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.