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Re-establish herring stocks so salmon, halibut can return

Re: Return fishing rights to British Columbians (Letters, March 23)

We, on Vancouver Island, don’t have many fish to fight over. A whale washed up on the beach a couple of years ago, apparently, because it had starved to death. When is the federal government going to realize that if you keep strip-mining herring from the bottom of the food chain, the whole fishery will collapse, which is what happened in Nova Scotia.

Now, because the herring are so reduced in numbers, the roe fishery is after a smaller fish. The roe fishery needs to be stopped. We need to create freshwater fish farms in some of our lakes to send to Japan.

We need ocean parks set up over herring spawning grounds right around North and South America, or all the predatory fish could wind up here. If and when the herring come back, we will maybe have plentiful salmon and halibut. Not before.

Judy Whytock

Victoria