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Nets being filled with Arctic char Annual commercial harvest expects to deliver thousands of kilograms to processing plant
Danielle Sachs
Northern News Services
Published Monday, July 15, 2013
IKALUKTUTIAK/CAMBRIDGE BAY
During the next couple of weeks, around 9,090 kilograms of Arctic char are expected to be harvested from various sites around Cambridge Bay.
Amanda Currie, a technician with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, weighs an Arctic char. Commercial fish harvesting monitoring is underway in the Cambridge Bay region. - NNSL file photo |
The commercial fishing started July 8 and is expected to last eight to 10 days, said Stephane Lacasse, general manager of Kitikmeot Foods Ltd.
So far, the harvest has been business as usual for the summer season. It's the fall season that brings in the bulk of the char, with 41,818 kg expected.
The annual harvest involves a few different sites in the Kitikmeot region, including Surrey River, 30 Mile, Ekaluk River and Jayco Lake.
The summer harvest is coming from Surrey River and the fishing at 30 Mile will begin in mid-August, followed by Ekaluk River, then Jayco Lake.
"There are four different locations but they do their own hiring," said Brenda Sitatak of the Ekaluktutiak Hunters and Trappers Organization.
"There's another project on the go with it, which is fish monitoring by the department of Fisheries and Oceans," she said.
The fish monitoring project is currently a seven-year project that gets funding from the Nunavut General Monitoring Plan, overseen by a committee made up of members from Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada, the Nunavut Planning Commission, Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. and the Government of Nunavut.
Commercial fish harvesting monitoring in the Cambridge Bay region is being overseen by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, the Ekaluktutiak Hunters and Trappers Organization and Kitikmeot Foods.
Eventually, the data collected from the monitoring project will be used to figure out what kind of commercial quotas can be put in place to ensure Arctic char commercial fishing remains sustainable.
"The intention here is to hire and train local monitors, people from the community, to work along the fishers at the commercial sites either with gill net or the weirs. As they pull out the fish the monitors record all the information," said Tyler Jivan at the Department of Fisheries and Oceans.
"We've developed two log books for commercial fishing. One is a weir-based log book and one is a gill net. The goal is to collect catch information. What this does will allow fishery scientists as well as the local community to establish some knowledge and assess the sustainable harvest levels."
So far, one year of data has been collected. After each fishing season, the community is invited out to talk about the results of the collection and give feedback into what could be done differently.
"Every spring, we talk to our fishers and hire our monitors and get everything organized. In the fall we do a followup, we talk about the feedback and monitoring program, then we look to the next steps," said Jivan.
"The most important thing about community based monitoring is having the support of the local community. We have the full support of the hunters and trappers organization and the plant. Cambridge Bay has been very, very good. The commercial fishery has been in operation since the 60s and has always been very sustainable."
On top of collecting data on the commercial fish harvest, there are also plans to start collecting information on recreational and subsistence fishing.
For those studies, high school students will be hired by the hunters and trappers organization.
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