Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and also the members of the committee, for the opportunity today.
To give first of all a bit of introduction, I work as the executive director of the Nova Scotia Fish Packers Association, which is an association of over 60 processing companies and exporters on the mainland of Nova Scotia. Our combined export value last year exceeded $400 million. The companies I represent are involved in exporting almost all the varieties of seafood we have on the market in Nova Scotia. I would also remind the committee that Nova Scotia is the number one exporter of seafood in Canada, with over $1 billion exported last year.
The industry is under extreme pressure right now, as is the industry in Newfoundland for the very same reasons: the American exchange rate, fuel prices, electricity rates, and Chinese competition in our markets.
I would like to express a plea to the minister today to come to Nova Scotia as soon as possible, hopefully this summer. We need the same kind of summit as was recently held in Newfoundland, where the minister gets to meet with the industry leaders and understand what the issues are. Perhaps by putting our heads together we can come up with some effective strategies.
I have to underline the urgency of this. I live in an area of Southwest Nova where right now there are boats that are on a cash basis for fuel, where one of the big auto and truck companies is repossessing trucks from fishermen, where we're facing very soft markets, especially in the United States. I hope the minister will hear this plea and that we can get to see him, hopefully this summer.
Now on to grey seals. I'm the secretary-treasurer of the Grey Seal Research and Development Society. We have a number of processing companies and fishermen's organizations that form the board of directors of this organization.
Starting off, what is happening with grey seals from a commercial fisheries perspective? In 1980 the estimated herd size was about 30,000, with a concentration around Sable Island and few seen in western Nova Scotia or Cape Breton waters. In 2006 the estimate of a year ago was about 350,000 to 400,000, with new breeding-pupping areas and concentrations from Cape Breton to coastal areas around the Gulf of Maine.
Unlike harp seals, which remain in the Gulf and off coastal Newfoundland and Labrador for a few months before moving north to the Arctic and Greenland, grey seals are in our commercial fishing waters and around our coast for 12 months of the year. These animals average between 600 pounds to 1,200 pounds as adults and they are eating large amounts of fish and seafood from our shallow fishing banks and coastal waters. They live in a cold water environment that requires more caloric intake on a yearly basis than that of the entire Nova Scotia population of nearly one million people.
While the grey seal population has increased more than ten-fold since 1980, our cod and other groundfish populations continue to decline or disappear off eastern Nova Scotia and Cape Breton. A commercial fishing moratorium has been in place for cod in these waters since 1993, yet the stocks continue to decline because of unexplained high natural mortality and the seeming disappearance of whole year classes before they become large enough to spawn.
This decline in cod and some other commercial groundfish stocks is spreading westward, to areas where fishing and fish processing has until now been able to survive.
The few cod that are harvested for science and analysis from eastern Nova Scotia and Cape Breton are infested with seal worm parasites and seem stunted in growth. This phenomenon is spreading westward, and our industry fears that we will soon be facing a complete shutdown of the groundfish industry.
Grey seals may not be the only factor, but the ecosystem impact of the more-than-tenfold increase of these large predators is in our view poorly understood and greatly underestimated.
World demand for wild-caught ocean fish is increasing, so we do have an opportunity; this is not a dying industry. Our competition in Norway, with an annual cod quota exceeding 200,000 metric tonnes, in Iceland, with a cod quota exceeding 150,000 metric tonnes, are reaping the benefits through fresh, frozen, and salted exports. By the way, the Atlantic Canada cod quota is less than 25,000 metric tonnes when you add Newfoundland and Nova Scotia together.
Fishing communities are thriving in those countries while we increase our export of young people from our fishing communities. Both Iceland and Norway manage their seal herds at fewer than 20,000 animals and make no apologies for doing so. Norway even licenses foreign hunters to harvest seals as a part of tourism.
A fish-processing industry continues to exist in southwest Nova Scotia, where a modest fishery for haddock, cod, and pollock has survived until now. This industry is under tremendous competitive pressure due to less attractive exchange rates with the American dollar, declining fish stocks, Chinese competition in frozen and added-value products, fuel price increases, and a shrinking supply of labour. The continued increase in the grey seal population and the growing numbers along coastlines and on islands in western Nova Scotia endangers the modest amounts of fish available for harvest. Increasingly, this fish is infested with seal-worm parasites that make it uneconomical to process and export.
