Fisheries Committee on April 10th, 2019

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Before we get into the agenda items, I want to get one piece of business out of the way. Everybody has the budget for Bill S-203. Can we get approval to adopt that budget?

It is moved by Mr. Finnigan.

(Motion agreed to [See Minutes of Proceedings])

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), we continue our study of the migration of lobster and snow crab in Atlantic Canada and the impact of changes to lobster carapace size.

We have a good many witnesses today, some by teleconference, some by video conference and one in person, with a lot of names up next to him but they're all either on the screen or on the phone.

Mr. Fitzpatrick, welcome. As you're an independent owner-operator fish harvester, you have lots of company, but they're just not here with you.

From the Coldwater Lobster Association we have Bernie Berry, President; and Heather Mulock, Manager. They're on teleconference.

From the Prince Edward Island Fishermen's Association, we have Bobby Jenkins, President; Pat O'Neill, Interim Executive Director; Melanie Giffin, Marine Biologist and Program Planner; and Laura Ramsay, Research and Liaison Officer.

From the Gulf of Maine Research Institute, we have Andrew Pershing, Chief Scientific Officer, by video conference.

From the Fisheries and Marine Institute of Memorial University of Newfoundland, by video conference, we have Arnault Le Bris. I believe he was here the other day. We got interrupted so often that we never actually had a meeting.

Welcome back again sir, even by video conference.

We'll start off with statements. We'll do the one by teleconference first.

I believe, Mr. Berry, you're going to do the statement. You have seven minutes or less.

[Bernie Berry, President, Coldwater Lobster Association]

Good afternoon and thank you for the opportunity to address the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans on the subject of lobster movement.

As mentioned, my name Bernie Berry and I am President of the Coldwater Lobster Association.

I represent approximately 200 lobster harvesters throughout lobster fishing area 34, off southwest Nova Scotia. LFA 34 is the most lucrative lobster fishing area in Canada, with landings in the last five years averaging 55 million pounds per season. LFA 34 accounts for 40% of the maritime region landings and 25% of Canadian landings.

The Coldwater Lobster Association was established in 2014 to address some of the impending issues facing our industry in an effort to protect our fishery and our coastal communities for generations to come. One of our primary mandates is to oversee and conduct industry-supported scientific research initiatives. Much of our scientific work, including our lobster tagging program, which I'm about to discuss, is focused on collecting baseline datasets that could provide valuable insight into emerging trends that could impact our industry.

The inshore lobster fishery in Canada is regulated by effort controls, such as limited licence entry, pot limits, pot size, defined seasons, boat size, minimum carapace sizes, no berried female retention and window gauges in some LFAs. There's also an offshore lobster fishery that is managed by a quota system in which one company owns the entire quota.

Lobster movement has a significant importance to the lobster industry in understanding how environmental changes, such as rising water temperature, salinity levels, acidity, etc., can and have had an impact on the movement of a species. It is imperative that the movement of all sizes of lobsters be examined while our stock is healthy.

There must also be a focus on the movement and settlement of lobster larvae in different stages, and when and where they settle.

The shift in where lobsters are harvested in LFA 34 over the past 30 years is dramatic. In the 1970s and 1980s, 90% to 95% of lobsters caught were in 50 fathom and shoaler. In today's catch, 50% to 60% is harvested in 50 fathom and deeper. This is an important trend that is worth noting.

The Coldwater Lobster Association has initiated a lobster tagging program within lobster fishing areas 33 and 34 off southwest Nova Scotia for the past two years. The sample size of the program is 2,000 lobsters, both legal- and sublegal-sized lobsters. The recapture reporting for the tagged lobsters over the past two years has been approximately 18%, which is notable, as most tagging programs typically have an average recapture reporting of 10%. Coldwater Lobster is currently in the preliminary stages of reviewing the raw recapture data in an effort to determine broad outcomes and trends.

Coldwater Lobster also is a partner in a tagging program that will tag 12,000 sublegal-sized lobsters each year for the next three years. The lobsters are tagged using the standard T-bar streamer tag that is situated underneath the carapace into the meat. That will remain affixed to the animal for multiple moults.

