Fisheries Committee on Nov. 9th, 2006

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerald Keddy]

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), we're going to call this meeting to order.

I would like to thank all of our witnesses for appearing today. It's very much appreciated.

The committee has been in St. Anthony, on the Great Northern Peninsula of Newfoundland. We started out in the Îles de la Madeleine. We left there quite late. We got in at 3 o'clock in the morning last night, so committee members, I thank you all for getting up and making it here this morning.

I'd like to welcome Robert Thibault to the table. It's nice to see you here, Robert.

I think Rodger Cuzner is here somewhere. He's another committee member. Rodger is having breakfast. He's a committee member from Cape Breton.

Earlier I saw the MLA for Shelburne County, Sterling Belliveau. Sterling, are you in the room? Good morning. It's nice to see you here.

And we have the warden for Shelburne County, Ms. Scott, here. How do you do?

Again, I would like to thank our witnesses for appearing today, and certainly the members of the audience. I will tell you, it's nice to have a good turnout. We've had that in every community we've been in. It's good to have a nice large audience. It shows the interest in this issue.

We have the speaking order in front of us. How many people have prepared texts? Ouch! How many of them are less than 10 minutes? Okay, thank you.

Maybe what we'll do is go to Mr. Wadman first. I don't want to put you on the spot, but I just did.

[Glenn Wadman, Operations Manager, D.B. Kenney Fisheries Ltd.]

There's nothing like cold turkey. We Newfies are tough.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerald Keddy]

We'll work around the table in no certain order. That way, everyone will have an opportunity to speak.

This meeting is on the Canadian seal hunt, in particular the grey seal issue here on the southwest coast of Nova Scotia. The next meeting we hold will be on boat stability tests by Transport Canada.

With no further ado, I ask Mr. Wadman to begin.

[Glenn Wadman]

Good morning, and thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'd like to thank the committee very much for this opportunity to appear and speak on this pressing problem.

First, I'll give you a 10-second background. My name is Glenn Wadman. I'm an operations manager for D.B. Kenney Fisheries Ltd. We're located on Brier Island in the Bay of Fundy. We're a vertically integrated fish processor/harvester, importer/exporter, and we market primarily in the U.S., but we do $4 million or $5 million worth of business each year in Canada.

Anyway, enough with the pleasantries.

I'm going to speak to the grey seals over the last 20 years, because it's been 20 years now since I moved from my own country down to the Bay of Fundy. Twenty years ago, we basically did not have to candle fish from the Bay of Fundy. The existence of seal worm parasites in the flesh were basically non-existent. You might get one or two in a day's production and many days you'd get none. Now the fish from my local area are heavily infested, to the point where, with fish from some fishing areas, we have a 50% reduction in throughput as employees attempt to detect and remove parasites.

This has caused a significant competitive problem with our competing with low-labour countries. It's also caused a quality problem, as when you're cutting up, or stripping up, fillets to get the parasites out you're not putting nice firm whole fillets on the market. You're putting pieces of fillets that are winding up in fish bits or cod blocks or on the lower end of the spectrum. As I said, it's a 50% reduction in throughput, which is basically a doubling of cost. When we do miss a worm, believe me, we get some very significant phone calls from people wondering, what is this? Am I going to die? Is it going to live? Is it alive? Is it dead? What doctor do I see?

Because of the lack of harvesting of seals, we now see seals at our plant coming to the water effluent to look around for pieces of fish. They are everywhere. There are small herds of seals that have started living on the back of our island that we've never seen before. I've talked with fishermen on the island who are 70 or 80 years old who have never seen these things except in the last seven or eight years. The necessity for a hunt to reduce the numbers and to reduce the parasite load is tantamount. We have to get over the fear that some tourist will say, we can't go to Nova Scotia because they kill the seal. That same tourist would also say they can't eat Nova Scotia fish because they found a parasite.

