Fisheries Committee on Sept. 21st, 2016

[John Brattey]

That's a good question.

When the improvement began, we saw the first signs in southern 3K just around the 3K-3L border. After a few years, it expanded slightly northwards into 3K, and it's only in the last couple of years we've seen it move up further north into 2J, which is the northern division there. The reason perhaps it's most prevalent in 3K is that that's where it started, and 3K is also one of the biggest areas where the shelf is broader and—

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

Do we know why? Do we know if there are ocean conditions that have changed?

[John Brattey]

I think part of the reason is that the remnant stock that was left after the collapse was in that region. The capelin also collapsed at the time of the northern cod, the large migratory component of capelin. There was a residual small inshore stock of capelin that persisted around the Trinity-Bonavista Bay area, and that seemed to support that small population that was left after the collapse. It was from there that the rebuilding seems to have emerged and spread further north. It hasn't gone south, which is quite perplexing, because before the moratorium, in the southern part of 3L, we would find large numbers of cod in this area that is still basically blank on the chart. That is a concern. That portion of the stock area hasn't rebuilt, and we're not clear why.

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

Hopefully more science will be able to look at that. I know that on the west coast we're also concerned with ocean conditions. They are critical. We haven't had the amount of science we want and need, and the resources haven't been there to do that. Hopefully we will get more information.

Do I have more time?

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

You just ran out.

Dr. Brattey, you want to give a quick response to that?

[John Brattey]

I don't have any response, no.

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

Okay. Thank you for that.

We're going to move on now to Ms. Jordan for seven minutes.

[Bernadette Jordan, Liberal, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

If I get my questions answered, I'm going to turn it back to Mr. McDonald to ask a few more that he has.

Thank you very much for being here today and for the presentation. I'm going to start with the question about Area 6 with regard to the shrimp resources. You're probably aware of the extreme decline in the biomass in Area 6, and things aren't looking good for the crab resource either in 3K and 3L. Is this because of the rebound in the cod stock? Do you want to make a suggestion on that?

[John Brattey]

We're often asked that, and the fishermen do express concern about that. I think the answer is that changing ocean climate conditions are really driving the change. We do see cod preying on shrimp and they do prey to some extent on crab. The mortality they cause just from predation by cod is not enough to cause the declines we're seeing. There's mortality from other sources and there's poor recruitment, particularly in the crab resource. It's not producing the offspring that it should be to sustain itself at a high level. I don't think we can simply point a finger and say cod are eating them all and that's why they're going down, because it's just not that simple. Ecosystems are much more complex. There are a variety of things going on here at one time, and it's a bit too simplistic to consider cod to be the sole cause.

[Bernadette Jordan, Liberal, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

That being said, are any studies being done with regard to climate change and the effects that warmer waters have on the stocks?

[John Brattey]

We do look at temperature effects on all of the stocks, and we are seeing some interesting things. And it's not just with cod; our ecosystem research program looks at that issue with respect to a whole variety of elements within the ecosystem. We do study this. We know that warmer temperatures, provided they're just on the warm side of the regional normal, are good for things like cod, but they tend not to be good for things like crab and shrimp, which like cooler water.

If the current climate warming continues and persists, in a general sense we think it would be more favourable for cod and less favourable for these other resources. If we look on a broader scale at the southern end of the range of cod as a species on our side of the Atlantic, it's really disappearing from down in New England because the argument there is it's simply getting too warm. Populations are not doing well at all. Indeed, anywhere south of Newfoundland, they're not doing well at all. There are many reasons. It's not just climate change with respect to Nova Scotia, but certainly it's one of the issues. It's affecting other species too. We're seeing things like salmon, which are affected by climate change too, and they're not doing well in the southern end of their range where the rivers are getting really warm.

There are broad-ranging impacts from climate change across the whole ecosystem, and we are doing a lot of work to try to quantify this.

[Bernadette Jordan, Liberal, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

Thank you.

My next question is with regard to gillnets. I know that there are a number of fishers in Newfoundland who have concerns with the use of gillnets, and I'm just wondering if that's something that DFO is willing to ban the use of, or would they consider that? Is it an area that's been looked at or studied in terms of how it affects the cod? Is there a go-forward plan with regard to gillnets?

[John Brattey]

I defer that question to Philippe.

[Philippe Morel]

I don't know exactly about the gillnets, but the reason we allow stewardship-fishing harvest levels is to develop more sustainable fisheries with cod. This is so that if and when we reopen the commercial fishing for cod, the quality of the fish will be better.