Until recently, the last time a significant lobster tagging program was conducted in LFA 33 and 34 was in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The interest in lobster movement and growth has increased in recent years, which can be seen with other tagging programs that are currently under way. One tagging program in the Bay of Fundy is being conducted by a first nation from New Brunswick. Most recently, a tagging program is under way in U.S. waters by the Atlantic Offshore Lobstermen's Association.

Recent studies have shown that there's evidence that the centre of the biomass of most stocks in the Gulf of Maine has moved north and east by 70 miles in the last 10 to 15 years. One example is Maine lobster landings. A decade ago, the southern half of Maine landed the bulk of the catch. Now the majority of the catch is landed in northern Maine. Another example of this could be the southern portion of LFA 33 in Canadian waters, which has experienced a major jump in catches, particularly in deeper waters. This is in conjunction with the trend of warming water and the biomass of lobster looking for optimum water temperatures. There is also the example of the massive increase in catches in LFA 35 over the last 25 years.

While all of this is positive, there is some evidence that the warming water has had a detrimental effect on the southern extremities of the lobster stock.

Tracking lobster movement is critical in determining the change in lobster behaviour, primarily because of the warming water trend that we are seeing. The Gulf of Maine is the second-fastest warming body of water on earth. Determining where lobsters are moving, especially female lobsters, is critical. If female egg-bearing lobsters are going into deep water to release their eggs because the traditional areas, shoal water, have become too warm, then it is critical to track where the eggs and larvae are going. The direction of current and the strength of current in these new areas are different from those in the inshore grounds and could lead to a different dispersal range from what used to exist.

There are many questions that remain to be answered. Are lobsters moving in a different direction because of food or lack of food in certain areas or because of water temperature? Could lobsters be going to unfamiliar territory because of overcrowding in areas brought on by favourable environmental conditions that have led to 100% of lobster larvae surviving, which has led to the abundance of lobsters that we've seen over the last 20 years?

Browns Bank, LFA 40, has been closed to all lobster fishing for approximately 40 years because it was believed to be an offshore nursery for lobster. If lobster movement is tracked, we might be able to identify other areas that could be classified as potential lobster nurseries and treat them as safe havens, or closed areas, to help the biomass in future years if the stock comes under pressure from environmental changes.

Tracking lobster movement could lead to a more cost-efficient harvest of the species and also lead to a harvest of premium lobsters based on location and time of year harvested. As Coldwater Lobster data is developed, it could provide us a snapshot comparison with data collected approximately 25 years ago. Over time, it will show the difference in movements, such as how fast, how far and what direction the species is moving in.

Coldwater Lobster's an in-house biologist, along with one of our member fishermen who also has a long-standing career as a geologist, are currently working on interpreting the raw data collected and applying it to a GIS mapping platform for further analysis and interpretation.

This is a very important time for the industry and DFO to collaborate on science. Changes in the environment are happening at an unprecedented pace, and collectively, we must act now to better understand the changes that have happened and will continue to happen, for the health of the stock and the economic viability of the fishery and the communities it supports.

Again, thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you, Mr. Berry.

We will now go to the Prince Edward Island Fishermen's Association, for seven minutes or less, please.

[Pat O'Neill, Interim Executive Director, Prince Edward Island Fishermen's Association]

Thank you, once again, to the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans for the opportunity for the Prince Edward Island Fishermen's Association to present on the important topic of migration of lobster and snow crab in Atlantic Canada and the impact of changes to lobster carapace size.

My name is Pat O'Neill and I'm the Interim Executive Director of the PEIFA. Today I'm joined by our marine biologist and program planner, Melanie Giffin; our research and liaison officer, Laura Ramsay; and the president of the P.E.I. Fishermen's Association, Bobby Jenkins, who has more than 40 years of experience in the fishery.

The lobster industry is the most important fishery on P.E.I., and each of these witnesses plays a key role in the management, coordination and science of the species within the surrounding lobster fishing areas. The P.E.I. lobster fishery contributes to over 30% of the total Canadian lobster harvest and is one of the main economic drivers on P.E.I., with over 9,000 industry-related jobs and a direct landed value of $250 million annually.