I'm not going to harp on it very long, but one of the other problems we're seeing because of the abundance of seals is this. Traditionally, especially back in Newfoundland, we see seal worms as a problem in cod fish. Due to the abundance of seals and since, unlike the Newfoundland harp seals that visit Newfoundland for about three or four months a year and then move back north, our grey seals stay here 12 months a year, we're now seeing seal parasites occurring not only in our codfish stocks but in haddock, in some instances in ocean perch, in flounder, and also a few in pollock.

I would ask the committee to look very favourably at supporting a grey seal hunt in the Maritimes.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerald Keddy]

Thank you, Mr. Wadman, and thank you for your brevity. We're not used to that at this committee.

[Gerry Byrne, Liberal, Humber—St. Barbe—Baie Verte, NL]

Where did you say you were from?

[Glenn Wadman]

Bar Haven, to Placentia via Joey Smallwood, to Arnold's Cove via my father.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerald Keddy]

Very good.

[Gerry Byrne, Liberal, Humber—St. Barbe—Baie Verte, NL]

And that didn't give him his brevity, I can tell you that, being a Newfoundlander. His birth was longer than his address.

[Glenn Wadman]

Actually, for the record, I was born in Come By Chance, one of the most famous communities in Canada.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerald Keddy]

There you go.

And it would be useful for the committee for all of our presenters, when you introduce yourselves, to say who you represent and where you're from.

I'm going to ask Mr. Hammill to be our next presenter.

[Dr. Mike Hammill, Research Scientist, Maurice Lamontagne Institute, Department of Fisheries and Oceans]

My name's Mike Hammill. I'm with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and I'm a scientist working on the seals in Atlantic Canada.

I did prepare a short presentation. I think it's been distributed to everybody.

As you know, just to put you back into the framework, we've switched areas. You've been through an area that is heavy on the harp seal and now you're switching over to the grey seal. The grey seal is much bigger than the harp seal, roughly double in weight, and probably about another 30 to 40 centimetres longer.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerald Keddy]

Before you continue, I'll interrupt you for a second. I apologize for that, Mr. Hammill.

A couple of the fishermen in the room brought in some pictures that I'll pass around to our members at the table. This is a halibut that weighed about 30 pounds that was preyed on by grey seals. It's very typical of what the fishermen are seeing.

I'm sorry to interrupt you. Go ahead.

[Dr. Mike Hammill]

Harp seals, as you heard, reproduce in March. The grey seals start to reproduce just before Christmas and the mating season continues into about mid-February, depending on where you are.

There has been a change in the population. Back in the 1970s, there were probably 20,000 grey seals in all of Atlantic Canada. Today the population has increased to about 250,000 or 260,000, and the largest concentration is found around Sable Island on the Scotian Shelf. Probably about two-thirds of the population is on the Scotian Shelf and one-third in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. It varies because animals do migrate in and out of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Some animals from Sable Island will move into the gulf to spend the summer and then they'll return to the Scotian Shelf to spend the fall and winter.

There are different ways to look at the diet of the grey seals. One way is to look at stomach contents or fecal contents. That's where you look at the otolith or the hard parts you can find in these different samples. You use these to reconstruct the diet and it gives you an idea of how much fish of different species are in the diet.

Another way is to look at fatty acids, the idea being that you are what you eat, so if an animal consumes a fish, the fatty acid profile will reflect the fatty acid profile of the fish. We see that things like cod are very low in proportion as a component of the diet. The diet is dominated by species such as sand lance in particular and also redfish.

All these samples were taken from the Sable Island area, so they reflect what the seals are eating within about a 100-mile area around there.

There is another study by Bowen and Harrison, and it is based on the fecal analysis approach. In some samples at some times of the year you can see that the proportion of cod really does jump. It can be as high as 40% in some samples--for example, in a sample collected in October 1997. It also varies down to less than 10%.

One of the problems in trying to allocate or evaluate diet is that you get large fluctuations depending on what animal you may have sampled and where that particular animal has been feeding. You get a big jumping around. This is different from what it would be from the fatty acid, which reflects what has been incorporated in the diet over a long period of time.

