BC Coastal Communities: A GIS Analysis of Commercial Salmon
 Fishing Restructuring

 


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Introduction

Methodology

Results

Discussion

References

Acknowledgements
 

Introduction

  
     On 29 March 1996, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) , under the leadership of Federal Fisheries Minister Fred Mifflin, announced the Pacific Salmon Revitalization Strategy.  Popularly known as the "Mifflin Plan", its stated objectives were three-fold (Gislason, 1996):

1. Sustainable development and salmon conservation- with the goal of ensuring that the salmon resources currently enjoyed will be protected for future generations.
2. Bringing the commercial salmon fishery closer in line with the principles of sound business practices.
3. Increasing the accountability of the constituent stakeholders in the Pacific salmon fishery by sharing with them the responsibility of resource development.

     In this report attention is focussed on the licencing component of the Mifflin Plan, and more specifically on the provision for commercial salmon licences to be "stacked" or "retired."  For the first time in the history of the commercial salmon fishery a single fishing vessel could have more than one salmon licence attached to it- refered to as a "stacked" boat.  This provision was necessitated by "area licencing": dividing up the Pacific fishing grounds of BC into areas where only fishers holding a licence for the area are permitted to fish.  Quite simply, if a commercial salmon fisher wants to fish in more than one area, they need to stack another licence on to their vessel.  It has been argued that only the wealthy fisherman and fishing companies have been able to stack licences, and in the process, siphoning licences from those with less financial resources.  This concern will be addressed in this report by looking at the relative increase of urban licences and decrease of licences in more peripheral coastal communities.
     In addition to the stacking provision, DFO also introduced licence retirement.  The voluntary licence retirement program allowed salmon fishers who wanted to get out of the commercial salmon industry to sell their salmon licences to the Federal Government at market value.  This second provision of the Mifflin Plan has also put the commercial salmon industry into flux.  Gislason (1996) suggests that out of the total 4, 367 commercial salmon licences in 1996, 798 of these were sold to the government under the "buyback" program.
     The report that follows cartographically details these plans and processes.  Using Geography Information Systems (GIS), this report seeks to display the net change in salmon licences for each coastal salmon fishing community and also regional variation in licence changes from 1995 to 1999.  The research that follows is by no means an exhaustive analysis of licence change, or even why this change occurs; rather, it is hoped that by making some preliminary observations and mapping our findings, we can begin to understand some of the push and pull factors at work.  The importance of understanding these processes is considerable.  The commercial salmon industry has a long and prestigious history of being one of the key cornerstone's of BC's early economy.  Like most primary industries, commercial salmon fishing has taken a back seat to post-industrial industries; however, it still remains the lifeblood of many small and isolated coastal communities.  As will be discussed in the sections that follow, aboriginal communities have been particularly hard hit by the recent restructuring, but they are by no means alone.
     Firstly, we begin with a discussion of our methodology, specifically detailing the process in which we constructed our GIS maps and the data sources relied upon.  Following this summary of our methodology we illustrate our main findings through  map projections, simple linear regression models and relevant data tables.  Thirdly, we discuss our observations from our map projections with particular attention paid to outlining the relevance of our findings and demonstrating why these results have applications to our central research question.  And finally, we suggest some of the broader implications of our research and attempt to fit it into a greater body of literature concerned with BC's commercial salmon fishery.