Landings in 2018 increased in each lobster fishing area, with 19.3 million pounds in LFA 24, 11 million pounds in LFA 26A and 8.3 million pounds in LFA 25, equalling a 2%, a 12% and a 10% increase in landings respectively.

Fish harvesters on P.E.I. participate in a variety of other fisheries, including crab, tuna, small pelagics estuarial fish, shellfish and groundfish. On P.E.I., snow crab is second to lobster in landed value, with over $37 million in landings.

The P.E.I. Fishermen's Association is a multi-species fishing organization, representing approximately 1,300 independent core fishers. The association was created for numerous purposes, including but not limited to the following: to undertake the necessary action to manage the allocation of fish species harvested by fish harvesters on P.E.I.; to undertake, in concert with other fisheries interests in Atlantic Canada, methods to ensure the conservation of endangered species and the survival of the fishing industry; and to study, investigate and disseminate information concerning the fishing industry.

Today we will give an overview of the PEIFA's perspective on the topic, including specific concerns.

Climate change and the increase in water temperatures over time in the Gulf of St. Lawrence have been red-flagged at snow crab stock assessments, due to what is known on the impact on molting, movement and reproductive behaviour in snow crab. The trawl survey, which includes bottom temperature readings at each location, has become an important and consistent monitoring tool for this species in a variety of ways.

The fishery on P.E.I. is mainly dependent on lobster. It is vital that we have a good monitoring program in place to understand how climate change is affecting their habitat, biomass and molting. Currently, there is no permanent funding in place to monitor this.

The Department of Fisheries and Oceans is mandated to study lobster stock biomass, but nothing beyond that. Fishers on P.E.I. are concerned with other aspects of the lobster population, including the species' carrying capacity—namely, food and habitat limitations.

Understanding that better would include a project to gain knowledge on the rock crab population, which are a main component of the lobster diet. DFO submitted a proposal on this in collaboration with the P.E.I. Fishermen's Association, but the project was rejected for funding.

Lobster and other mobile species will naturally avoid unsuitable habitat, less than ideal temperature, dissolved oxygen, pH, salinity and other water chemistry levels. These can shift with climate change, but also with industrial runoff such as Northern Pulp's proposed effluent treatment pipe into the Northumberland Strait. There is no monitoring being done by DFO to track these changes and monitor the movement of lobster from the area.

With respect to carapace length, P.E.I. is exceeding what is required according to DFO science and we are consistently reviewing and re-evaluating management measures to improve the way we harvest lobster. The last two carapace increases in lobster fishing areas 24 and 26A were requested by the fishers, who voluntarily agreed to move up in minimum carapace size. The lobster advisory committees on P.E.I. continue to work with the fishers to ensure progress in the right direction.

The P.E.I. Fishermen's Association conducts its own science projects to gain knowledge. We work with other organizations such as the Lobster Node Incorporated, a collective group of lobster fishing industry associations, to expand knowledge for all the Atlantic provinces. We develop new technology to improve data collection, and we work closely with DFO management and science to ensure we are doing everything we can to better understand the lobster population and changes taking place.

We work closely with the provincial lobster biologist and principal biologist Robert MacMillan on the lobster resource monitoring program. We also work extremely hard to keep all harvesters included in the information-sharing through lobster quality and handling workshops, advisory committee meetings and presentations from the biologists, etc. Knowledge-sharing is both top down and bottom up.

P.E.I. is also leading the way on lobster marketing with the development of the Lobster Fishers of P.E.I Marketing Board, which is funded by a levy. This type of funding initiative is only being done in Prince Edward Island, and the marketing board is run completely separately from the P.E.I. Fishermen's Association.

We are pleased to answer any questions you may have.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you, Mr. O'Neill.

We'll now go to the Gulf of Maine Research Institute with Mr. Pershing for seven minutes or less, please.

[Dr. Andrew Pershing, Chief Scientific Officer, Gulf of Maine Research Institute]

Thank you.