The idea behind that information is that cod is not a major component in the diet of grey seals on the Scotian Shelf.

Switching subjects a little bit and moving on to the management approach for seals in Atlantic Canada, we use what is called an objective-based fisheries management approach. This is based on the idea of a precautionary approach, where you identify targets and conservation measures to try to make sure the population stays above certain levels to avoid running into an endangered species situation.

There are two schemes in this. The first is data rich. This is what we apply to our harp seal hunt, and the idea is to make sure the population of harp seals stays above 4.08 million animals in eastern Canada.

For grey seals, our information is not as good. We're almost there. We need to do a couple of more surveys, a little bit more work, and then we can shift them over to what we would call a data-rich category. For now they fit into what is called a data-poor category, and that means that if we're trying to set quotas for harvesting we set very conservative quotas that allow the population to continue to increase.

The quotas currently are 2,100 animals in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and 8,300 animals on the Scotian Shelf, but hunters are not allowed to hunt at Sable Island. The harvest in 2006 was close to 1,800 animals. The harvest is quite small compared to the available quota.

This winter we intend to carry out another survey, also with the help of hunters, getting new samples on things like reproductive rates. After this survey we hope we can move the grey seal into the data-rich category, which means we can probably increase the quota and accept a greater level of risk as far as our decision on harvesting goes.

The last two slides I have are extra. One is just to show you the idea of the objective-based fishery management approach and the idea of reference points. When we get into a data-rich situation, this is the framework we follow. The idea is to keep that population of animals above the 70% maximum mark. If it falls below the 70% maximum, then you would adopt more conservation-minded quota recommendations.

The last slide shows the general area where the grey seals are found, mainly based on the pupping areas. The major pupping area is Sable Island. Around 50,000 to 60,000 pups are born there, according to the last survey, which was done in 2004. The remaining animals are born in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, on the ice when there is some, or on the small islands in the southern gulf, and also on some islands along the east coast of Cape Breton Island, down to roughly Ecum Secum in Nova Scotia.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerald Keddy]

Thank you, Mr. Hammill.

I'm going to ask Ms. MacKenzie to present next.

I understand you have a presentation of your own, and you also have another presentation. I'm going to ask you to read your own and present the other one to the committee in writing. We have six presenters, and timewise we're going to be very limited.

Thank you.

[Debbie MacKenzie, Chair, Grey Seal Conservation Society]

My name is Debbie MacKenzie representing the Grey Seal Conservation Society based in Nova Scotia.

Three years ago, l explained to this committee that starvation is the major factor preventing the recovery of the cod stocks and that this has resulted from a decline in plankton. Unless fisheries managers begin to consider the health of the ocean overall, we stand to see a total collapse of everything. Three years ago, my comments to this effect were not included in your report on Atlantic fisheries issues.

There is one reason why ecosystem-based fisheries management is not now used in Canada. It is not because we lack scientific understanding of what must be done; it is rather because fisheries managers, including the seal hunt managers, simply refuse to acknowledge that this information exists and that it pertains to their work. Objective-based fisheries management, as described, is not ecosystem-based fisheries management unless the objectives are ecosystem conservation objectives. There's a difference. That single-species approach, when you count the seals and try to keep them above 70% of the maximum, is not ecosystem-based.

Scientists now realize that fishing has undermined the fundamental workings of sea life, altering the entire web from top to bottom. The problems we now see in Atlantic Canada--the starvation of cod, the decline of numerous other species, including everything from shark to herring to barnacles and seaweed, along with a general degradation of ocean water quality--are manifestations of the ecological end result of centuries of human fishing.

As grim as that sounds, this conclusion is well supported by the scientific literature. The removal of virtually all large predatory animals from the sea is now acknowledged as a major cause of the current collapse of the ecosystem. That is why Canada should place a moratorium on commercial seal hunting, because seals are the last surviving large ocean predators in Atlantic Canada. As such, their presence is needed. Large natural predators are needed, because the ocean is dying and because the fish are starving.

