UieTiTherman
138 East Cordova Street, Vancouver 4, B.C. Phone: MU. 3-9655
10 CENTS A COPY $4 A YEAR
GEORGE NORTH, Editor HAL GRIFFIN, Associate Editor
Authorised as second class mail by Post Office Department, Ottawa and for payment of postage in cash. Published every Friday except the last Friday of the month. Deadline: Wednesday prior to publication.
Lessons are Obvious
PREDICTING salmon runs is anything but an exact science. We're sure the Skeena River Management Committee will agree this is an understatement. The federal fisheries department as a whole will undoubtedly endorse this view and it's even possible the International Pacific Salmon Fisheries Commission may add its amen.
This has been a year of surprises from the Fraser to the Nass with small returns where larger ones were expected, and relatively poor fishing where the expectations were for reasonably good runs.
"A strong run" of pinks was forecast for Area 6 (Bute-dale) and a> "better than average return" for Area 7 (Bella Bella) but so far these runs haven't materialised, although it's still not too late for them to appear.
"Spring salmon runs to the Fraser, Skeena, and Nass are all expected to be below average," the fisheries department stated in its annual survey of last January.
Spring fishing, however, has been one of the bright spots in this year's fishery, not only in these main rivers but in other areas. Many gillnetters were well on their way to a good season as a result of their spring catches.
The Skeena Salmon Management Committee got down to detail when it predicted 944,000 sockeye this season but admitted it hadn't been too accurate in previous years.
It was away out. Catch and escapement to August 9 totalled 1,674,000 sockeye, including an escapement of 977,000 sockeye, which is greater than its overall prediction. This is considerably more than the minimum escapement the Committee felt was necessary.
We must add that the Committee did note "past difficulties" in forecasting Skeena sockeye runs and the possibility that this year's run might be larger than forecast. But it gave little encouragement to such optimism.
We are not quoting these few examples of error among many to chastise those responsible for fishery management except to say that fishermen have almost unanimously expressed considerable scepticism about the reliability of fisheries officials in such matters.
Our view in the matter is that the fisheries department and its related commissions obviously know far too little about their complicated subject to be reliable.
They don't really know what happens to the salmon when they go to sea; they don't know how far out they go; they don't know in detail their migration routes, and they most certainly can't break down "ocean mortality" into its basic elements.
The Skeena Management Committee doesn't even know how much of the Skeena and Nass runs are taken by the Americans north of the international boundary.
And the fisheries department and the fishery commissions certainly don't know how many BC salmon the Japanese are catching on the high seas.
There have been generally negative opinions but on the basis of the available evidence, we regard them as largely political and not scientific.
The Canadian government and its federal fisheries department should look on this year's inaccurate forecasts as an object lesson in how much remains to be known about salmon and their movements.
Department officials should propose and the government should allocate greatly increased funds for added research in this vital field.
Canada should undertake a large scale tagging program far offshore, to and past the 175° west meridian in mid-ocean and in other vital areas as well.
It's about time we talked a little more firmly to the Americans about their catches of salmon off our northern boundaries and insisted on a joint approach to the matter.
Knowledge is the only sure way to achieve proper fisheries management but skinflint policies obviously won't permit that information to be acquired.
The lessons of 1964 are obvious. The next step is practical action.
Is This 'Free Enterprise'?
Arecent issue of Industrial News Service, a clipsheet published weekly by the US National Association of Manufacturers, carried an article entitled The Meaning of Free Enterprise. It gives the NAM's definition of that term. The first one says:
"Free enterprise is the right to open a gas station, or a grocery store, or to buy a farm."
• In the past few years, millions of farmers have left their land because they couldn't make a living on it. To buy a farm on which a family can exist takes at least $40,000, according to department of agriculture reports. Nowadays, only big "landlord farmers" and wealthy city people can buy farm land.
• Likewise, the grocery business has been largely taken over by big chain store companies. Thousands of small independent grocers have been starved out. Much the same sort of thing is happening in gas stations, dominated by the giant oil corporations.
Among other definitions in the NAM sheet, one says: "Free enterprise is the right to change your job if you don't like the man you're worsting for."
That right may be freely exercised by those who make up the NAM, but millions of workers who have no jobs regard the NAM's version of "free enterprise" as a "lot of bunk." _LABOR
4 THE FISHERMAN - August 14, 1964
"They're rolling off the line at one every five minutes. Don't you think we could cut it down to one every four?"
Behind the Headlines
VIETNAM FACTS VS US FICTION
By BEN SWANKEY
YOU don't have to be an expert on international affairs to know there's something very much wrong about the August 4 bombing of North Vietnam by the United States.
The US had its reasons. It told the world that North Vietnamese torpedo boats attacked its Seventh Fleet in international waters on August 2. It said it had issued a stern warning to North Vietnam that it must not happen again.
Then, said the US, four North Vietnamese on August 4 again attacked the US fleet on the high seas. This is too much to take, said the US, we'll have to teach these people a lesson. And so the same day it made. 64 air strikes against North Vietnamese ports.
This is what they told us. It looked suspicious right from the beginning. Now news starting to seep through from both Washington and North Vietnam suggests that we've been taken for a ride by the US propaganda machine, and a rather dangerous ride at that.