My name is Andrew Pershing and I'm the chief scientific officer at the Gulf of Maine Research Institute in Portland, Maine, U.S.A. I've been studying the oceanography and ecology of the Gulf of Maine for more than 25 years.

As you know, the Gulf of Maine is bordered by the provinces of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick as well as the states of Maine, New Hampshire and Massachusetts. The United States and Canada have a shared interest in the well-being of the Gulf of Maine. I'm honoured to be invited to share my perspective on how climate change has impacted and will impact ecosystems in the northwest Atlantic, especially the region's valuable lobster fisheries.

The earth's oceans have absorbed more than 90% of the excess heat trapped on the planet due to the burning of coal and oil. At the ocean's surface, temperatures have increased at an average rate of 0.01° Celsius per year since 1982. However, the warming of the ocean is not uniform. Over the last 30 years, the waters from Cape Hatteras to Newfoundland have warmed at nearly four times the global average rate. This makes this region one of the fastest-warming ocean regions on the planet.

The area of rapid warming encompasses the natural range of the American lobster. Over this period, the distribution of lobsters has shifted poleward by a rate of 11 kilometres per year. This shift has coincided with the dramatic increase in landings in Maine, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, but a severe decline in catches in Rhode Island and New York.

There are two main processes that lead to range shifts in animal populations. First, individual animals can actively move to follow the environmental conditions that they prefer. This active movement is most common in large, mobile animals. A good example of a movement-driven range shift is the recent shift in the distribution of right whales from their summer feeding areas in the Bay of Fundy now to the Gulf of St. Lawrence. For less mobile species like lobsters, shifts in their distributions come from differences in reproduction and survival. Lobsters have not crawled from Rhode Island to Maine. Instead, lobsters in Rhode Island now produce fewer babies, and fewer of these survive, while Maine and Canada have seen a lobster baby boom.

The northward shift in lobsters has been driven by increased reproduction and survival in the north and decreased reproduction and survival in the south. Warming is an important part of this story. When lobsters are raised in warm water they grow fast and reach maturity in only a few years. But smaller lobsters produce fewer eggs and juvenile lobsters must run a gauntlet of predators. In colder water, lobsters grow more slowly and mature at a larger size.

When Dr. Arnault Le Bris and I compared lobster populations in the Gulf of Maine with those in southern New England, we were able to identify an optimal summer temperature for lobster recruitment near 16° Celsius. As waters have warmed, these optimal conditions have shifted from Massachusetts in the 1990s, to Maine and Nova Scotia in the early 2000s, to eastern Maine and New Brunswick in the last decade.

However, because we're talking about a shift due to differences in survival, we'd also need to account for fishing. In our modelling study, Dr. Le Bris and I contrasted the management strategies used in southern New England with those in the Gulf of Maine. Until recently, the lobster fishery in southern New England only had a minimum legal size, while Maine has long had both minimum and maximum legal sizes. This strategy, along with the practice of marking egg-bearing females with a v-notch, has been championed by generations of Maine lobstermen under the hypothesis that protecting larger lobsters would ensure a large brood stock and support high recruitment.

Our calculations support this hypothesis. We found that the lack of an upper size limit amplified the effect of warming in the south, turning a moderate downturn into a collapse. Similarly, protecting larger lobsters amplified the benefit to Maine from the recent warming.

But what about the future? Climate projections suggest that the northwest Atlantic will continue to warm at an above-average rate. By 2050, our region will likely be 1.5° Celsius warmer. At these temperatures, the western Gulf of Maine, the Scotian shelf and the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence will become less favourable for lobsters. When we put this rate of warming into our model, the number of lobsters in the Gulf of Maine decline to levels we experienced around the year 2000. Removing the protection on larger lobsters would result in a steeper decline. One of the most important messages of our recent paper is that protecting older, larger lobsters helps build resilience in this population.

In our study, we ran our model out to the year 2050. Beyond 2050, the fate of lobster will depend on global carbon emissions. If carbon emissions are reduced as envisioned in the Paris Agreement, then Maine and Atlantic Canada will likely hold on to valuable lobster fisheries. However, under business-as-usual emissions, these fisheries will be much smaller.

