According to Carla Wilson’s Vancouver Sun article, there are few young people interested in becoming commercial fishers. The next generation is not interested in carrying on the family business.

A B.C. fishing industry study suggests that:

Young people avoid commercial fishing because of factors such as the high costs to buy licences or quotas, inconsistent earnings, and difficult to understand and changing training and crew requirements…

Due to the high costs involved in purchasing or restoring commercial fishing vessels, in addition to purchasing licenses to fish for salmon, younger fishers must invest hundreds of thousands of dollars up front. It could take many years before these expenses would pay themselves off, making commercial fishing a challenging career choice.  This is especially true considering there is less money to be made in the fisheries today rather than 30 years ago. Since the 90s, the decreasing numbers of fish have caused the fisheries to enforce stricter rules on commercial fishing, resulting in declines in open fisheries and thus less income being generated by the industry over the years. [Read full article].

Posted by websitedev

•   Share
•   Tweet