Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and thanks to the members of the committee for this invitation to come and speak to you today.
I won't say everything that I've provided in my brief to you because a lot of it is about basic elements of biology, but it's there for your interest and perusal.
My experience with Atlantic salmon began in 1982 during my master's research in Newfoundland in two rivers and two ponds in Terra Nova National Park. Since then, I've accumulated 34 years of research experience on wild Atlantic salmon, and I also have 27 years of experience working on the consequences of interactions between wild and farmed salmon.
In addition to my research experience, I've held positions with responsibility to provide science advice. These have included being chair of the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada, or COSEWIC. I've also chaired a Royal Society of Canada expert panel on sustaining Canada's marine biodiversity with respect to fisheries, aquiculture, and climate change. I've had the pleasure to be able to present testimony to this committee and the Standing Senate Committee on Fisheries and Oceans over the last 20 years. I'm currently a member of the scientific advisory committee on the Atlantic Salmon Conservation Foundation and I've served as independent reviewer of recovery plans for several endangered Pacific salmon for the United States National Marine Fisheries Service.
There are about 34,000 species of fish in the world. Of these 34,000, the life history variation expressed by Atlantic salmon is actually matched by relatively few other species. Atlantic salmon might well express more life history variation than almost any other fish in Canada. It is thus emblematic of the richness of Canadian aquatic biodiversity, but the richness and diversity of wild Atlantic salmon, as the committee is aware, is under considerable threat, particularly in the southern parts of its range. Salmon have been extinct in Lake Ontario for more than a century, and they no longer spawn in many rivers in the Maritimes.
COSEWIC, the national science advisory body to the Minister of the Environment on species at risk, has assessed six units of Atlantic salmon as being either endangered or threatened: south Newfoundland; Anticosti Island; eastern Cape Breton; Southern Uplands, which Brooke just talked about; inner Bay of Fundy; and outer Bay of Fundy. From a science perspective, I think it's fair to say there is consensus that the primary threats to most endangered and threatened wild Atlantic salmon in eastern Canada include partial and full barriers to migration such as dams; illegal fishing, which we've already heard about; and deterioration in habitat quality in some rivers.
In the marine environment, we almost certainly have had some shifts in oceanographic conditions and likely in ecosystem structure that have altered the interactions between species from a predator-prey perspective, and possibly in terms of competition for food. We also, in the coastal marine environment, have issues related to aquaculture operations.
However, of key importance from a recovery perspective is the fact that almost all endangered Atlantic salmon have declined by more than 90%, some even more so, when compared to their maximum recorded abundances. Declines of this extent can lead to unduly prolonged and increasingly uncertain recovery. Such massive depletions draw attention to a central tenet in population biology: small populations are more vulnerable to unexpected natural and human-induced change than large populations. Another way of putting this is that within the context of endangered and threatened wild Atlantic salmon, every fish counts in many of these rivers.
By focusing on the small, absolute numbers of salmon—often there are tens of adults returning to many of these rivers—attention is drawn to the possibility that the marine environment might not have changed quite to the extent that is sometimes hypothesized. Rather, perhaps what has changed is the ability of depleted salmon populations to persist in the face of environmental conditions in which considerably larger populations might have been able to persist in the past.
I've suggested five courses of action from a science perspective.
The first would be to accept COSEWIC's science advice to list Atlantic salmon under the Species At Risk Act. The listing of salmon under SARA would initiate legal requirements to prepare and enact recovery strategies and associated action plans.
The second would be to take measures to expand the quantity and quality of Atlantic salmon habitat in fresh water by mitigating partial and complete barriers to salmon migration, and perhaps by expanding existing initiatives to improve salmon habitat and stewardship.
The third would be to reduce and ideally eliminate illegal fishing, as has already been mentioned. Even if the absolute numbers of salmon that are poached or illegally caught is small, the proportional effects on very small populations can be quite large.
Number four would be to reduce threats to wild salmon posed by salmonid aquaculture. In this case, the viability of severely depleted populations can be negatively affected by unintended consequences of aquaculture operations, including interbreeding between wild salmon and farmed escapees, which has been reported in 54 rivers and bays in eastern Canada, and the exchange of pathogens and disease, although that latter point is perhaps not as well scientifically substantiated for Atlantic salmon as is the former.
Last, I suggest from a science perspective to take a very broad generic, theoretical approach, a modelling approach, to identify a model that would incorporate all available information on Atlantic salmon throughout its range to identify survival bottlenecks at various regional and population scales, thus strengthening the science advice associated with potential mitigation strategies.
To sum up, then, I would see the following general pattern. As we move from north to south, from Newfoundland and Labrador south to the Maritimes, we see an increased risk of extinction. We see a reduction in the survival from the smolt stage to the returning adult stage. We see an increased level of habitat alteration and fragmentation in fresh water. We see an increase in marine and freshwater water temperatures. We see an increase in the number and density of salmonid aquaculture sites, and from a marine ecosystem perspective, we also see shifts away from the larger demersal or bottom-dwelling groundfish, such as cod, to ecosystems that are increasingly dominated by small mid-water or pelagic species such as herring, and this might well have consequences for the food supply of salmon smolts.
With that, I'd like to close. I'd be happy to address any comments and questions that might arise.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.