Our results for lobster underscore a major theme that emerged in the “Fourth National Climate Assessment” published last fall. In the “Oceans and Marine Resources” chapter, my colleagues and I highlighted how sound fishery management can help fisheries build resilience to climate change. We also identified clear economic benefits to fisheries from reducing carbon emissions, a theme that cut across all of the chapters in the recent U.S. “National Climate Assessment”.

As you consider policies for the future of Canada's lobster and snow crab fisheries, I would encourage you to learn from the experiences in the United States fisheries and to consider how your policies will fare in a warmer ocean.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

We'll go now to Mr. Le Bris, from the Fisheries and Marine Institute of Memorial University of Newfoundland, for seven minutes or less, please.

[Dr. Arnault Le Bris, Research Scientist, Centre for Fisheries Ecosystems, Fisheries and Marine Institute of Memorial University of Newfoundland]

Mr. Chairman and committee members, thank you for inviting me to speak with you today about lobster and snow crab ecology and fisheries.

My name is Arnault Le Bris, and I am a research scientist at the Fisheries and Marine Institute of Memorial University of Newfoundland. I define myself as a fisheries ecologist, addressing issues relevant to the fishing industry and to the sustainable management of marine resources.

As part of my current research on a variety of marine species, including lobster, I'm working with fishing associations from four provinces in Atlantic Canada and Quebec, with members from both the inshore and offshore fishing industries and with federal scientists from three regional centres of Fisheries and Oceans Canada.

My presentation will focus on three issues. The first is the concept of movement in lobster and snow crab. The second is the problem of carapace size in the lobster fishery. The third, and most important, in my view, is the need to anticipate the future.

Issue number one is the movement in snow crab and lobster.

There are two types of adult movement: seasonal movements and alongshore movements. Seasonal migration from shallower water to deeper waters has been well documented in both lobster and snow crab. While this type of movement affects where the resource is distributed across seasons, it does not really affect whether a lobster or a snow crab moves from one fishing area to another.

The second type of adult movement is alongshore movement. This has the potential to cause movement across fishing areas. However, all tagging work conducted to date suggests that there's very little movement across lobster or snow crab fishing areas. Indeed, lobster and snow crab move alongshore in the order of tens of kilometres, which is enough to connect some fishing ports, but rarely enough to connect fishing areas, as demonstrated by the recent studies from the Lobster Node project.

Issue number two is minimum and maximum landing carapace sizes in the lobster fishery.

Throughout Atlantic Canada, minimum landing sizes are imposed in lobster fisheries. The rationale is to help lobster reproduce at least once before they are caught in the fishery. However, most of the minimum landing sizes are currently situated below the length at 50% maturity. This means that only a minority of lobster reproduce before they become vulnerable to the fishery. Increasing the minimum size, as was recently done in P.E.I., improves the chances that lobsters will reproduce. This increases the egg production in the population and consequently the resilience of the fishery to future changes in the ecosystem.

Another solution to increasing the egg production is to protect larger lobsters and especially larger females. Fecundity increases exponentially with size. For instance, a female lobster with an 85-millimetre carapace length produces about 10,000 eggs, while a female with a 110-millimetre carapace length produces about 50,000 eggs, which is about five times more. Another advantage of preserving larger females is that they reproduce more often. Preserving large reproductive females can be achieved through various conservation measures, including maximum size limit, throwing the egg-bearing female back in the water, v-notching and fishing gear selectivity.

As stated by my colleague Dr. Andrew Pershing, our work has demonstrated that the use of various conservation measures in Maine amplified the temperature-driven recent boom observed in the fishery.

In Canada, maximum size limits are not imposed. However, the combination of fishing season, the practice of v-notching in some areas and the general low selectivity of traps for larger individuals ensures that some large females remain in the water. How many large females are in the water is, however, unclear. Naturally, there are a lot of economic consequences of imposing minimum and maximum size limits, and especially market consequences, but I'm not an expert in that domain.

Issue number three is on anticipating the future.