Predators play an important role in cycling nutrients and in maintaining the health of fish. The tonnage and types of fish eaten by seals is beside the point. That question is like asking, how much blood is cycled through a person's lungs? Fish removed by humans is like blood drawn from a vein, while fish eaten by natural predators is like blood following its normal course, a crucial process that must continue for the survival of the larger entity, in this case the ocean.

DFO ecologists have used the word “catastrophic” to describe ecological changes that have been caused by large predator removal on the Scotian Shelf. Consider, too, that the ecological impact of marine mammals was recently analyzed by other DFO scientists, including Mike Hammill. The conclusion of the study was that the beneficial predation effect is even greater than the predation itself, leading to an overall positive impact of the predator on the system. Why are these facts not considered by seal hunt managers?

Must the ocean exhibit signs and symptoms beyond catastrophic before fisheries managers take notice that all is not well, and before they take the necessary steps to protect ocean health? New ecological insights are ignored by fisheries managers, who control what scientists are allowed to tell them during their science advisory process. It seems that fisheries managers must not be told certain things that the fishing industry does not want to hear. Why do taxpayers fund ecological studies that are then ignored by our public resource managers?

Ecologists are excluded from fisheries management consultations, and if anyone else tries to enter their findings into the record—as l did at DFO's Seal Forum last November—then the information is still ignored. When l tried to include DFO's own ecosystem science in the 2005 Seal Forum, my written submission was lost and it was omitted from the record. Despite being asked repeatedly, DFO management refused to correct their error.

l have tried for years to warn the government about the ecological damage caused by fishing. l have suggested, since 1999, that a decline in plankton production has been caused by fishing, and l have asked that plankton ecology become a focus of DFO science research. Two years ago, l warned of an impending crash of the herring stocks, and today that seems to be happening in the Maritimes. Crustacean stocks are showing signs of starvation too, and these fisheries will also be doomed if the ecological breakdown continues.

Our recommendations are as follows.

This committee should undertake a study of the issues affecting ocean health, because oceans are your mandate too, with particular attention to the ecological impact of fishing. In this regard, I'll leave you with a selection of relevant documents that I ask you to review.

Direct the seal hunt managers to include a full and open discussion with ocean ecologists before approving any seal hunt plan. As it stands now, DFO does not even have a seal management plan, although one was supposed to have been produced by last spring.

Direct DFO Science to provide a comprehensive report on the full scope of what scientists have learned about the ecological impact of fishing. Make it clear that this information is to be considered by fisheries managers.

Create a new body, like a minister’s advisory council on oceans. A previous entity by that name provided only broad policy advice, but a new advisory council on oceans should have the mandate to advise the government on the practical implementation of ocean conservation. This must not be controlled by fishing interests.

Stop the seal hunt under the Oceans Act, for ecological reasons already given. This will be preferable to stopping the seal hunt after Canadian seal marketing causes an international food safety incident. In this regard, I recommend that you consult with veterinarians on the wisdom of processing seals for human consumption using only fish inspection protocols, as is the current practice. Marketing seals as if they were fish instead of meat is dishonest, it potentially threatens the health of consumers, and it may thereby ultimately damage the good reputation of Canada's legitimate fish and meat exporting industries.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerald Keddy]

Thank you, Ms. MacKenzie.

We'll go to Mr. Victor Wolfe next.

Maybe just before you start, Victor, there is one other person in the room that I had meant to recognize. That is Denny Morrow. Denny, it's nice to see you here. Denny has been an advocate on this issue for some time and certainly has kept most of us in Ottawa apprised of the situation as he sees it on the ground.

Mr. Wolfe.

[Victor Wolfe, Chairman, Shelburne County Competitive Fishermen's Association]

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Victor Wolfe, and I am the chairman of the board of directors of Shelburne County Competitive Fishermen's Association, a small association here in Shelburne County.

My background in the fishing industry goes back 58 years as a commercial fisherman. Over that period of time I have seen many changes. There was a downturn in the fisheries in the early 1950s that took 16 years for recovery. During that recovery, some fishermen of my generation went out to Vancouver and Prince Rupert and fished as crew members on boats, longlining halibut and seining salmon. I did this for 14 seasons.

