[news] Herring-egg harvest angers B.C. natives

[ron]

Herring-egg harvest angers B.C. natives

By MARK HUME
Globe and Mail
Saturday, February 28, 2004


Vancouver - Each spring, the herring come flooding into sheltered
bays along the West Coast to deposit globs of glistening, golden eggs
worth about $35-million a year on the Asian market.

But this year on British Columbia's central coast, the fleet of
commercial herring boats gathering for the harvest may be blockaded
by hundreds of angry natives who feel a natural resource is being
stripped from their region while communities languish in poverty.

"Who knows, maybe this province and country will soon see scenes on
national TV of what took place with our brothers from Burnt Church on
the East Coast. These stocks mean that much to us. Our way of life is
at stake here," said Reg Moody of the Heiltsuk Nation in Bella Bella.

Mr. Moody said people are sick and tired of watching commercial boats
from outside haul away a fortune in herring eggs each year without
benefiting the community, where the unemployment rate is often 90 per
cent and up to 70 per cent of the working-age population is on social
assistance.

"The poverty is bad here. It's real A lot of people who are on social
assistance have trouble even getting gas to go fishing [for food].
You get three or four guys pooling up so they can get enough gas to
go some place where they can catch a halibut. I see that on a regular
basis," said Mr. Moody, who is helping to co-ordinate a protest
against the herring boats. "It's hard to just sit here and watch your
resources hauled away while there are so many unemployed and so many
living below the poverty line."

About 30 commercial herring boats from around the West Coast are
expected to gather in the Bella Coola region over the next few weeks
to await openings by the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans.
The central coast fishery is one of five areas where herring are
harvested in B.C. The areas open at different times in the spring,
depending on when the herring eggs ripen. In the past, up to 100
boats have participated in the fishery.

The herring boats have commercial licences, which are expensive, and
beyond the means of Heiltsuk fishermen.

When the open signal comes, the boats rush in to net thousands of
tonnes of the herring, in what is known as a roe fishery. The object
is not the fish themselves, but their sacs of rich eggs, or roe,
considered a delicacy in Japan.

Also waiting for the herring are fishermen who have what is called a
spawn-on-kelp (or SOK) fishery, in which fronds of seaweed are strung
in spawning areas. In a spawn-on-kelp operation, the herring are
allowed to lay their sticky eggs on the seaweed and then swim away.
The kelp is hauled out and the eggs are processed for market.

The spawn-on-kelp fishery is mostly made up of native fishermen, who
hold 36 of 46 licences coast-wide. The Heiltsuk, who have nine
licences to harvest spawn on kelp, can trace the practice to before
European contact on the West Coast, when egg-covered hemlock branches
were collected and traded among tribes. A 1996 Supreme Court of
Canada case confirmed the Heiltsuk's traditional right to sell spawn
on kelp.

But Mr. Moody said the roe-herring fishery, in which the spawning
fish must be killed to extract the eggs, is taking too big a share of
the catch, depriving the Heiltsuk of opportunities to conduct their
harvest. "Our commercial right to harvest SOK within our traditional
territory is one of the few economic development options we have."
Although we make up 55 per cent of the central coast population, our
herring allocation represents approximately 9 per cent of the
harvested resource value. The remaining 90 per cent of the allocated
herring resources (worth an estimated $155-million since 1996) cct
with these brackets - it's the source speaking, not the reporter are
exported, without benefit to the Heiltsuk," Mr. Moody said.

He said the Heiltsuk have been calling on Fisheries and Oceans Canada
to double their spawn-on-kelp quota to 1,043 tonnes from 525 tonnes.
That would mean taking an equivalent amount away from the roe-herring
boats, which this year on the central coast can catch about 2,000
tonnes.

Mr. Moody said that after years of fruitless negotiations, the
Heiltsuk and a neighbouring band - with the backing of 15 other
tribes coast-wide - have decided to try blocking the commercial
fishery.

"To protect the future of the central coast region, the Heiltsuk and
Kitasoo Xaixas Nations have been instructed by their people not to
allow a seine or gillnet sac-roe fishery in their traditional
territories for the 2004 season," Mr. Moody said in a statement. The
bands have declared that all herring fishing grounds traditionally
used by natives on the central coast are closed to the commercial
fleet. While that would leave some areas open, key areas, like
Spiller Channel, would be "closed.""We have no recourse. The two
[First] Nations will take all necessary steps available to them to
resolve these issues," Mr. Moody said.He would not to say exactly
what type of action is being planned, but said 200 to 300 native
protesters would probably be involved.

Gord McEachen, Fisheries and Oceans chief of conservation management
for the central coast, said the government hopes a confrontation can
be avoided.

If there is a protest, he said the government will see that
commercial boats can fish.

He didn't want to speculate on what native protesters might do, or
how the department might respond. "They plan to do something on the
grounds ... [but] I'm not sure how you blockade ..... when you're in
the open ocean," he said. "We've met with the Heiltsuk repeatedly.
.. We're still in discussion with them ... we'll see if it can be
averted or not."

Ed Safarik, president of Ocean Fisheries Ltd., said the confrontation
boils down to a tough question of sharing a limited resource. He said
he doesn't doubt the Heiltsuk have pressing economic needs, but so do
others. "All the users of that resource need the money. ..... It's a
tough business right now," he said.

Mr. Safarik said Fisheries and Oceans is doing the best it can under
difficult circumstances.

The situation appears to be coming to a head. A statement being
prepared for release by the Heiltsuk and Kitasoo says about 200
kilometres of coastline will be declared "no-fish zones for the
commercial herring sac-roe fishery for 2004."