I had a slide to show to you, and I don't know if it's on your screen right now. I wanted to show you a figure that summarizes the landings in fishing area 34 in southwest Nova Scotia from 1892 to 2016. The figure for landings in that area, which is very representative of the overall lobster landings for Maine and Atlantic Canada, shows that despite some ups and downs, landings were relatively stable for about 100 years, until the last 20 years. Quite suddenly over the last 20 years, we've experienced a massive boom in lobster landings.

This raises two very important questions: first, what has driven this rapid boom; and second, what will happen in the future? Responding to the first question helps to inform the second one.

In our previous work, we demonstrated that large-scale ocean warming has been favouring recruitment in northern regions like Maine, the Maritimes and possibly Quebec and Newfoundland, as some signs indicate nowadays. However, we don't fully understand the mechanism by which temperature affects recruitment. Is it through changes in the food availability for larvae lobster or through direct effects on growth and survival of food chains in the community of predators present in the system?

We need to better understand how climate change and ecosystems drive the recruitment process and also how predation affects the mortality of juvenile and adult lobsters. I think this is true for lobster but also for snow crab and, I will add, for shrimp.

Fisheries and Oceans Canada does a very good job of assessing the status of the resources. The next and most difficult step is to better understand the climate and ecosystem mechanisms that are driving the productivity of fish stock. Some work is being done on that, but we need to increase our science capacity around those questions, especially if we hope one day to predict future fisheries' productivity.

This brings me to the last point. Looking again at the figure that I was supposed to show you, I hope that everybody realizes that we are in a situation never experienced before. This is not the norm. The current landing of lobster in Canada is not the norm, and we need to keep that in mind.

Thanks to favourable ecosystem conditions and the hard work of the industry as a whole, the catches are at record highs, and the prices have been really good. This is fantastic, and I truly hope it lasts as long as possible. However, what will happen if the catches start to decline by 20% or 30%? What will happen to the thousands of harvesters and plant workers and to the hundreds of fishing communities that rely almost exclusively on these unique resources? This is a conversation that needs to happen sooner rather than later.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you, Mr. Le Bris.

Now we'll go to Mr. Fitzpatrick, for seven minutes or less.

[Alfred Fitzpatrick, Independent Owner-Operator Fish Harvester, As an Individual]

I don't have a prepared statement as such.

My name is Alfred Fitzpatrick. I'm a small boat independent harvester from the south coast of Newfoundland in Burin Peninsula. I come from an area where the lobster fishery is the vast majority of our income. For me personally, it's at least 80%. For some people in my area, it's 100%.

Areas 11 to 14 along Newfoundland's south coast and up the west coast have seen some very dramatic increases in lobster landings even though I believe we still make up less than 10% of the Canadian landings. Over the last few years we have seen big increases, and that's why I was eager to get the chance to come and sit in on this proceeding.

That being said, on the other side of the Burin Peninsula, which we call area 10, the lobster landings have plummeted to near zero. In the early 1990s, we were on par with Fortune Bay—area 11—and Placentia Bay. I don't know if it had something to do with industry, climate change or a change in water temperatures or currents, but all of a sudden, Placentia Bay plummeted to near zero. Fortune Bay increased along with the rest of the southwest coast.,

One thing I will say is that we're seeing a lot of very small lobsters being egg-bearing. A lot of the older fishermen in the area where I fish now say they've never seen it to the magnitude that it is now. I'm wondering if other LFAs around Atlantic Canada are seeing the same thing.

Is it normal? Does it bode well? With other stocks, they say that when smaller individuals start spawning and producing eggs, such as cod, it's a sign of a species under stress. I guess I'm here today with more questions than I have information to offer, which is probably normal for me.

That's about it. If you ask me a question and I have knowledge or anything to add to it, I'll certainly do so. If I don't, I'll defer to someone with a bit more experience than me.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you, Mr. Fitzpatrick. Let's hope you get some answers from some of the people here regarding the questions you're wondering about and the situation you're describing.

We'll now go to the question round. On the government side we have Mr. Fraser, for seven minutes or less, please.

