Sockeye illegally poached found by Maple Ridge elementary school

It is illegal to fish for salmon now in rivers across the province.

But that did not stop a person or persons from discarding the guts and heads of several sockeye in the parking lot of an elementary school in Maple Ridge.

The discovery was made by a community advisor with Fisheries and Oceans Canada, (DFO), while dropping off his daughter at child care Tuesday morning, Aug. 1.

Brian Smith parked his car at Harry Hooge Elementary, along 230th Street by Abernethy Way, and noticed a couple of garbage bags and fish guts strewn about. When he looked closer he found up to eight sockeye heads strewn across the grass.

“I don’t know if you can jump to the conclusion that it is poaching from the Alouette or not, it’s poaching for sure because the fish heads I collected this morning were from sockeye and there’s no openings for sockeye right now,” said Smith

“Which means if you are catching sockeye it’s illegal,” he said.

Currently, he said, the DFO is in the process of rebuilding the stock of sockeye in the Alouette River and even an illegal harvest of six to eight fish, could be eliminating 20 to 40 per cent of the entire population for that run.

“It really contradicts anything we are trying to achieve,” he said, calling the illegal act disheartening.

Greta Borick-Cunningham, executive director with the Alouette River Management Society, is waiting to hear if the sockeye are indeed from the Alouette.

“This is more than extremely upsetting to see sockeye salmon being illegally harvested when they are endangered in our river system. As you are probably aware, ARMS and our supporters have been working for years to re-establish a sockeye run and to fight for fish passage,” she said.

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Smith took the heads with him and has since harvested their DNA and sent it away for analysis which will tell him what river they are from. The department, he explained, has a data base of fish from rivers across the province.

“For cases like this it really helps, because we can definitely positively identify where these sockeye are from. Sockeye being a species of concern right now, we have an elaborate data base set up for them,” he noted.

For now, though, he wants to increase public awareness and remind people that sockeye are a species of concern locally, a stock they are trying to rebuild.

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He said enforcement can and will be stepped up as well with plain clothes anglers – either federal fisheries officers or provincial conservation officers – who can and will lay fines.

“And right now you should not be fishing for salmon because there are no openings. So it will be pretty easy to catch people if they are fishing during the daylight hours,” he said.