Fisheries Committee on Sept. 21st, 2016

[Robert Sopuck, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB]

So the warming ocean, which is affecting the southern stocks of cod, is not happening at the same rate up there, or it's not happening at all in Iceland, so the water is cool enough and the stock is doing well partly because of that.

[John Brattey]

Yes.

[Robert Sopuck, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB]

Is it fair to say, too, that the severe decline in northern cod stocks is clearly a result of overfishing?

[John Brattey]

It's certainly a very important factor.

Around the time of the moratorium, much of the publication work that came out from science was very strong that it was all overfishing and it wasn't environmental. Since then, we've gone through two decades and done lots more research. I think the significance of the environmental component to decline is much stronger now than it was back then.

[Robert Sopuck, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB]

Okay, great.

I'll go back to the 200,000 metric tonne fishing level that we referenced earlier.

Is it your best guess that when all the dust settles, we'll be looking at a commercial fishery of 200,000 metric tonnes? I wouldn't hold you to it; whether it's 180,000 or 220,000, is that the right order of magnitude? Is it in the ballpark? I'll equivocate as much as anybody.

[John Brattey]

My colleagues who work in the ecosystems have said it this way. There are no guarantees that the cod stock will rebuild the way it was, nor that the ecosystem off Newfoundland will rebuild as it was. At this point it's very unclear how it will rebuild. It could be bigger or it could be smaller.

[Robert Sopuck, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB]

This is the last point, as I don't have much time.

The notes we were given refer to a project called the fisheries improvement project. The Fish, Food and Allied Workers are partnering with World Wildlife Fund and the department to undertake this fisheries improvement project.

That concerns me greatly. The World Wildlife Fund has been an activist group against the seal hunt, and has, quite frankly, done harm to rural Canada right across the country. On the one hand, I guess it's okay to get the funding and expertise where you can. On the other hand, World Wildlife Fund, in my view, would probably want to play it both ways. It might want to be part of this project, but when it comes to the final recommendations, whether it be a seal suppression program or an expanded fishery and so on, one wonders whether it will expect to be a lobby group at the same time.

As a final comment, that participation by that activist group with your department on this project I think raises some alarm bells.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

Would you care to respond?

[John Brattey]

I have no comment.

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

All right. I have to offer the opportunity.

Mr. Sopuck, thank you very much.

Mr. McDonald, we are back to you for five minutes, please.

[Ken McDonald, Liberal, Avalon, NL]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I have just a couple of things.

First, we mentioned there is a small sentinel or stewardship fishery on the go. I've heard from some fishermen who are taking part in that. I think for some of them the catch limit is 2,000 pounds each week for a number of weeks, to probably 12,000 or 13,000 pounds of fish. However, I have fishermen—and they are still using the gillnets, as my colleague referenced—telling me that the fish are so big this year that they are actually tearing up the nets. It wasn't that way last year or the year before. That was on the southern shore, up towards Calvert and the Ferryland area, which I am sure you'd be familiar with. At the same time, even where I live, in Conception Bay, people who go out in the recreational fishery are catching fish that are of a size they haven't seen for years. We've heard reports of people getting 60-odd-pound cod fish or 70-odd-pound cod fish.

What do you make of the increase in that this year, compared to other years? We didn't hear those stories in past years, especially in the recreational fishery.

[John Brattey]

The average sizes we are seeing in the fish catches have generally been increasing steadily in the past few years. I mentioned earlier how the age structure of the fish population is expanding every year. They are surviving to an older and older age, and we are seeing fish that are 14 years old now in the stock. Ten years ago, we didn't see anything like that at all.

The fish that are 60 and 70 pounds are there. We see the photographs on social media. We know they exist, but they are actually a very small proportion of what is caught in total. We have fisheries officers who go out on the vessels and measure fish that the recreational fishers catch. When they do it every year, they measure thousands, and all that information comes to us. We also measure something like 10,000 or more fish that are caught by the sentinel fishermen, and the percentage of fish we see that are over, say, a metre long is actually really small. They are there, but the proportion is actually quite small. The fishermen tend to use gillnets, which are very selective for a mid-size range of fish. They do get these very large ones, which roll up in the nets. They get caught by the lips, and they roll the nets up. Then the rest of the net doesn't fish very well because it is all bundled around them.