There is a project on fish quality. It's a project we fund and participate in. It's called the Cod Quality Project, which started in 2015. It's done by FFAW. Last year we allowed them to harvest 370 tonnes of fish, and this year 475 tonnes. They have a four- to eight-month period to harvest fish. There are 48 harvesters who are entitled, who have licences to harvest fish through that Cod Quality Project, and the objective is to demonstrate how we can improve the quality of fish that are being harvested. Of course, fish nets, and the use of gillnets or the type of gillnets, is certainly one of the concerns we have.

[Bernadette Jordan, Liberal, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

That's going to lead to my next question, then, with regard to the data on the catches and the rates and things. It used to be that the commercial fishery vessels, particularly offshore, were the ones who did the science, and now you've expanded it. You talked about logbooks in your presentation. How often are those assessed? Is it mandatory or is it based on whether or not they want to keep accurate logs? What's the process for accessing the logbooks to make sure to get the data?

[John Brattey]

I can only speak to part of that. They're done annually. They were designed by the science area, surprisingly enough, since catch monitoring is not really our job, but we had a lot of input into this after the moratorium came about. They're used at the assessment every year, so the fishermen record the amount of fish and the amount of gear they use, and how long it's set for, so that we can convert the information into a catch rate.

We receive close to 2,000 logbooks every year, and we come up with catch rate trends from those for different areas. We look at those and we compare the catch rate trends with trends in the sentinel fishery, which is slightly different. We also compare the trends with trends in our research vessel survey. From about the late 1990s onwards, the trends agree very well, both in direction and in spatial differences.

The logbooks are a very important part of what we look at.

I can't answer your questions about whether they're mandatory or not. Perhaps one of my colleagues can do that.

[Philippe Morel]

The logbooks are part of the licence they receive. They have to fill in the logbooks and send them to us monthly. Then they go to science for analysis.

[Bernadette Jordan, Liberal, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

Do I have any time left, Chair?

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

I'm afraid not.

We'll go to Mr. Arnold for five minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I have three or four questions. I'll try to keep them short, and if we can keep the answers reasonable, then hopefully we'll get through them all.

I note that studies have determined that during the years 1985 to 2000 seal predation wasn't deemed to be significant. How was that determined, and has any study been done to determine if the seal diet changed during that time? We know that fish can be very food-specific. They'll feed on only one type of feed for certain periods of time. Do seals do the same thing? And what has been done to determine what the seal diet was prior to the moratorium?

[John Brattey]

There wasn't a huge amount of information going way back in time, but the basis for that conclusion was what was called a “bulk biomass” model. That was developed by some scientists at DFO. They considered three things that could influence cod: the fishery, capelin availability, and predation by seals. They considered these three things together. In their analysis, they couldn't find any indication that northern cod population dynamics were actually being driven by seal predation. It didn't seem to be having a major impact. Capelin availability and the fishery were far more important than seals were in driving the changes we were seeing in northern cod.

If you look at my presentation, you'll see the increase that we've seen in northern cod in the past decade. That has come about when the harp seal population—I emphasize the harp seal; this is not the grey seal—was close to an all-time high for the recent period. The stock has managed to improve considerably in the presence of a very large harp seal population. Again, that supports the idea that seal predation is not a major issue. The seal population was much lower back in the eighties, when this stock was very high.

I'm not the best person to ask about how much data we had back then. Seal diet is an extremely difficult thing to study in the open ocean. It's very hard to get samples of seal stomachs from seals out in the open ocean. It has always posed a very significant challenge to the scientists trying to estimate the impact of seal predation.

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

In British Columbia, I know they're doing studies of hair samples on wolves and coyotes to determine their prey. They've been very surprised by the amount of mountain goat in the wolf diet. I'm wondering if the same science could be used on previously harvested seals from the products prior to the moratorium to determine if there have been changes in the seal diet in that time.

[John Brattey]

I'm not sure whether that could be done or not. I know that certainly one of the primary things they use are the otoliths, the fish ear bones, in the stomachs, which allow them to reconstruct what the seal has consumed within the past 48 hours, say, because the ear bones are very slow to digest.

With regard to the historical information, I'm afraid I don't have the answer to that.

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

Staying on the subject of predator mortality, the natural mortality stayed high during the moratorium. Is there any evidence that predator swamping may have helped the cod stocks stay high, prior to the collapse? We know the effects of predator swamping with salmon smolts migrating. Has that been looked at?

[John Brattey]

I suspect that the huge capelin population sustained the harp seals. They simply didn't eat many cod, because capelin were so abundant, so available, and much higher in calories. They were probably one of the key prey back then. When capelin were abundant, they sustained most of the large predators in the ecosystem off Newfoundland, the seabirds included.