★ * ★
THE FACTS NOW APPEAR to be as follows:
Just prior to August 2, South Vietnamese naval units launched an attack on two North Vietnamese islands. The American fleet moved into North Vietnamese waters to protect the South Vietnamese attackers. Torpedo boats rushed out of North Vietnamese ports to chase them off. The US fleet fired some shots at the torpedo boats at long range and then withdrew to international waters. Apparently this is all that happened.
As for the alleged attack by North Vietnamese torpedo boats on the US fleet on August 4, this has been branded by official North Vietnamese spokesmen as "sheer fabrication".
What makes the whole thing more suspicious is that the US has so far failed to produce one shred of evidence that such an attack really took place. No pictures, no prisoners, no boats captured, no wreckage of the boats the US claims it sank, no survivors, nothing. Strange, isn't it?
It's beginning to look very much as if the Americans did not produce the evidence because it hasn't any.
It looks as if the US simply manufactured the alleged attack to give it the excuse it was looking for to attack North Vietnam, something it has been threatening to do for months. .
★ ★ ★
CAN ANYONE IN THEIR right senses believe that a hand-
ful of tiny North Vietnamese torpedo boats would be foolish enough to attack the mighty US fleet on the high seas, and without any reason at all?
Even US spokesmen can't explain this one. They are coming out with all sorts of fantastic explanations, none of which make any sense. They recognise that their own story of the attacks is far from convincing.
But let us suppose, for the sake of argument, that a handful of North Vietnamese torpedo boats had attacked the US fleet. (The US admits that it suffered neither damage nor casualties.) Would this be any excuse for the drastic action which the US took when it bombed North Vietnam ports in "retaliation"?
The US action is like burning down your neighbor's house because his little boy threw a rock at your window, and missed at that!
★ * ★
T. C. DOUGLAS, NDP NA-tional leader, hit the nail on the head in the House of Commons. It's one thing, he said, to fight back when you're attacked on the high seas. It's another thing to attack a country in retaliation. That is an act of war.
It looks very much as if the US has been caught with its propaganda pants down. It has been caught naked in the act— the act of aggression. It is not a pleasant sight.
What if the allies of North Vietnam had struck back? We could have been involved in a world war that wasn't of our making and for which there was no justification.
And involved we would have been because our prime minister, after receiving a phone call from Washington, rushed out a statement that Canada fully supported the US bombing of North Vietnam.
★ ★ ★
THE DANGER NOW IS that, encouraged by the success of its first attack, the US will strike again. If it does, will the war remain "limited"?
We will be protecting our homes, children and future if we join in the demand that the US cease all its military operations in the Vietnam area and let those people decide their own affairs.
The 14 nation Geneva Conference, charged with solving the conflict, should be recalled into session. The war can be ended by negotiation.
Dr. James G. Endicott, chairman of the Canadian Peace Congress, Vancouver peace supporters last Saturday.
"It's better to talk for five years," he said, "than to wage atomic war for five minutes."
High Finance
To get a loan
You first must own
Some property or such
Or just a car or house will do
You really don't need much
To dig this grave You first must prove You really can repay In perhaps a year or less Or maybe YESTERDAY!
If you can prove
You can succeed
And that you sure
Don't need it
You'll get your loan
Quick as can be
But Boy! just try to meet it.
—By shirEll
Fisherman's Prayer
Our owner which art in Vancouver Hager be thine name, Thy Celestial Empire come, Thy will be done in Hecate Strait
As it is in Vancouver.
Give us this day our corn beef
and cabbage And forgive us our ignorance. We who set hook and hook with
us
Deliver us from the school of dogfish
And deliver us from the southeaster For thine is the dory The gurdy and the roller For ever and ever—A-men.
Composed by Tom Ford, an old time fisherman, in 1913, and passed along by Abel Pye.
Oh Canada
Oh mighty Canada
So fertile, rich and blest.
We need no flag at all
To prove this land is best.
Hurrah for spaces wide Which all of us can share, Ne need no flag at all TO prove to all we care.
Its independence proud Encourages us to serve it. If we should find it gone We'll ruddy well deserve it.
—W. Olsen
Goldwater
Gold won't sift from desert squids
Water! Water! Water! Our cries now weak from swollen tongues Water! Water! Water! Long are those trails o'er black-man's bones Water! Water! Water! Donkeys and loot packed elephants . . . God those atomic bombs. Water! Water! Water!
Pure, clear water Wate! Wat! Wa!
—Dan McLean
How Trollers Got Sockeye
The big troll catches of sockeye by combination gillnetter-Rivers and Smith inlets area weekend troll closures in the Rivers and Smith Inlet areas were triggered by a fisherman who found that a fluorescent plug was deadly in its effectiveness.
The story is that he took 400 sockeye in one day and delivered them to Wadhams, which was like a roulette player with a foolproof system publishing a book on the subject.
The fleet moved out in full force the following weekend, with considerable success.
The fisheries department gill-net closures were meaningless with this kind of formula for boating the once hook shy sockeye.
With protests from the gillnet fleet and department knowledge of the new development, troll closures to coincide with those set for gillnetters logically followed, as reported last week in The Fisherman.