We do see some of those fish, but they are not a huge proportion of the catch. Sometimes you'll see a bunch of them in one area, and it will cause problems, as you said, but they are not as abundant as we would like them to be. We would like to see more of them.

[Ken McDonald, Liberal, Avalon, NL]

I guess it is a good complaint to hear when we are talking about the rebuilding of the stock.

I know my colleague referenced what cod prey on, and you mentioned the capelin. I've had fishermen send me pictures of cod they caught, and when they opened up the cod, there was an enormous amount of female crab in their stomachs, probably about the size of a toonie or a bit bigger. They are going for the really small crab at a time when we are seeing our crab actually decrease in population. I think a crab has a lifespan of probably 13 years or something.

[John Brattey]

Yes. They can live to be quite old.

They will feed on crabs at a time when there are no other things around. They're certainly not their preferred prey. I'm sure they're quite crunchy to sink your teeth into, but we do get photographs sent to us because fishermen are obviously concerned when they see that.

I think it gives us a bit of a selective picture of what they're eating. It's not a balanced sample of what cod in general eat. Fishermen are concerned when they see crabs in the cod's stomach, and so they send the pictures to us and they put them on social media. It's not as prevalent as those bits of information might indicate. It's not trivial, and I don't mean to trivialize it, but it certainly gives it a bit more of a representation than perhaps is evident within the whole stock.

[Ken McDonald, Liberal, Avalon, NL]

Thank you.

Lastly, I think I'll reiterate what a colleague across the floor said about the seal population and its predation on cod. We see seal now. I grew up on Conception Bay and I'm still there. We see seal where we never saw seal before. I live right across from a small pond, and I see seal in the spring up on the pond ice feeding on something, whatever they're taking, whether it be sea trout or whatever.

We hear tell of the seal population and how large it is. Will there come a time when we finally say that we know we want cod to get to a point in terms of biomass, and we know the seals are at this point in biomass? Are they too big now that the department sooner rather than later will have to determine that it has to find a way, whether it's through selective harvesting or whatever, to lower the seal population to give a chance for the cod to rebound even more quickly than what it's doing over the past five or six years?

[John Brattey]

I think the answer is that the seal population is close to an all-time high, so it's no surprise that you are seeing them even in the wintertime, especially in the estuaries where, as you say, there may be sea trout around.

The science indicates that the growth we've seen in the stock in the last 10 years is good, and that's taking place in the presence of this large seal population.

The latest information on harp seals suggests, if I recall correctly, that the seal population seems to be levelling off. This is not grey seals now. This is harp seals. It seems to have levelled off and is perhaps a bit lower than it was a few years ago. At the moment it doesn't look as if it's going to continue to increase, whereas cod is in an upward track.

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

Thank you, Dr. Brattey. I'll have to cut it there.

Mr. Donnelly, go ahead for three minutes, please.

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

Thanks.

I wanted to go back to the recreational fishery for a moment and ask what the plans are to effectively manage the recreational fishery given that there are no reliable estimates of landings and the DFO science recommends all removals be at the lowest possible level and all sources of uncertainty be reduced.

[Philippe Morel]

You're talking about the plan for next year and how we will manage? I'm sorry, I'm just not sure.

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

Yes. I'm asking if you have plans and what they are.

[Philippe Morel]

We have a plan to issue licences and tags next year for around the same level of 2,000 tonnes for recreational fishing. The system we're building right now is a system to manage that with stakeholders and to see how we can issue the tags to the fishermen.

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

That system is available online?

[Philippe Morel]

It's not available now. We're developing it. This year there's no system.

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

There will be one?

[Philippe Morel]

Yes. We have a system on the west coast, and we will migrate that system for the—