The voice of B.C.'s organized fishing Industry workers
• Chaos erupted in Nanoose Bay March 1 as the full 80-vessel Gulf seine fleet stampeded after roe herring in the wake of a botched announcement by the local
fisheries officer. Boats set early, the fishery opened, then was closed, but not before at least 20 boats set their nets in the panic.
All hell breaks loose in Nanoose
By GEOFF MEGGS
AFISHERIES officers apparent slip of the tongue cost a dozen herring seine crews several hundred thousand dollars March 1 and taught them a bitter lesson: crime pays.
The slip came in a crucial VHF broadcast from the fisheries vessel Stuart Post as more than 80 herring seines jockeyed frantically for position in the narrow confines of Nanoose Bay. They were on a 10-minute countdown for the set that could make or break their season.
As the crew of the MV George Miller sat listening at dockside in Deep Bay, some 30 miles away, we heard the brief series of announcements which spun the fishery out of control as some vessels jumped the gun, others protested and the work of harvesting fish degenerated into a wild scramble for economic survival.
In a series of interviews on the grounds and in Nanaimo during the next two days, we pieced together an account of the incident, which will undoubtedly be debated around galley tables for months to come.
When the dust cleared, those fishermen who played by the rules set down by the department were the victims of an unwitting hoax. Those who defied fisheries' efforts to impose order were big winners. Whether they committed a crime or not will likely never be tested in court, but it is certain that some vessels set early that day. They caught once-in-a-decade sets and got away with it.
Events had moved at a blistering pace from the moment the Miller left False Creek Feb. 25 for a moonlit passage to Nanaimo. The next morning, organizer Frank Cox advised skipper Bert Ogden of a tentative price agreement reached by the UFAWU during the night. The long process of voting began.
To some fishermen, the sudden settlement sounded a warning. "Why the rush?" wondered troller Cliff Gissing, whose crew had not yet arrived. "Have the companies heard of an opening?" Twenty-four hours later, he had his answer: a seven-hour seine fishery at Comox that began with 15 seines on the grounds and ended with fewer than 35 on hand.
With the fishery half over, the Miller plucked five deckhands from the dock at Union Bay and delivered them to the Mary Roberta and the Windward Star. The snap opening had caught them flat-footed. As late as Sunday morning, the fisheries tape in Vancouver had advised that no opening was expected until Tuesday.
John Person, who joined the Miller crew that day, told us seines had been streaming under Lion's Gate Bridge at 1 p.m., more than an hour after the opening. At 4 p.m., the gillnet fishery began as well.
For most of the seines, their first day of the fishery in the Gulf was spent watching a massive gillnet and packer fleet harvest more than 8,000 tons in Lambert Channel.
We lost count of the vessels we passed as we moved slowly south that afternoon, taking votes and making out clearances as we could. The radar showed a fleet numbering in the hundreds .and there seemed to be a cash buyer for every skiff. There was no rush to bid prices higher, however. The average price was $1,250 a ton.
The lack of warning about the Comox
Geoff Meggs photos
• Area supervisor Kip Slater (above) tried to bring order from the pandemonium by ordering all boats to dump their fish and start again. At least six successfully defied him. The next day, the crew of the St. Joseph wrapped up a good set (bottom) when the fishery at last began in earnest.
opening, the heavy gillnet fishery which exceeded its quota by one-third, and long advance warning of the Nanoose fishery all contributed to the tension as the seine fleet moved into position Tuesday night. More than 1,300 tons of their quota had been taken at Comox; for most, events at Nanoose would determine whether they would have wages or welfare in the coming months.
The George Miller had just tied up in Deep Bay when all hell broke loose in Nanoose. The Stuart Post announced at 4.40 p.m. that the fishery would open in 10 minutes. When 10 minutes had elapsed, Stuart Post again came on the air. Then it all began — screaming, cursing, shouting, mayhem.
The notes in our log, transcribed from the VHF with approximate times, read like this:
"Make them backhaul."
