, the pictures taken at Big Falls on the Humber River ten years from now will not include any salmon jumping the falls. Non-resident anglers who intend to catch and release salmon this summer in Newfoundland waters will not be welcome. Local or international activists groups may need to be engaged to help. Retention anglers have no choice but to take stronger actions to spur government to act to protect salmon. Tensions between angling groups are at a boiling point. Advice on better ways to protect and sustain salmon stocks has fallen on deaf ears. George Salmon Stewardship Group in returning salmon stocks back to a healthy condition, after a devastating catch and release policy, have been completely ignored. The advice and success of local stewardship groups such as the Bay St. They are taking advice from a foreign business lobby group, the Atlantic Salmon Federation, who want a catch and release only salmon fishery and to privatize the rivers in this province. DFO refuses to discuss catch and release as a conservation strategy with local groups. Parks Canada recognized this and banned catch and release angling on all its rivers here.Įight local stewardships groups are calling for a return to retention only salmon fishing as the best conservation strategy to protect salmon stocks. There are just too many variables to manage and control. Governments must accept that any regulations regarding catch and release salmon fishing cannot be enforced. How many salmon need to be injured and die before governments act? Other countries have banned catch and release and put salmon under the protection of their animal welfare acts. They explain in slick promotional videos the best way to keep a salmon alive so that it can be tortured again in future years. They see nothing wrong with actively promoting the best way to continuously torture salmon for fun. Parents would not intentionally harm their children for fun nor should we harm salmon for fun. It’s fundamentally inhumane and wrong to harm any animal for fun. There is something wrong and rotten with the management of salmon. About 1.6 million salmon have been needlessly injured many fatally to date. That extreme pressure on salmon stocks is unsustainable.Īt the annual rate of injuring salmon, all the salmon left in Newfoundland and Labrador will be injured, many fatally, in three to five yearĪnglers who injure 100,000 salmon per season, kill thousands, and destroy millions of salmon eggs, can’t expect Atlantic salmon to survive. There are now four to five times more salmon being injured yearly than under a retention only conservation strategy. Thousands of salmon are needlessly dying every year because of catch and release angling.Īt the annual rate of injuring salmon, all the salmon left in Newfoundland and Labrador will be injured, many fatally, in three to five years. Most anglers can’t release a salmon in four minutes and have no one waiting near the beach to dip their fish with a rubber mesh net.Īnglers are catching and injuring thousands of salmon per season – playing salmon to exhaustion, beaching salmon to measure them, removing salmon from the water with cotton gloves for extended periods of air exposure while picture taking, and throwing salmon back into the water without any effort to revive them. These mortality rates are likely much higher as the study conditions did not resemble what’s actually happening on the rivers. Water temperatures quickly exceed 20 C on most rivers here in July and August - meaning every second or third salmon will die from catch and release angling. The mortality rate found at 18 C was 19 per cent - twice the level that the study saw as a major risk to salmon and at 20 C was triple the level posing significant risks to salmon. The study stated that “if the mortality is substantially higher than the 10 per cent estimate presently used by DFO, this practice could pose a significant conservation risk to salmon.” The low mortality rate reported in the study of four per cent only occurred in 13 C water temperatures, not found here during the summer angling season. Mortality rates clearly increased sharply with water temperatures. The salmon mortality rates found at 18 C, 20 C and 22 C water temperatures were 19, 32 and 49 per cent respectively. This means that twice as many salmon then previously thought are being injured yearly. It is very significant to note that the study required hooking and injuring twice as many salmon as the study needed to validate results.
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