I'm hearing again about what we should do. We went through this before in the cod moratorium. We were never going to repeat the mistakes of the past, but we seem to be good at it. We like to criticize science. No, they're not right on with what the fishermen are saying. We did that in 1992 or 1993. Science drove the cod fishery down to a low TAC. We said, “You're wrong.” The size of cod and the condition of the cod were excellent. Our catches per unit effort were never so high. We said, “This is what you wanted and we're there.” “Yes, but we're not seeing recruitment. We have a major problem.” Nobody listened, and we kept at it.
Science today on crab is saying the same thing. It's my understanding that there's a large loss of females. The recruitment in juveniles is not there to the extent they want to see, and they're worried. Yes, there are good catches this year because there are fewer fishermen on the water. They've got a smaller amount to catch, so you catch it quick. The crab that are being caught are big, they're big crab, and they're full. There are areas where they're not showing up. There are areas where things are going right fast. I think we should be very cautious.
As a fisherman, I'm tired of listening to the politics that cuts my wages, and the people involved don't.... I think a good way to run the department would be that part of their wages should be based on the biomass in the water. If they can rebuild it, they get an increase in wages; if not, they lose.
What we're going through is ridiculous. In the 1970s, we had Atlantic Canada management, which worked pretty well. Pretty well the whole system in Atlantic Canada was based on the same rules and regulations. You went to a meeting, generally the whole works.... We used to do 53 ground stocks in three days. Everybody was treated the same.
Then, to make it better, we went to regional management. Then, to make that better, we went to area management. Then we went to micro-management. Then we went to crisis management. Now we're in co-management, because the managers have taken in the industry to help manage. You pretty well see in any business where you take in new managers...the managers aren't doing their job; they're making a mess of it. That's what happened.
In all these years, the fisheries got worse, the fishermen got less, and the department stayed the same. In fact, it's better. At one time, DFO meant the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. Today it's pretty well the Department of Fisheries Officials, because they're the only ones sustaining their own biomass and rebuilding--fisheries employees.
It's a disgrace. I'm getting tired, after 40-some years on the water, of seeing the mess and where this thing has ended up. All we're doing is studying.
I mentioned the cod in 1993. I want to give you an example. If you can all remember, the first thing that came out was the dumping, discarding, and misreporting model, where the fishermen were liars, crooks, and blackguards who ruined the fishery. That went across Canada. That's still there today. But three years after the fishermen came off the water, when we were telling them something was wrong, something had been wrong for ten years, but they had it all factored in. They were doing their studies every year. The fishery stocks were still going down devastatingly fast with nobody on the water. So they started to do a natural mortality model. Natural mortalities point to 20% of the stock—something killed besides fishermen.
After they finished their model, all of a sudden in 4T it was 0.4%. They took that 0.4% back to 1986. That's what destroyed the fishery. It wasn't all fishermen. We killed fish; that's what we're supposed to do.
But that's never been corrected. Now science is saying natural mortality in cod is 0.8%. It's never coming back, but we had a couple of thousand tonnes of fish, and to manage the fishery and rebuild it, they took the fishermen off the water.
Those are some examples. Our policies and our management aren't working in the fishery we have today.
Unemployment started in the fishery in the 1950s. It was to supplement the fishery. Now the fishery is only supplementing the unemployment. This whole thing, the fishery, is turning into a make-work project for stamps. It's nothing but a disgrace for the industry we had in Atlantic Canada and where it's led to--gone. I'm terribly scared that we've gone too far.
When we don't want to repeat the mistakes of the past, we should read what the past was all about.
Thank you.