Evidence of meeting #115 for Fisheries and Oceans in the 42nd Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was whales.
A recording is available from Parliament.
President, Area 19 Snow Crab Fishermen's Association
Gee, we don't have enough time.
Yes, I've been on the record in the past saying that. I still would say it's true for a lot of things.
I can't say we're under attack, though. What happened in our crab fishery happened. It's world news, but are we being...?
I felt last winter we were being told what we were going to do for changes, and that they were maybe not listening to some of the recommendations and things that could have changed.
Executive Director, Sport Fishing Institute of British Columbia
I feel we're under attack, or we're meat in the so-called sandwich.
There has been opportunity to consult. However, in the first round of consultation, our input was basically ignored, and the additional consultation opportunities almost seemed strategically poorly timed for us to be able to contribute meaningfully.
Conservative
Todd Doherty Conservative Cariboo—Prince George, BC
I want to turn over what time I have left to Mr. Arnold, if I may.
Conservative
Mel Arnold Conservative North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC
Thank you.
Mr. MacLean, I'll start off with you, and if anybody else has an answer to this question, I'd appreciate hearing it.
I'll be very brief. Have there been any population targets set for whales that you know of? We hear that we have to conserve, have to protect, and so on. I come from a wildlife management background and from fisheries management in which we saw provincial regulators continuously restricting and restricting access, but never ever wanting to set a population target. Without a population target, how many do we have to save?
Have there been targets set?
President, Area 19 Snow Crab Fishermen's Association
No target has been set, to my knowledge, on the right whale population.
Director, Business Development, Sport Fishing Institute of British Columbia
It's the same with southern resident killer whales. To our knowledge, there's no population goal. They're still talking about a “rate of increase”, or something like that, but no targets have been set.
Conservative
Mel Arnold Conservative North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC
Ms. Schmitt? Or Mr. Tutty, if you're still there?
Brian Tutty Independent Consultant, Omega Pacific Hatchery Inc.
The only comment I could offer is that the target for prey has not been established. The target for chinook food availability has not been established either. Much of the discussion has thus been around conservation and initial closures, but there is no grow or go program that would allow us to actually produce more chinook as a collective strategy of private and public hatcheries and various nested strategies that could result in more prey. We're still treading water, and that's why we're here today.
Conservative
Mel Arnold Conservative North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC
Thank you.
Ms. Schmitt or Mr. Tutty, are there any hurdles in place preventing the expansion of your program?
Independent Consultant, Omega Pacific Hatchery Inc.
The suggested program is largely limited by the ability to slowly grow overwintering chinook because of the cold water that the Omega Pacific hatchery has, as compared with the warmer waters that the existing DFO hatcheries have. They simply cannot grow them as effectively as Omega Pacific can.
However, with regard to the killer whales, it is to provide them with a directed food availability in the zones where they feed that we have suggested that the overwintering chinook be coupled with the pen-rearing chinook that Chris Bos is doing in Sooke. That is now in year three. They are doing half a million eggs this year, with a couple of million targeted in a few years. We think that by coupling both programs together we could have a grow team to fast-track.
President, Omega Pacific Hatchery Inc.
This is just a comment on [Technical difficulty—Editor] size.
Earlier, I believe 16 trials that federal Fisheries did with the S1s at their own warm hatcheries produced a large number of jacks, and the females returned at three years old. We [Technical difficulty—Editor] fish similar to the [Technical difficulty—Editor] you have very [Technical difficulty—Editor] jacks and had six-year-old tyee fish come back. It's all related to how the fish are grown in fresh water.
Mr. Ken McDonald (Avalon, Lib.)
Thank you, Mr. Arnold. Your time is up, so Mr. Calkins will not take any time right now.
We'll move on now to the NDP.
Mr. Donnelly, you have seven minutes or less, please.
NDP
Fin Donnelly NDP Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC
Thanks to all the witnesses for coming to provide testimony on this important subject concerning whales.
We've been told for decades that there is a problem with whales and that their populations have been impacted. Just looking at the southern resident killer whale, it was in 2003 that they were first designated, so we've known this problem was coming.
We've also heard from the environment commissioner, who has told us that collective governments over the years haven't acted on recovery plans—in other words, that nothing has been done—unless it hit the news. In 2017 it hit the news and, for right whales, that prompted the government to try to do something.
Scientists have told us now, concerning southern resident killer whales, that noise pollution and food seem to be the main issues.
Let me turn to Mr. Bird and Mr. Paish to talk about salmon production. That was one comment. You also talked about seal and sea lion predation. I think you stopped short of a cull.
