Fisheries Committee on Nov. 9th, 2006

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[James Lunney, Conservative, Nanaimo—Alberni, BC]

Well, moving on from the cod....

[Dr. Mike Hammill]

Let's get after DFO.

The other part is trying to model this, saying, for instance, let's reduce the seal herd by 50%, or by x%, or by whatever percentage you want to choose. What are the costs of trying to reduce this population versus the benefits that would be achieved, and how long would it take to achieve these benefits?

These are the questions we need to answer before we can go that next step--namely, do we want to cull or do we not want to cull?

[Peter Stoddard]

Mr. Chair, could I just make a comment?

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerald Keddy]

Go ahead.

[Peter Stoddard]

If you take a 20,000 metric ton biomass of cod in a four-year period where you aren't fishing it, and it's reduced to less than 4,000 metric tons, then...? You know, here's your sign. It should be obvious.

Look at the natural curve of the fish. Look at the curve of the increase in the seal population. Put them on the same graph. There's your answer.

[James Lunney, Conservative, Nanaimo—Alberni, BC]

Thank you for that contribution.

It's just not the cod here. We're all wanting to see the cod stocks come back. But there also seems to be some pretty clear evidence that halibut and other fish are suffering. Longline fishermen are finding their lines coming in missing fish body parts, sometimes most of the fish.

We have this problem on the west coast as well, where sport fishermen are fighting to get their salmon in when seals have taken the fish up on the rocks. It's easier for a seal to catch one, I guess, if it's already on a line.

I recognize that you're in kind of a sensitive spot, since you're representing DFO in this. We're not trying to abuse you here. However, it seems to me there are some serious concerns here.

Mr. Thibault already brought up a question about 70% of the population being for conservation purposes. That would seem to be a very good thing if the population were stable, but when it's obvious that the population has been increasing tremendously, even exponentially according to your own data, maybe we need to re-examine that tool as an appropriate measurement level for conservation purposes.

Mr. Wadman, there's something you want to contribute?

[Glenn Wadman]

Yes. It might be an appropriate level, but perhaps we should have picked 70% of the stable level between 1966 and 1983, not 70% of the inflated level of 2006.

[James Lunney, Conservative, Nanaimo—Alberni, BC]

It seems to me that when there's a huge range like that, logic might dictate that somewhere between the extremes you might take a level, and then take 70%. That would be quite a different thing from taking the maximum sustainable, especially in the evidence of exponential increase. But that point has already been made.

[Dr. Mike Hammill]

I might add that a lot of this is based on the idea.... This started out looking at the harp seal hunt, which is where we have a profitable fishery. We want to preserve that resource. That forms the basis for the plans, trying to make them fit across wherever we go.

Some of our work is suggesting that the carrying capacity for grey seals could be in the order of 400,000 seals. We're still a long way from there. I mention that not to say that's where we should go; this is just what the ecosystem could be capable of carrying. It's what the pristine levels were at one time. We're a lot higher now. We haven't seen these levels for probably 200 years. Grey seals were one of the first to disappear when colonization occurred. They were an easy resource. They were used for food, they were used for lamp oil, they were used for many different things. It goes back a long way.

Turning to another aspect, Ms. MacKenzie talked about the ecosystem. This gets into how you want to put them in together. The department is moving towards ecosystem management. It is not as easy as it sounds. This is one aspect where we have to identify a few things. What cod levels do we want to have? What pollock levels do we want to have? What hake levels do we want to have? What tools do we need to get to those levels?

Into that equation probably seals will fall. And in that discussion, we may still stick with 70% of whatever the largest number we have seen, or the pristine estimate, or we may come up with another figure that will be lower. This will be part of the evaluation process.

[James Lunney, Conservative, Nanaimo—Alberni, BC]

Let's bring the parasite issue into this. Is that a concern to DFO?

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerald Keddy]

This is your final question.

[James Lunney, Conservative, Nanaimo—Alberni, BC]

On the parasite situation, given what we've heard here about the seal worm, which is infesting a lot of the fish now, is that a concern to DFO in terms of management of the health and quality of the fish stocks?

[Dr. Mike Hammill]

We downsized, or whatever you want to call it, our parasite program in 1998. We moved away from that. We have not been doing a lot of research. There's still one researcher looking at cod worm, I think, and he's based out of Moncton now. We do not do a lot of science on this aspect right now. For the other aspects you'd have to ask the management people.

[James Lunney, Conservative, Nanaimo—Alberni, BC]

If we're ignoring a serious aspect and not collecting data on it, is that something that perhaps should be included in our decision-making if we're concerned about protecting the ecosystem? We're allowing parasites to proliferate because of an overabundance of a particular species that's damaging other species. Isn't that something we should be doing a little more science on? Shouldn't we be calculating that into our equation on how we maintain balance in the ecosystem?

[Dr. Mike Hammill]

We can go back and re-examine. In the work that was done in the early 1990s, we looked at impacts and ways it could be controlled. One of them was the delivery of ivermectin, which is a worm control agent that was delivered to seals. The technique worked fairly well as far as cleaning up worms out of the seals goes, but the problem was the delivery mechanism--trying to make sure you gave it to a seal in a safe manner for the person who was doing it and also in a safe manner for the seal.

[James Lunney, Conservative, Nanaimo—Alberni, BC]

You could get them to report to the local clinic.

[Dr. Mike Hammill]

That's one way of doing it, although probably a more effective way is injecting them on Sable Island or on the ice during the pupping season. You can approach the animals then and you'd just hit them up, so to speak.

We have done a fair amount of this work. Maybe a lot of this stuff needs to be re-examined, because it's apparent from industry that it's more of a problem now.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerald Keddy]

Mr. Stoddard, did you want to comment?

[Peter Stoddard]

Am I hearing this right? We're now going to give seals medicare so they can live longer? We have a problem with too many now. We want to reduce the herd size, not make them live longer.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerald Keddy]

We appreciate that interjection.

[Dr. Mike Hammill]

That's the other approach.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerald Keddy]

Mr. Courtney, did you have a comment?

[Robert Courtney]

Yes, I have a quick comment.

The grey seals that are being harvested are juvenile seals; they're only six to eight weeks old. How many of those will you have to harvest and how long will it take before there is any effect on the herd, before it would come down in size?

[Dr. Mike Hammill]

Are you talking pups?