[Colin Fraser, Liberal, West Nova, NS]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and thanks, everybody, for joining us today on this important study.

I'd like to ask Bernie Berry a question. I represent West Nova and know Bernie very well, and I know what good work the Coldwater Lobster Association does. Obviously this is a tremendously important industry for all of Atlantic Canada, and in particular southwestern Nova Scotia, where it is the backbone of our economy.

I'm glad for the work that you and your association do, Bernie. The changes to and the impact on the lobster population in the waters off our coast are extremely important, and it's extremely important that we understand what actually is happening in the waters. I was interested to hear more about the lobster movements based on temperature, rising waters and the salinity rate.

You made specific reference to some of the data you have, but I just need to be clear on it. You said, I think, that 90% to 95% of the landings in the seventies were from shallower waters and that now they're in deeper waters. I assume that's because the lobsters are moving around to find colder waters, and that's the difference in where the lobsters are found now. Is that accurate, Bernie?

[Bernie Berry]

That's some of it. The other part of it is that the biomass is so much larger, so the lobsters are going to different areas to find food and stuff like that. As I pointed out, LFA 34, like most LFAs in the seventies and eighties, was a traditional inshore fishery. That 50 fathom shoal, that's where all the lobsters were. It was a hard, rocky bottom.

Now, like I pointed out earlier, 50% to 60% of our harvest comes from deeper water with a muddy bottom. There is a food source there, and I think the lobsters simply needed to disperse somewhat. There were so many lobsters that they had to go to different areas, which is all good. It spread out the fleet. The fleet now encompasses.... I'm not sure how many square kilometres LFA 34 is, but it is the largest in Atlantic Canada. I think it might be 70,000 or 80,000 square kilometres. Certainly, with the increase in the size of the boats now, this has been very beneficial, basically because the fleet is spread out now.

The movement of lobsters is to deeper water, whether it be for food and/or coupled with the size of the biomass and the water temperature and stuff like that, Mr. Fraser, as you pointed out, but as for the bulk of them in the fall for us, when our season is open, the bulk of the lobsters are in the deeper water now.

[Colin Fraser, Liberal, West Nova, NS]

Yes. You mentioned as well the lobster nursery in Browns Bank as representing LFA 40, which is closed because it's seen as a breeding ground for lobsters. In your comments, you talked about the fact that it's possible that there may be other areas or places that we need to look at for lobster nurseries that could be even more beneficial to ensure the long-term sustainability of the stocks.

Do you have any further thoughts on that? Is there any data to support looking at other areas at this point?

[Bernie Berry]

No, and I think that's the thing we're going to try to do, and actually look at it as we do a tagging program and track lobsters. Maybe there are other areas. We simply don't know.

Like I said, when they closed Browns Bank, that was kind of the low-hanging fruit. The information was available at the time and made it easy to close that area, but even that has changed over time. I think there was some tagging done in the Browns Bank area back in the eighties. Even the lobsters coming off Browns Bank now have changed their patterns, I suspect.

Again, we simply have to have a continuity to this type of work. You can't take 20-year breaks, which unfortunately did happen, at least in LFA 34. Over time, I think the key is that if we need it, it would be good to identify it if there is another area that we could fall back on, like LFA 40.

[Colin Fraser, Liberal, West Nova, NS]

I know that the Atlantic fisheries fund has promoted some organizations working in partnership between industry and government in order to get better data and better scientific research, and I know that you've been involved in some of that work.

Are there any other recommendations you can make to the committee about how government can better support industry actually doing some of this work themselves?

[Bernie Berry]

What it really comes down to is that we have to have collaboration between the two. Everybody can't work in their silos like in the past. There really was not a whole lot of of collaboration, at least in our area. We have to really focus on temperature monitoring, larvae settlement and things like that, and possibly on the extension of the Lobster Node, which is a very good vehicle for Southwest Nova. Southwest Nova is not at this present time involved in the Lobster Node.

One of the other organizations you mentioned—the Southwest Lobster Science Society—is doing a data collection program. They have just under 1,000 members. They're mainly focused on bycatch. It is the organization that I mentioned earlier. We're part of the science society, and we're going to do the tagging of 12,000 sublegal lobsters. It has started already. We'll hopefully get to 12,000 in the water for this year and also for two more years to come.

