End of the Line

Like his grandfather and his father, Vic Amos is an independent fishermen. He's still making a go of it, but wonders if his son will—or should.

By Chad Hershler

IT'S LATE JUNE—middle of halibut season—but Vic Amos isn’t anywhere near his boat. He’s in Parksville, surrounded by boxes, movers and his real estate agent, scavenging for a pen. Amos, 54, has fished one of his best Junes in years: about 60,000 pounds of halibut, heads off, or about 75 percent of his quota. And with almost no by-catch. By the terms of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans new “Integrated Fisheries” program, Amos had to lease extra quota to account for any by-catch (such as rock fish or cod) that he hauls in with his halibut. If he’d exceeded his by-catch limit, the D.F.O.—whose onboard camera monitors every fish he reels in—wouldn’t have allowed him to fish any more halibut this season, a potential loss of $150,000. Finding a clean spot—loads of halibut, little by-catch—is this hook-and-line fisherman’s version of striking gold.

Amos—a burly, clean-shaven man—is wearing a black shirt, black shorts and a black hat. He leans back in his old office chair. His Parksville days are over, which suits him fine. He and his second wife, Susan, 47, who works for the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation, have just purchased a condo in Vancouver. She’ll spend the summer there; he’ll spend it on his boat. With what’s left over from the sale of his Parksville place, he hopes to buy a house in Port Alberni. “I’m jealous of those fishermen who can see the ocean from their bedroom window,” he says, grinning.

First things first, though. He has the rest of his halibut quota to catch. Not to mention his sockeye and tuna runs, or his 175,000-pound annual quota of dogfish. If Amos can’t catch the fish quota he’s leased, no one will lease to him next year and he’ll be on the hook for the money he’s borrowed (he pays almost $200,000 annually for his halibut license and quota alone). Once upon a time, an independent fisherman only had to catch and sell enough to pay his bills and make a living. Now he’s got to keep the D.F.O., his creditors and his lease-owners happy as well. Keeping his one-man, one-boat fish business afloat is getting trickier—and lonelier—every year.

Amos was born into the Hesquiaht band, a Nuu-Chah-Nulth fishing village north of Tofino. He always knew he’d be a fisherman; his father was one, as was his grandfather before that. This wasn’t what he imagined, though: squeezing in a house move between stress-filled trips counting fish in front of a camera. “Then,” he says, “you caught as much as you needed. You weren’t there to get rich.” His father was out for a week, then home for a week. Amos is lucky if he gets a weekend in Tofino with Susan while waiting for paperwork on, say, his lease for extra cod quota to go through. He used to join his father for harbour days, barbecues on the beach when all the fishermen would sit around the fire. Now, he docks his boat, cleans up and heads home for a glass of wine in front of the TV. His kids, adults now, complain that nobody wants to hang out by the boats anymore. Amos’ fishing chums—the guys he grew up with—have disappeared. He’s one of only three Hesquiaht commercial fishermen left; the other two are his brother and his nephew.

Last May, 11 Nuu-Chah-Nulth bands, including the Hesquiaht, began an unprecedented trial in Vancouver. The Nuu-Chah-Nulth has between 6,000 and 7,000 members, but only eight or nine commercial fishermen with individual boats and licenses. Dissatisfied with treaty negotiations, they’re attempting to establish their fishing rights through the courts. They believe that the combination of their aboriginal rights (pre-contact practices), aboriginal title (pre-sovereignty land and water ownership) and the Canadian government’s historical recognition of fishing as a key source of livelihood (Nuu-Chah-Nulth reserve lands were established primarily as access points to fishing) should give them first rights to the marine and riverine resources in their territories. Amos knows that a government-regulated fishing industry is a modern-day reality, but feels that these regulations have squeezed them out of their own waters. “All the guys I grew up with are on welfare. They’re in their forties and fifties, trained to fish, but with no more opportunities.”

When Amos was growing up, all his father needed was a boat, some gear and a D.F.O. issued “Sea License” that permitted him to harvest as many fish as he could catch. While Amos was establishing his own fishing business in the late-’80s and early-’90s, however, more and more commercial fishermen were targeting specific fish stocks. The D.F.O. began to require specific licenses for each fish, which led to the current system of independent fisheries, each with its own Total Allowable Catch (T.A.C.) and prescribed season. In some cases—halibut, for one—an Individual Quota system was introduced, whereby each licensee was given a personal T.A.C. Once the allotted number of licenses and quotas were distributed in each fishery, they became commodities, like stocks, that could be bought, sold, traded or leased. Unlike the east coast fisheries (which have an “owner-operator” licensing policy), anyone could buy in.

In time, values soared and many struggling independent fishermen couldn’t buy in. Amos was lucky. During the D.F.O. transition to independent fisheries, he acquired a dogfish license and, eventually, his 175,000-pound quota. He was also shrewd. Buying a halibut license and quota were out of his range (his 80,000-pound quota, for example, would cost him $3,000,000 to buy today), but he knew there were leases out there. He began to lease his halibut license—along with 10,000 pounds in quota—from the Hesquiaht band in 2002 (licenses and quotas were distributed to Nuu-Chah-Nulth bands as part of ongoing negotiations). The rest of his halibut and by-catch quotas he leased from other bands and non-native quota holders. In his first few years fishing halibut, the price shot up from 30 cents to $1.60 a pound.

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