Impact Issues: Grey seals eat cod and other commercial species. In Iceland, where there is abundant cod, scientists estimate that cod makes up between 20% and 25% of the seal diet. Our fishermen have observed that grey seals prefer to eat the soft bellies, liver, and gonads of large cod, so the tonnage killed far exceeds the tonnage eaten. Grey seals also prey heavily on the small numbers of juvenile, immature cod and other groundfish species in this region before the cod are old enough to spawn.
When I did this presentation before the committee on natural resources in the Nova Scotia legislature, I circulated pictures of cod with the bellies ripped out of them that fishermen have sent to me at the office.
Fishermen feel it is unlikely cod or other groundfish species are able to spawn successfully on the shallow banks while large numbers of seals are present. Fishermen have observed seals breaking up schooling fish and chasing them. Spawning requires fish to aggregate on certain shallow banks in the ocean. Scientists have wondered since the mid-1990s why whole year classes of cod seem to have disappeared. Fishermen believe that these year classes were never born. I would remind the committee members again that, unlike harp seals, these seals are in our waters 12 months of the year, especially during the reproductive time.
Grey seals chase fish off the best feeding grounds during the summer months and into less productive, colder, darker, deeper waters. Scientists and industry are observing thinner fish in poorer condition, and this phenomenon is spreading from eastern waters to the west as the grey seal herd spreads. Grey seals are the necessary, warm-blooded animal host for a parasite, pseudoterranova, that is responsible for an alarming infestation of cod, cusk, haddock, and flatfish to the point where one DFO parasite scientist in the late 1990s concluded that mortality of the most heavily infested fish was likely occurring.
DFO scientists continue to wonder what is causing the high levels of natural mortality of cod and other species in areas where a moratorium on commercial fishing has been in effect since 1993. I would mention the funding for that research work on the seal worm, pseudoterranova, was cut off around 2000, just after the report by the scientist at Moncton was released with the conclusion of high possible natural mortality.
Infestations of seal worms sap nutrition from fish, and the worms excrete ketones that have been observed to make fish sluggish. This is something I learned from a scientist when I was in Iceland three years ago. The impact of the parasite infestation is making it uneconomical to process our own fish. One processor last summer reported that cod fillets were literally walking across the work tables. Another salt fish processor reported he can no longer do skin-on dried and salted fish from local landings due to parasites and the cost of removing them. That processor now imports ling cod from Iceland.
Grey seals are destroying gillnets and longline fish before they can be brought on board. Fishermen in some areas have given up their inshore herring and mackerel bait fisheries. Halibut and groundfish longline fishermen are seeing good fish stripped and ruined before they can be landed.
The prognosis for Nova Scotia is more pressure on crab and lobster fisheries, fewer fishermen, fewer processing plants and jobs, and more people from coastal communities leaving for Alberta. Some plants and fishing captains are reporting difficulty in finding crewmen and workers. Fishing is a business, and in Nova Scotia the impact of grey seals is adding to other factors in stressing these businesses.
I will conclude with some facts about the Grey Seal Research and Development Society.
The society was formed in the fall of 2003 by some concerned industry representatives. The society requested a grey seal quota or allocation from DFO and received a two-year allocation of 10,000 animals for 2004 and 2005. That allocation was extended through to the end of 2006. The society has been able to harvest 460 juvenile grey seals in 2005 and about 800 thus far in 2006. It is estimated that 50,000 grey seal pups were born on Sable Island alone this past winter.
Grey seal products differ from harp seal products, and the society is breaking new ground in how to harvest these animals for best-quality pelts and meat. Products and markets must be developed. We are having some success in these efforts, but significant challenges remain.
Sable Island and other key breeding and pupping locations are off limits to the society for harvesting due to provincial regulations and the DFO allocation restriction. There is no recognition by either the Nova Scotia government or DFO of the impact that the grey seal herd expansion on commercial fish stocks is having on the fishing and seafood business and the marine ecosystem that has supported fishing communities in this region for hundreds of years. This is in marked contrast to governments in Iceland and Norway, which have maintained viable fishing industries and have managed their seal populations to avoid an increase.
Rather, we see DFO and the Nova Scotia government approach this with a head-down, quiet support for the development of a small commercial grey seal harvest with numerous restricted areas.
I'll end with that. You have the rest of my report, and I will entertain questions.