Well, thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I thank everybody on the committee for offering me this opportunity to speak. I appreciate it.
Let me start by telling you a little bit about myself. I've been a sport fisher in Nova Scotia for over 25 years. I should clear this up: I'm mostly a saltwater angler and am not considered a freshwater expert. I've done most of my years on the salt water, mainly fishing for shark and tuna.
I've promoted shark fishing in Nova Scotia since 1993, when the shark tournaments began. I have been on most of the committees for the shark fishing tournaments that took place in Halifax and Dartmouth since their inception. The first recreational tuna tournament in Canada was started by me and others in 1998, and we've promoted it around the world. We had as many as 15 teams from as many as five countries competing for the Sharp Cup here in Halifax. We've donated 100% of all the proceeds of the shark and tuna tournaments to our children's hospital, the IWK Health Centre, which make up close to $1 million to date for the sick children of the maritime region.
We've also promoted Canada on the world stage by means of the IGFA Offshore World Championship worldwide. Approximately 72 countries are invited to compete in that championship. It's usually held in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, because that's where most of the sport fish are to this day, and it's the easiest to catch for a tournament.
I've also been very active in the tag and release program with BIO, the Bedford Institute of Oceanography, and scientists in the Atlantic region, including the tuna tagging for your research centre in St. Andrews, New Brunswick, where we've done the pop-up tagging program to see where the fish travel in the off season.
I have a few ideas as to what could be done to increase the importance of the recreational fishery in the Atlantic region. One is a tag and release program for the recreational fishery, if it could withstand it, for the bluefin and some other species, such as swordfish, which to date has been a totally commercial entity. We recognize that, but at the same time, we also recognize the potential for a great economic contribution to the area by opening up a much-needed new fishery.
I propose, and I also believe, that we can go as far as to say it is possible to open a completely new fishery for sport fishing in Nova Scotia for marlin, dorado and swordfish. To date, those have not been actively sought-after species, because of the logistics to get there. As we all know, things have changed. Boats are faster. Boats are bigger. If we take, for instance, the past 25 to 35 years, they've been going 75 to 150 miles off Hatteras, North Carolina, with 50 to 75-foot boats to catch these species. Well, we can do the same here in even less time. Within 75 to 100 miles, you would be in the line of the Gulf Stream. Where it is depends on the time of year. It can move in and out within a distance of 40 miles. Certainly, the further north we go from Halifax, towards Cape Breton, the closer it gets at most times of the year. So it is very viable and we can reach these fish in our waters, which, to date, have been untouched.
The information we will collect through such a process will be free of charge for the scientists who report daily to BIO, through the tagging program for those new species. I would say we'll save hundreds of thousands of dollars in scientists' time and money to cover Coast Guard ships and other parties involved. This would be free of charge through the recreational fishing people. We would certainly align ourselves with science. We've always worked with them, and we encourage continuing to work with them.
The economic contribution to the region would mean millions in the upcoming years to Canada and put Canada on the stage as one of the best places left in the world to fish for large pelagics. Because I am from the area and have many commercial friends, I have been told endless stories of catching the marlin and the dorado on their longline expeditions. I'm going to say that when we go south, we catch these all on a rod and reel. There's no reason why we can't do it here. If things were progressing, and somebody decided that this was an idea for an exploratory licence to study the viability and sustainability through science, I would certainly encourage that.
I would also like to mention one more thing. We have large species of sharks in the water, and it is a very deep concern to me how they're being caught by the word “bycatch”. I've been told by many commercial fishermen that on every hook or every second hook there's a shark and that they're discarded, killed, or otherwise, all of which is decimating the shark population. We need sharks to have viable, healthy oceans. Without them, without the top predator, there will be a collapse of all species sooner or later, because they are the cleaners of the ocean. If you remove the cleaners, disease and decay set in.
So I applaud anyone's efforts to come up with some new ideas of how it would be possible to still commercially fish for these sharks they are licensed for, but maybe come up with some new ideas on how to release these sharks live. That to me is a very important thing, because without them, we are all in serious trouble. It's not just here in Atlantic Canada but a worldwide problem. It is our problem. We have a lot of commercial fishermen here and if you knew the number of sharks that were being discarded, it would make you really think: it's thousands and thousands and thousands of sharks a day. We need to look at this as a country and see where we can go with that.
If you have any questions at all, I'm open to discussion. That was just to bring you up to speed on where I came from.