During those years, from 1954 to 1970, time needed for the fish to come back, there was no predation from grey seals. That was because the grey seals did not start showing up here in coastal Nova Scotia until around 1980.

This time, however, I cannot see how the groundfish can recover. The groundfish are almost totally gone from the coast of eastern Nova Scotia because of grey seals, and if something isn't done very soon, in a very few years the same will happen on this part of the coast.

The grey seals will range over a large area of ocean. I watched a large grey seal one morning when I was fishing. I was 14 miles off the coast, at dawn, in 55 fathoms, or 330 feet of water, and I saw the seal towing a large cod by the tail. The cod weighed about 40 pounds. Needless to say, that was a bigger fish than I caught for the day.

The grey seal will raid lobster traps for the bait that is in the traps, bait intended for lobsters. It is common to have up to 20 traps in a row raided for the bait. This is 20 traps we must haul for nothing in them, because they raid the traps as soon as those go to the bottom. There are 20 boats fishing lobster out of this one harbour--that's our harbour at Port Hebert--so that could be up to 400 traps a day that are emptied and damaged due to the grey seals.

There was a survey of all the fishermen in this harbour, Port Hebert, about 12 years ago, on what they thought their losses were from seals raiding traps. The fishermen estimated their losses in dollars anywhere from $3,000 to $7,000 per boat in the six-month lobster season.

When I was a teenager fishing with my father, we used to set herring gillnets by anchoring them in the bays and entrance to the harbour. The nets would be anchored in these areas from Sunday afternoon until Saturday morning. This cannot be done now, because the seals pick the nets as soon as the herring get caught in them.

DFO science information, as of this fall, indicates that in 1962 there were 350 pups born on Sable Island; this year, there is in excess of 40,000 pups. Large males weigh 770 pounds, and the females weight 440 pounds.

I understand the longliners are being raided by seals. The seals are taking the fish off the lines when they are being retrieved. They go for the body cavities to get the liver, which destroys the fish.

If left unchecked, the seals will totally destroy the groundfishing and lobster industry. The impact on all the small fishing communities will be horrendous, and there will be no future here for our children and grandchildren.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerald Keddy]

Thank you, Victor.

Again, I just want to remark how brief and concise the messages are here, gentlemen.

Mr. Stoddard.

[Peter Stoddard, Procurement and Resource Manager, Sea Star Seafoods Ltd.]

Good morning, fellow committee members, witnesses, ladies and gentlemen.

My name is Peter Stoddard. I'm the procurement and resource manager for Sea Star Seafoods Limited, Clark's Harbour.

Sea Star has enjoyed 23 years of successful business. The Cunningham name has been synonymous with fish harvesting and processing for over 100 years . Sea Star currently employs about 70 people from the surrounding communities.

Our company supports a controlled cull of the seal herd for the following three reasons.

Number one is declining cod stocks. Norway, Russia, and Iceland, to mention a few countries, have had a seal hunt. Today, they enjoy healthy groundfish stocks that we can only dream of. They control their seal population, and they make no apologies for it. Norway has even adopted the policy of inviting tourists on a seal hunting expedition to witness the humane way in which the herd is culled .

After three years of a cod moratorium in NAFO area 4VSW, industry has been informed by DFO scientists that the 20,000 metric ton biomass of cod will probably continue to decline because of increased natural predation, namely seal. In our area, it is the grey seal. To date, the estimated biomass in NAFO area 4VSW is 4,000 metric tons, and we have had no fishery.

Unlike the harp seal, which moves gradually northward, the grey seal remains in our coastal waters year-round, eating juvenile lobsters, not to mention that they shadow the lobster boats to chow down on the short lobsters being thrown back. They chew the bellies out of our groundfish that have been caught on longlines. They eat the bait off the hooks before they have a chance to settle to the effective fishing depth .

