Fisheries Committee on Oct. 30th, 2018

[Robert Sopuck, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB]

I like the use of your term “balance”. When one talks about predator control in any situation, basically it's humans intervening to restore a balance. For example—and I'm going to use a totally different example—in prairie Canada, the landscape has changed so much that waterfowl nesting success is down dramatically, but it has been shown conclusively that removal of nest predators increases nest success from 10% to 80%. We have the issue of the Yellowstone wolves. They were removed, and the elk exploded. As Mr. Hardie pointed out, the reintroduction of the wolves was a good thing. We have study after study that shows how working to restore the balance can work in many situations.

Having said that, one thing I'm not hearing—and I'm sorry I wasn't here for the first part—is what human beings actually want. I think there is such a desire among humans on the west coast for chinook salmon, and all the salmon species, that we should take into account what people actually want in terms of the ecosystem out there.

In the same article I'm looking at, in Scotland, for example, they took three seals out of one river and fishing success went from 1% to 17%.

We have these data points that I think are painting a fairly compelling picture that we need to do something out there, and some active seal management is probably the right thing to do. I don't mean harass them; I mean remove them—not all of them, but reduce them to a number that at least gives salmon a chance.

Could you comment on that, Mr. Bain?

[David Bain]

I think harassing is adequate to protect those fish runs.

[Robert Sopuck, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB]

Do you have any data to back that up?

[David Bain]

Going back to the Ballard Locks, we installed acoustic barriers that kept seals and sea lions away from the fish ladder, and that allowed the fish to successfully enter Lake Washington and spawn in the Sammamish River system.

I think that if we want to have enough fish for everybody, what we really need to do is repairs and restoration.

[Robert Sopuck, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair]

Thank you for that, Mr. Sopuck and Mr. Bain.

Going back now to the government side, we have Mr. Rogers for five minutes.

[Churence Rogers, Liberal, Bonavista—Burin—Trinity, NL]

I want to get back to the seal question. I know we're talking about endangered whales and we're talking about the issues on the Pacific coast at this point, but in eastern Canada we have a major problem with seals.

As you are probably well aware, since the early 1990s, I guess, we've been waiting for the return of northern cod stocks in eastern Canada, particularly in Newfoundland and Labrador. Many people in the province believe that seals are the major contributing factor as to why it's been such a long time for these cod stocks to return. I'm just curious about that, because Mr. Sopuck talked about specific numbers in the hundreds of thousands. We're talking about millions of seals. We're talking numbers projected at nine million seals.

I'm just curious, Mr. Bain, if you have any knowledge of that particular part of the country and if you might have some suggestions for eastern Canadians and for DFO on how we deal with that problem.

[David Bain]

My knowledge is not as good for that part of the country.

I think we need to keep in mind that there was a long period of sealing and whaling in the Atlantic, and predators on those whales would have had their population severely depleted. If we had been having this discussion a century ago, it would have been the mammal-eating killer whales that we'd be worried about, and to deal with the seals we might have knocked them down too far and would have needed to look for other means in eastern Canada. Sharks are another seal predator, and they'll need time to recover to be efficient in dealing with seals.

[Churence Rogers, Liberal, Bonavista—Burin—Trinity, NL]

The other question I was going to ask was for Moira, and the question was asked earlier.

Some of the fishing organizations and people in eastern Canada also talk about whales. You hear from lobster fishermen and other people about whales not interacting with fishermen in less than 120 feet of water. Some of the groups we've listened to and some of the unions suggest that unless there are whales sighted inside those limits, they shouldn't be interfering with the lobster fishery. What are your thoughts on that again?

[Dr. Moira Brown]

Those data are going to be looked at. We have data looked at, so we have sighting data for right whales correlated with depth for all over eastern Canada for all of our sightings of right whales. That question came up this summer, and it is going to be looked at in the last week of November during the science advice meeting.

[Churence Rogers, Liberal, Bonavista—Burin—Trinity, NL]

All right. Thank you very much.

Again, on the entanglement piece, Mr. Morrissey mentioned the ghost gear question, of course, and asked that question.

If you listen to some people back in eastern Canada, Ocean Quest and some others talk about a major problem with ghost gear. I realize you said that the majority of the entanglement seems to be the currently active fishing gear, but is there something we should do about that ghost gear problem if that's also a major factor or a factor in causing problems for whales? What should we do?

[Dr. Moira Brown]

Absolutely. Ghost gear removal is good for whales and it's also good for the fishery, because there aren't pots down there collecting lobsters or other target species that are not going to be brought to the surface, so absolutely, ghost gear removal is a good idea. It has been done in the Bay of Fundy over the last few years over on the western side, and fishermen now notice that they lose less of their gear because there is less ghost gear on the bottom to tangle them up.

