Fisheries Committee on June 15th, 2006

[Raynald Blais, Bloc, Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine, QC]

Doesn't that shock you?

[David Bevan]

Yes. That causes some concerns. We don't want any situations of that kind. It will be necessary to improve the situation for next year. We let the Lower North Shore hunters hunt seals for three days. That may have been a bit too long. We underestimated the number of seals they'd catch each day.

So next year, it will be necessary —

[Raynald Blais, Bloc, Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine, QC]

I'll go further into that question on my second round.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gerald Keddy]

Merci, M. Blais.

Mr. Kamp, 10 minutes.

[Randy Kamp, Conservative, Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge—Mission, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I may not use all my time.

Thank you, gentlemen.

I'd like to follow up a little bit on the fact that, as you say, some of the boats have observers but not all of them. What percentage does? Is it just the big ships?

[Ken Jones]

Just longliners.

[Randy Kamp, Conservative, Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge—Mission, BC]

What percentage of the sealing effort has observers?

[Ken Jones]

We've had very few observers. One year we had eight, for example. We're trying to increase that.

The trouble is that it's impractical when you have two or three people on a small boat. Longliners have crews of six to twelve people, and every spot they give up is a hunter. So we've worked things out with, for example, the union and the membership in various areas to have a certain number. We'll draw, and put them on board, but it's still a relatively small number.

[Randy Kamp, Conservative, Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge—Mission, BC]

The ones who don't have observers have some obligation to report their catches, I guess.

[Ken Jones]

That's what we're trying to correct now, particularly with the small boats. We're trying to bring in perhaps a vessel registration system--that's what we're looking at with the industry now--so that we can make one person responsible for reporting. Right now we have a loophole where on a small boat...it's not registered to anyone, so you can't make any one person report.

We want to close that loophole and have everyone report daily. We've set up centres where they can do that, and then we can check with the buyer receipts later. Right now we get the data too late. By the time we know what's happened, boom, we're over quota. That's our problem, and that's what's happened, particularly in the gulf. The last two years it's been a race for seals as they've become more valuable. We've gone from a fully competitive fishery there to one where we've done area allocations. We may have to do more--that's what we're going to be discussing with industry--to reduce the race so that people aren't racing out there, fast and furious, to take them.

Never before have we seen the hunting done in two or three days, and the quota fully taken, the way we have in the last two years. It's just that they're so valuable, so quick, and the circumstances, in the northern gulf particularly, have been so good for sealing, in fact phenomenally good. People who used to be frozen in ports are not frozen in any more. Everyone and his brother are sailing out there.

[Randy Kamp, Conservative, Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge—Mission, BC]

But it's a fairly small percentage of boats that actually report, correct?

[David Bevan]

All of them are supposed to report, but we don't have a process for holding individuals accountable for the quality of the information we're getting. That's what we're going to change for 2007.

[Randy Kamp, Conservative, Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge—Mission, BC]

The quality is poor.

[David Bevan]

The quality of the information has been poor coming from the vessels.

We have had a tendency in the past to open for a period of time, shut it down, and then wait to count the seals coming through the distribution chain. We've done that in the past, and we did that this year in the front. But we left it open too long in the gulf, based on the accelerated pace of hunting this year, and we underestimated the amount of animals that could be taken in a short time. That's what we're going to have to deal with in changing the rules for the 2007 hunt.

In total, we haven't exceeded the TAC by any great amount, and we have not jeopardized the population or the future, but it will be something we have to consider when we set the TAC for 2007.

[Randy Kamp, Conservative, Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge—Mission, BC]

If 325,000, for example, is the target figure, and people aren't actually reporting, how do you know that you haven't done 400,000?

[David Bevan]

There are bottlenecks in the distribution chain. There are not that many processors, etc., and they all go through those facilities. We have an opportunity to get a very good count from them of what was taken in total. That gives us a high degree of confidence that we know the number taken. There are some that may go to personal use and other areas, but certainly there's no big distribution. People are not taking these for their own use, generally; they're taking them for the more than $100 they get per pelt, and for the oil. That means they have to send it through processing operations.

[Randy Kamp, Conservative, Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge—Mission, BC]

Right.

How many are shot and how many are clubbed?

[David Bevan]

The vast majority this year were shot.

Do you have an estimate, Ken?

[Ken Jones]

We don't really have estimates. We know that 70% of the seals are taken on the front, and almost all of those are shot. The clubbing generally occurs in the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence, around the Magdalen Islands, and in the Prince Edward Island area.

It's just a rough guess, but maybe 5% or less of seals are actually clubbed.

[Randy Kamp, Conservative, Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge—Mission, BC]

Do sealers have a choice everywhere?

[Ken Jones]

They have a choice everywhere, but the regulations stipulate what a club has to be, its minimum dimensions and size, and what a hakapik has to be, and also what firearms they have to use. A lot of our charges do stem from improper firearms--for example, using birdshot in a shotgun as opposed to rifle slug, that kind of thing.

[Randy Kamp, Conservative, Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge—Mission, BC]

So on the front and in the gulf, the same rules apply. There's no difference in technique.

This may be a better question for the next panel, but what progress is being made in marketing, I guess, the whole animal?

[Ken Jones]

The weakness in marketing the whole animal is the meat. We did a meat subsidy that began in about 1995 and finished off in 1999. We found that they were taking mainly big adult seals. The pelt was actually getting wasted because it has less value. We were propping up markets that didn't exist. Meat did end up being destroyed anyway, and it was very costly. Those were years when a lot of hooded seals were taken because they don't have good pelts, which are all bitten and ravaged by fighting. We ended up scaling back the meat subsidy and going back to what was primarily a fur hunt.

One of the things people think is that there's a lot of meat wasted. We learned from the meat subsidy that the beater seal--the stage where most of the pelts come from, and when animals are taken in Canada--has about 12 pounds of marketable meat on it. That's hard to fish off. It's not worth their while, and it takes up room in the boat. So all we could do was encourage them to land it.

That's where we're at now. We encourage people to land it, but is it worthwhile? Is it a lot of waste, or is it better to let the scavengers have it? We've been leaving that for the boat captains, primarily, hoping that markets for meat would come along. But there really aren't a lot of markets--just local domestic stuff for flippers, or choice steaks occasionally, and bits of meat.

[David Bevan]

I think it's important to recognize that the skin and the fat that are taken make up a pretty substantial portion of the animal, about 30% of the animal.

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

Mr. Chair, could you give me an indication of the time left?