[Colin Fraser, Liberal, West Nova, NS]

Okay.

Mr. Pershing, I will turn to you for a moment. I thought your comments were very helpful. I note you made reference to a lobster baby boom that's occurred. Obviously, the lobsters are being dispersed in different ways, but northward I suppose to the northern parts of the Gulf of Maine or nearby southwestern Nova Scotia.

You talked in particular about learning some lessons from what had happened perhaps off Rhode Island and New York and seeing the lobsters being dispersed more northward.

You talked about carbon emissions being responsible for the warming temperatures of the waters and about the importance of meeting the Paris Agreement targets.

Would you say those elements are directly related to the long-term sustainability of the lobster stocks that we currently see dispersed throughout the Gulf of Maine?

[Dr. Andrew Pershing]

Yes. I think that's a very clear story that's coming out when we look at lobsters. There are similar kinds of stories if we look at cod. There are stories on the west coast as well. I think fisheries are becoming a really interesting way to think about the challenges of climate change.

One of the messages we were really trying to put out a little bit in the testimony here but also in some other work we've done is that there really are these two time scales that you have to think about. There is what's going to go on in the next 30 years, in which we're dealing with warming that's essentially already in the pipeline. The term that climate scientists use is the “commitment” we've already made to a warmer future. Then there's the question of what's going to happen after mid-century, so after 2050. That's where the decisions around carbon emissions really come into play.

In fishery management, with many of the things we're discussing today, with the adaptations going on in the industry and in fishery management, they can do a lot to prepare for warming waters to hold on to the harvest they have, but beyond a certain point it becomes beyond their control. That's really where the national governments are going to have to step in.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you, Mr. Fraser. Your time is up.

Now we go to the Conservative side with Mr. Arnold for seven minutes or less.

Go ahead, please.

[Mel Arnold, Conservative, North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'm going to twist things up a little bit here. Typically when I talk about species that migrate, it would be a seasonal migration, or an age-related migration. I believe it was Mr. Fraser who put the idea forward that the study be on the migration of lobster and snow crab.

I'm curious to know if he could add some clarity as to whether what we're talking about here is migration or relocation or redistribution or the range shift of lobster or seasonal migration or a different type of movement, so we can all be clear on what this study really is.

[Colin Fraser, Liberal, West Nova, NS]

The idea was to track or determine the dispersion of lobsters and whether they are migrating from one area to another, or whether the movements of lobsters themselves or larvae or whatever is having an impact on where we're finding lobsters, because we know that they have been seen tracking northward for the last number of years.

I don't think there's one element in particular, whether they are moving from one LFA to another or whether we're seeing movements between colder waters and warmer waters, as Mr. Berry said, or whether we are finding that they are going to deeper waters. Those things are all part and parcel, in my view, of the same idea.

[Mel Arnold, Conservative, North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

If I may, then it's really not the migration, because with migration we're talking about something like an Atlantic salmon moving out to sea and then migrating back or a snow goose migrating back and forth from the north to the south each year. We're talking more about the range shift, or a spatial relocation of lobster than about migration, the term that's used in the study.

[Colin Fraser, Liberal, West Nova, NS]

In setting the terms of this study, we had a discussion. I made it pretty clear, I think, before we determined that this was something we were going to do, what parameters I had in mind.

In a short title it may not be easy to capture all of that, so if the word “migration” wasn't broad enough to capture what I have articulated already, then, hopefully, what I meant is now understood.

[Mel Arnold, Conservative, North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

Okay. That's why I was asking the question. One of the few meetings I missed with this committee was the one at which this motion was brought forward. I just wanted to make sure that I was clear and that other members of the committee were clear. It looks like we're actually studying more the relocation or redistribution and not necessarily the migration patterns of lobster and snow crab.

I guess the next question would go to any of the witnesses who are here today. What would happen if the lobster distribution went back to what I heard were recent and kind of normal location patterns? What would happen if we went back to what it was a few years back?