NR-HQ-00-36E

Resident Trout and Char Fishery in Southern Labrador

June 15, 2000

St. John’s, Newfoundland – Fisheries and Oceans Canada today announced the opening of a resident trout and char fishery for residents in the Lake Melville area and southern Labrador communities. The fishery will also provide for a limited and carefully regulated retention of salmon.

Conservation will be key in the management of this fishery. Due to the low abundance of stocks, there will be no fishing effort in the Labrador Straits areas. Similarly, there will be no additional effort in the Lake Melville area, where access will be limited to fishers who held trout and char licences for food in 1999. Each license holder will be provided with tags enabling them to retain four salmon.

In Southern Labrador, there are local reports of increases in the number of salmon in the rivers. This fishery will allow the department to gather valuable catch, effort and other pertinent data regarding the salmon. If necessary, new conservation measures may be identified and implemented during the course of the season.

The fishery will be managed in accordance with a conservation-harvesting plan, which includes more restrictive seasons than the 1999 trout and char fishery and stringent tagging and reporting requirements. Monitoring provisions including split seasons, tagging requirements and mesh size will be strictly enforced. Should there be evidence of non-compliance with the provisions of this plan, further necessary actions will be taken, including prohibition of net fishing in areas where salmon by-catch occurs.

Data gathered from this fishery will provide improved information on the status of salmon stocks in Southern Labrador and will assist in the proper management of the resource. As a result of this information, the department will be better able to monitor and limit unreported and unregulated catches compared to previous years. It is expected that the anticipated salmon catch will not result in an increase in mortality above what would have occurred as by-catch in the existing trout and char food fisheries.

Details of the harvesting plan are provided in the attached backgrounder.