Evidence of meeting #133 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 species.
A recording is available from Parliament.
4:20 p.m.
Mr. Ken McDonald (Avalon, Lib.)
Thank you, Mr. Rogers.
I'll turn it over to the Conservative side for the last five minutes of our first hour.
Mr. Arnold.
4:20 p.m.
Conservative
Mel Arnold Conservative North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC
I'll start, and then I'm going to pass it on to Mr. Sopuck.
Mr. Wilson, you were touching briefly on slot limits or size limits for fisheries. Can you perhaps enlighten us a little bit more on how these might be used to manage the striped bass fishery in the future, given that you were speaking about how, when there's a poor recruitment year or a poor spawning year, you may have a low return in certain stocks?
4:20 p.m.
Co-host and Founder, Miramichi Striper Cup
In the Saint John River you have to keep a fish over 68 centimetres, and in the Miramichi you have to keep a fish between 55 centimetres and 65 centimetres. That slot limit protects the big spawners. You're not allowed to kill big fish, that big female. You shouldn't be able to do that in the Saint John River either. You're not going to kill your most fertile cow and keep all the little ones; you're just not going to do that. It's exactly the same with a fishery. That big spawner is going to populate your whole harvest capability in four years, right?
4:25 p.m.
Conservative
Mel Arnold Conservative North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC
If you had a year when you had a large abundance of big spawners coming up, but you knew the ones that were going to be spawners in two or three years' time were in a small slot limit, would you be able to exclude that smaller slot?
4:25 p.m.
Co-host and Founder, Miramichi Striper Cup
Yes. Right now you see that coming, but natural fluctuations in the school will actually protect against an overabundance of spawners. Right now, we have a bit of a problem where we have way more males than females, but that's just an effect of nature. Eventually those males will die off. Mother Nature again will make that adjustment for us. We don't have to do a thing. I promise you that it will go back to normal.
4:25 p.m.
Conservative
Mel Arnold Conservative North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC
You wouldn't have to protect those smaller ones before they become—
4:25 p.m.
Co-host and Founder, Miramichi Striper Cup
You are, by not letting people take fish under 55 centimetres. That allows those young each year to get robust and strong. You get to harvest there, when they're in that bulk of the population, knowing you've got some big ones that are going to continue through.
4:25 p.m.
Conservative
4:25 p.m.
Conservative
Robert Sopuck Conservative Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB
I have one question I'd like each of you to stake a stab at. Are both of you satisfied with how responsive DFO has been to your concerns in general terms? If the answer is yes, could you say why? If the answer is no, what would you recommend?
Mr. Mallet.
4:25 p.m.
Executive Director, Maritime Fishermen's Union
I think that the science has been pretty decent with regard to putting in the effort to try to understand what's going on with the population in the last five or six years. The main reason for that was probably the pressure coming from the salmon associations—the salmon fishermen and anglers.
The main question we were asking as inshore fishermen was what the impacts are of this new population boom for striped bass on our principal commercial fisheries, which are lobster and herring—but especially lobster. From what we've seen, it's minimal.
4:25 p.m.
Co-host and Founder, Miramichi Striper Cup
I think DFO needs to up its game considerably as it understands the striped bass. When I go to a meeting of the eastern advisory committee and I have this much information on salmon and only one eight-by-eleven sheet of paper on the striped bass, and the striped bass information is critical, I think that we still have a ways to go to understand this species.
4:25 p.m.
Conservative
Robert Sopuck Conservative Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB
Mr. Wilson, is DFO responsive to you? When you ask for meetings, are they there? Do they show up?
4:25 p.m.
Conservative
Robert Sopuck Conservative Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB
That's good to hear.
I'm done, Mr. Chair. Thank you.
4:25 p.m.
Mr. Ken McDonald (Avalon, Lib.)
Thank you, Mr. Sopuck.
With the permission of the committee, I'd like to allow Mr. Donnelly a couple of minutes.
Mr. Donnelly.
4:25 p.m.
NDP
Fin Donnelly NDP Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC
Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thanks to the committee.
I just have one question for each witness.
Mr. Mallet, does the MFU have any further recommendations for this study? Do you have any concerns with this study? In other words, would you like to see a different focus of priorities—on smelts or something like that?
4:25 p.m.
Executive Director, Maritime Fishermen's Union
As an association, and with some of our other partner associations in the gulf, we are really pushing for more ecosystem-based approaches to science and what's going on with climate change and the interrelationships between these species. I can go on with a huge list of examples here, starting with the situation with whales that we had in the past two years. There are major shifts right now in the distribution of several species. We've mentioned the whales and we can talk about herring. There's a major crisis coming with some of the pelagic species we depend on. We have good monitoring of these species, knowing what their populations are, but we don't know why they're fluctuating. It's the same thing for bass.
We have several thousand grey seals in the gulf. What's the impact of grey seals on salmon, bass and other important species that we fish commercially? An ecosystem approach to try to figure out what's going on in light of climate change is coming up as a major push point from the MFU to move forward with.
4:30 p.m.
NDP
Fin Donnelly NDP Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC
Excellent. Thank you.
Mr. Wilson, you brought up a point that when promoting the striped bass to the U.S. rec fishers, some felt it was ridiculous. Can you just elaborate a little bit about why that is?
4:30 p.m.
Co-host and Founder, Miramichi Striper Cup
The problem that we had here in the province of New Brunswick was that nobody was fishing these. They didn't see them as a valuable recreational fishery. As I always say, they call it “Bass Pro”, not “Salmon Pro”. It's a huge driver in the United States.
When I would tell them that you could go out for a day and catch a hundred fish, they would say, “What? You're dreaming.” However, I managed to get a lot of TV shows to come because I said that if they couldn't catch a hundred in a day, I'd pay all their expenses. I've yet to write a cheque. It worked pretty good. I did put my name on the line a little bit, but I felt that it was important. I think they're so much more valuable, economically, to us in the recreational fishery than they will ever be in the commercial fishery for this species.
4:30 p.m.
Mr. Ken McDonald (Avalon, Lib.)
In closing, I want to thank both of our witnesses, Mr. Mallet and Mr. Wilson.
It's certainly been a very informative session for the committee this afternoon with the two witnesses we've had for this particular study.
Thank you for your participation. If there is anything you think was not heard, please get it to the committee. We can include it in the study or recommendations.
We're going to suspend now for a couple of minutes to switch over to committee business. I ask everybody to be very brief.
[Proceedings continue in camera]