I remember as a child that it was an exciting event to see a seal sunning itself on the rocks; now they are competing for space. There are a few local fishermen in the audience. Ask them the extent of how they are being affected, not only in the inshore but now in the offshore. I had a local fisherman tell me that while fishing 60 miles offshore he witnessed a 500- to 600-pound grey seal floating on its back, waiting for him to launch his hooks. When he did, they were nearly torn away. Upon hauling it back, he saw that all that remained were a few straightened hooks. I could give you many more accounts, but I only have seven minutes.

Number two is increased parasite infestation. Sea Star currently processes cod from all parts of the world. The parasite infestation levels in cod caught in our local waters is unequivocally the worst, even to the extent that sometimes the entire fish is deemed unusable and has to be discarded. I have personally witnessed this on numerous occasions. In one case in particular, I had my staff take the extra time to remove 200-plus worms. Subsequently, the fish looked as if it had been shot from a distance with a 12-gauge shotgun. That fish was unusable.

It is a proven fact that seals have worms, and lots of them. Seals eat the fish. Their feces settle to the bottom and are eaten by small crustaceans that in turn are eaten by the bottom-feeding groundfish. Thus the infestation has begun. With this in mind, it should indicate to anyone with any sense of logic that we have a problem. That problem stems from grey seals.

You can sit and listen to the countless unfounded, factless stories of those opposed to the seal hunt if you wish, but we have science and personal accounts to back our cause. Please join our cause and act responsibly and proactively to correct an ecosystem that is in a tailspin. We need a seal hunt--period.

I'll quote you a statement from April 2003, when the federal Minister of Fisheries and Oceans was lobbying the FRCC:

Given the Minister's request to the FRCC to evaluate the prospect for an immediate, substantial and durable improvement in the stock condition, the only credible response by the FRCC to this is to seek from the Minister--once again--immediate, substantial and durable action to reduce natural mortality on all cod stocks by reducing the predation by seals. The only means of achieving this is to reduce the seal herd size.

Again, I appeal to you. We need a seal hunt.

Number three is developing markets for seal meat. The Grey Seal Research and Development Society has all but closed an Asian deal that could potentially open the door for the export of 10 to 20 containers, up to 450 metric tons, of frozen seal meat. What an efficient utilization, not only taking the pelts, but selling the meat too.

I recently read an article from the HalifaxChronicle Herald in which Ms. Mackenzie stated that you can become very sick from eating seal meat. She goes on to associate brucellosis, an infectious disease passed from cattle to humans, with seals. Trichinosis is a painful disease caused from worms that work their way from the gut into the muscles of those who eat undercooked meat. Trichinosis has been found in Arctic seals. Well, I guess the Eskimos should have been extinct a long time ago, because they've eaten a lot of raw seal meat.

In closing, I was taught, and I know myself, that overpopulation eventually equals starvation. When—not if—this fishery collapses and the carcasses of the dead and rotten seals begin to wash up on our beaches, I'm just curious to know if Paul McCartney or, for that part, the Grey Seal Conservation Society will be there to take credit for that also.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerald Keddy]

Thank you, Mr. Stoddard.

We have two witnesses left. Mr. John Levy, go ahead, please.

[John Levy, President, Fishermen and Scientists Research Society]

Good morning, and thanks for the opportunity to speak on this subject. My name is Captain John Levy, and I am a fisherman from Chester Basin. I'm also an elected representative of the South Shore Gillnet Fishermen's Association and the Lunenburg and Queens groundfish management board, an organization that represents hundreds of inshore fishermen along the south shore of Nova Scotia. As well, I am the president of the Fishermen and Scientists Research Society, as well as the president of the Grey Seal Research and Development Society.

The first thing I will speak about is what we, the fishermen, are seeing on the water with respect to what the grey seals are doing.

This past spring, I was fishing for groundfish—

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerald Keddy]

I'd ask you to slow down a little bit, if you could. We have simultaneous interpretation occurring, and most of the time they can't keep up with the fast talk.

[John Levy]

I know, but you gave me five minutes.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!