Valuable fish stocks threatened
November 07, 2007 | | |

Dear editor,

The recent article in the paper by Ralph Shaw over the massive predation by harbour seals was very factual, without finger-pointing at any guilty party.

One does not have to be a rocket scientist to figure out who is responsible for lack of any culling or balancing of the hungry seal stocks.

There are many thousands of DFO employees who are simply not doing their job, and who even keep the actual Minister of Fisheries and Oceans in the dark as to management of the wild salmon resource, or so it appears.

These problems — mostly bureaucratic apathy, and seal predation — were what caused the collapse of the Atlantic cod on the East Coast.

Are we willing to stand by and allow this to happen on the West Coast? Foreign overfishing was also a factor in the cod loss, enabled by bureaucracy turning a blind eye on the problem.

Unless we spend most — if not all — of the recent announcement of $43 million allocated to Pacific wild salmon on spawning enhancement and seal reduction, we will soon see these valuable fish stocks disappear from the West Coast.

We can have constant meetings, constant studies, excessive enforcement, and shuffle vast amounts of paper, but none of this will solve the problem in time.

http://www.bclocalnews.com/vancouver_island_north/comoxvalleyrecord/opinion/11058111.html

"These problems — mostly bureaucratic apathy, and seal predation — were what caused the collapse of the Atlantic cod on the East Coast."

This person needs to look a little further if they believe the seals are what caused the collapse of the Atlantic Cod. Humans just don't like to take the blame/responsibility for anything they do.

Char & Ziggy