Can you talk about your recommendations for salmon production, and can you also talk about whether the organization supports a sea lion and seal cull and say whether there is some evidence you could provide to the committee that culling works?
Director, Business Development, Sport Fishing Institute of British Columbia
I can handle this question, Fin.
First off, as it relates to increased production of chinook as a way to provide more food for southern resident killer whales, we do indeed endorse that approach. We think there is a strategic way of going about it in that we need to focus our energy on those stocks of chinook that are available to southern resident killer whales when they need them. That's not a broad scale “let's make a whole bunch more chinook” program, but more let's figure out when chinook are there based on their normal migration timing and enhance those stocks. We talk about mid and upper Fraser early time chinook, for example, the 5 sub 2s that grow really big, those types of things. We definitely consider that.
In terms of actually within a reasonable time frame being able to create enough chinook to help solve the accessibility of prey thing, that's definitely something we can do. We've done it before. I'll state again that in the 1990s, when the southern resident killer whales were demonstrating increases in their population, we produced 15 million chinook in the Fraser River through hatchery production and now we're producing three. It's a simple question of getting back there.
As it relates to seals and sea lions, we are not recommending a cull. We're recommending a targeted, science-based predator control program. Here's why: We know that there are about 70,000 seals in the Salish Sea right now. There were about 7,000 in the 1970s. We also know that it's a certain number of those seals in specific geographic locations that are causing the harm to outmigrating chinook. What needs to be determined is what those specific individuals are, where they're operating, when they're operating, and then deal with that type of approach rather than a broad scale cull.
Again, speaking to Todd's discussion of the Puntledge, it's a similar program to that. It's not a harvest, not a cull. You only need to take out a certain number of animals at a specific period of time to be able to accomplish the job from a predator control perspective, not a market harvest sale perspective or that type of thing.
NDP
Fin Donnelly NDP Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC
Thanks.
I'll go to you, Ms. Schmitt, in my remaining few minutes.
You were about to talk about some of your recommendations. Could you use a minute to talk about your recommendations?
Can you also explain—I was trying to follow along, it was a very technical presentation you gave—why DFO hasn't listened to your plan for growing fish? What's been the biggest barrier?
President, Omega Pacific Hatchery Inc.
They designed all their hatcheries originally to produce these quick S0s, where you spawn the fish in the fall; they are grown rapidly the first three months in fresh water on high-energy diets to get them to three to five grams by the first of May, and they would release them. However, in our hatchery, we only start feeding the fish at half a gram, when they're releasing theirs, and we keep ours an additional year.
Their hatcheries are not designed to grow any number of these yearling chinook, and yes, 30 years ago their S0 production did have greater survival, but currently, they do not. So we have to change the strategy. The great thing about the S1s that we grow is we release them at the beginning of April. There are herrings and herring spawn. The S1s migrate very rapidly. They're not huge; they may be only 10 or 11 grams, but there's other food available and they're not targeted by the seals and they're more immune competent. They move quickly up to Alaska. It's a totally different creature from the type that the government releases.
To get back to your question, they simply are not set up to grow these, whereas we have designed our whole facility around it. It's a big facility. We spent about $3 million. We have a big cold-water source, lots of independent incubators and rearing facilities, and proven results.
Independent Consultant, Omega Pacific Hatchery Inc.
The other comment I would make is that DFO has produced the 90-day S0 fish from a point of view of the least cost. They can produce a large number of them at the least cost and get them out of the hatchery and then essentially wait until the next cycle. The S1s require husbandry year-round, and it's roughly a dollar a fish to produce. They're more expensive, but they survive much better.
It seems to me that DFO has not experimented a great deal, because they've not had cold water to experiment with. This has an opportunity to link to other private sector [Technical difficulty—Editor] projects. In my view, the experiment should be, let's couple both hand rearing of the fish such as Chris Bos is doing in the south island for killer whales with Omega hatchery and we could have a particularly well-targeted program as Owen Bird and Martin Paish have just explained.
Mr. Ken McDonald (Avalon, Lib.)
Thank you, Mr. Tutty.
Thank you, Mr. Donnelly.
We'll now return to the Liberal side for seven minutes.
Mr. Hardie.
Liberal
Ken Hardie Liberal Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC
Mr. Chair, I'm still looking for the channel for the Newfoundland....
Sorry, we'll just move on.
Liberal
Ken Hardie Liberal Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC
Mr. MacLean, we've heard a fair number of times that local knowledge sometimes isn't rated highly enough by DFO when it's given to them. They'll quite often hear something and then come back with something quite a bit different from what the local people, who should know the conditions, would advise.
If we were to rewind the clock to the decision to close the snow crab fishery, how would you advise DFO to proceed if this situation were to come up again?