"Are we going to stop these guys? What are we going to do; go wild?"
"Set your net."
"Close this thing down."
"They announced it open."
Stuart Post: "It is not open."
"Guys are all setting now, for Chris-sake."
"Eight minutes to five, let her go boys." Stuart Post: "It is eight minutes to five, the area is now open." At 4.55, according to the clock on the
Miller, Stuart Post announced, "This fishery is closed and we will restart." The fisheries officer ordered everyone who had set to backhaul their gear. Area supervisor Kip Slater later said the fishery opened at 4.50, making the length of the opening some five minutes.
Moments after the closure, Slater himself came on the air and announced that fishing would resume once all fish had been dumped and gear backhauled. Some vessels adamantly refused. While they hurriedly pumped their fish aboard, the debate continued. A fisheries officer warned on the VHF, channel 78A, that any vessel not complying would be seized along with the catch and the net.
Fishermen interviewed by the Miller crew the next day reported that a fisheries officer toured the fleet in a zodiac and warned that all those with fish that failure to release the catch would result in seizure. One by one, boats began to let go, believing the refusal would mean seizure and indefinite postponement of the fishery. They were wrong.
At 7.30, with several vessels still pumping, the department announced it was ready to restart. Some fishermen protested that a night fishery would be unsafe and the opening was delayed until daylight.
When fishing began in earnest Wednesday morning, vessels that
THE
retained fish from the previous evening were still on the grounds. No seizures or arrests had been made. At press time, it appeared that those who defied the department — about six vessels — would get away free. The dozen who obeyed, believing wrongly that they faced seizure and convinced it would lead to an orderly fishery, threw away hundreds of thousands of dollars.
During the next 24 hours, the crew of the Miller sought to reconstruct the previous evening's events. A delegation of UFAWU seine members, including Guy Johnston and Tom Dalton of Evening Star and Bruce Logan and Mark Warrior of Olympiad, went aboard the James Sinclair to protest the chaos of March 1. Were fishermen wrong to dump their fish?
Slater agreed in an interview that vessels that refused to dump were threatened with seizure. "We didn't order any vessel to dump," he said, but "people were told that if they weren't prepared to dump ... we were prepared to proceed with seizing."
Slater admitted that the Stuart Post erred by announcing an opening was imminent and then coming on the air to make another statement. But once the closure was in place, "my biggest concern was getting gear backhauled so we could start fishing.
"People refused to spill and we were in a poor position." A full enforcement operation would have taken all night, he said, and at the time he and the officer on the Stuart Post were the only two enforcement people present.
When Slater realized the fishery had been legally open for at leastfive minutes, his options dwindled to nothing.
Without the collaboration of fishermen on the grounds, he could not identify which vessels had set early. Most of the panic occurred well away from the Stuart Post. Without knowing which fish had been taken illegally, he was powerless to compel any fishermen to spill their fish. In fact, the threat of seizure was empty.
Were fishermen right to spill? "Yes," says Slater. "I wanted to get the fishery going. I said, 'If everybody spills we can get going.' Some said, 'No, I took these fish legally,' and there's a good possibility they did. I was tied."
In the department's defence, Slater said "everybody in my staff has bust a gut to get seine fish out of the Gulf. When we get fish, we go as fast as we can. I figured it was more important to get the seine fishery going than to prosecute a handful of people.
"To the people who spilled, I take my hat off." As for the others, "I'm not optimistic that we have a legal case unless people come forward with statements. I have to have grounds to believe that they had clearly violated the law, otherwise I am powerless. The key priority was to get the fishery going."
The fishery finally did get going. The fleet took more than 2,600 tons out of Nanoose, some of it very low in roe content. But some fishermen took away a determination never again to play the nice guy when the fisheries department makes a mistake.
At Nanoose, nice guys finished last and a short two-minute crime in the midst of a panicky seine fleet paid big rewards — for some, several hundred tons of herring worth $1,250 a ton.
FISHERMAN — MARCH 11, 1983/5