[Churence Rogers, Liberal, Bonavista—Burin—Trinity, NL]

Finally, I guess in terms of....

How much time do I have, Mr. Chair?

[The Chair]

You have 20 seconds.

[Churence Rogers, Liberal, Bonavista—Burin—Trinity, NL]

Concerning vessel strikes, I know there were some complaints from private operators about the speeds for vessels and so on, because it impacted their crossings from central Canada to ports like St. John's, but I guess the success of the past year or so suggests that there might be a future plan for the long term. Would that be correct?

[Dr. Moira Brown]

Yes. I think the working group came up with a good plan. There were corridors that were identified where vessels could go at normal operational speeds. They were surveyed and they were slowed down about 25% of the time, not due to sightings of whales but actually because two aerial surveys couldn't be completed in a single week.

There is a large static slowdown in the Gulf of St. Lawrence that we can look at and where we can perhaps adjust some of the corners a little bit. We drew a big box, and the corners can be adjusted to allow for ships to be fully operational in those areas while slowing down where the whales are.

I think we have a good solution, and it could be adjusted as we go forward and learn more about right whale distributions.

[The Chair]

Thank you, Ms. Brown.

Now we go to Mr. Donnelly for three minutes, please.

[Fin Donnelly, NDP, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Dr. Barrett-Lennard, I was finishing my last round of questions about the food ceiling. I think you talked about four main solutions or actions the government could take. One of those related to the food ceiling, and you were talking about chinook and the closure of the sport fishery. Could you talk a little bit more because, obviously that seems like a drastic move, but as Ms. Wilhelmson said, we've not really seen the action the government needs to take for 15 years, at least since the time when the southern resident killer whale was declared endangered. Could you comment a bit more about that?

Also, what solutions does the government need to address? You talked more about the medium to longer term. Is there anything in the immediate term that the government could do to address that issue?

[Dr. Lance Barrett-Lennard]

Thank you, Mr. Donnelly. Those two questions go together, to my mind.

As far as the sport fishery is concerned, the recommendation last year by scientists in British Columbia was that there be a closing of sport fishing in very specific, well-defined areas in southern British Columbia that are known to be—through very good scientific evidence—prime foraging areas for the southern residents. It wasn't a general fishing closure. It was a seasonal area, a very area-specific closure, and that actually was implemented this summer—not in all of those areas, but in some of them. That was a good first step, I think, in terms of immediate actions that could be taken. It was crazy to be out there and see a hundred sport boats fishing in an area with killer whales moving through it, with the boats trying to fish around the edges.

Our government is pouring millions of dollars into trying to restore this killer whale population, and we're not doing the obvious. We've got to get those fishing boats stopped as direct competition in the immediate term, and I'm glad to see that's been done.

Also, DFO has slot limits on some of the chinook fishery further west in Puget Sound. Sport fishermen can still catch fish, but they have to let the bigger ones go. Those are the ones that are most valuable to the whales. That, I think, is a very good move as well. I'd like to see more coverage in closures of the sport fishery on those southern resident killer whale foraging hot spots. It's the first thing we should be doing. Before we get into arguments about chinook and before we get into arguments about anything else, we should do the thing that's right in front of us and perfectly obvious, as anybody can see, which is to eliminate boats and whales competing for food.

[Fin Donnelly, NDP, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

Thank you.

I think I have a little bit of time. I have a quick question.

Dr. Michaud, you talked about a massive—

[The Chair]

Your time is up.

That concludes two rounds of questioning. I think we have time to do one three-minute round for each party, if that would be acceptable.

We'll go to the Liberal side. Who's going to go for the first three minutes? Don't take too long to decide, please.

Mr. Morrissey, you have three minutes.

[Bobby Morrissey, Liberal, Egmont, PE]

Thank you, Chair.

I missed the presentations given by the witnesses, but my question is to whichever of you would choose to answer. As to the whales in the Gulf of St. Lawrence that were killed, those that were identified as ship strikes versus entanglement in gear, was there any analysis done on which occurred first in some situations? Was the entanglement in the gear a result of the animal being harmed by a ship strike?

[Dr. Moira Brown]

No. There was a necropsy report that was published by the lead veterinarian from the University of Prince Edward Island. There were no whales that were found to have injuries from different human encounters. The two that were entangled did not have any sign of broken bones, and the ones that were struck by ships did not have evidence of entanglement.

[Bobby Morrissey, Liberal, Egmont, PE]

That was conclusive?

[Dr. Moira Brown]

Yes. Of the 12 dead whales, they were able to do necropsies on seven of them. One was sampled at sea, so it was not conclusive, but they did bring all those carcasses, seven carcasses, ashore—