Fisheries Committee on Sept. 26th, 2016

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

Thank you, Mr. Pepin. I appreciate that. It was very well done, with lots of slides. You made your way through them clearly and concisely.

I have one question for clarification, however. There's always some confusion. The turbot fishery is a big fishery here in Newfoundland and Labrador. The green on slide six says “halibut”. Are you talking about Greenland halibut, as in turbot?

[Dr. Pierre Pepin]

I apologize for that. In all these slides, we're talking about Greenland halibut, which is also called turbot around here.

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

Yes, Greenland halibut we commonly call turbot, which is not to be confused with actual halibut, which we do catch as well. See, I just even confused myself. How about that? You're welcome for that.

The first round of questions is for seven minutes each. As the umpire would say, who's up?

Mr. McDonald, you have seven minutes, sir.

[Ken McDonald, Liberal, Avalon, NL]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Again, thank you to our witnesses for coming here today to present to the committee.

My first question is for Pierre. I've been going through the paperwork of earlier witnesses throughout today and even last week, and there's been a lot of talk about capelin, the ups and downs, and how those relate to the ups and downs of the cod.

What are we doing, as a department and as scientists within the department, to monitor what's going on with capelin? It seems to play a very vital role in what's taking place with our biomass for cod. I don't know if I'd say we're being negligent, but it's hard to get a real sense of what's going on with capelin when they're not here one year and they're here the next. What should we be doing, going forward, to really tie the two together? Some people earlier mentioned having scientific information every year versus every two or three years.

[Dr. Pierre Pepin]

That's a good question.

We do normally conduct an annual acoustic survey of capelin in area 3L. Sometimes that extends a bit into area 3K.

[Ken McDonald, Liberal, Avalon, NL]

Describe what you mean by “acoustic”.

[Dr. Pierre Pepin]

Basically, rather than using trawls to estimate the abundance of capelin, we use an echo sounder that is calibrated so that we can get an estimate of the biomass. It's a commonly used method, used mostly for pelagic species because they have a swim bladder, and you get an echo that comes off the swim bladder. If you can get a relationship between the size of the fish and the strength of the echo, then you can estimate abundance.

So there is a survey that has been going on. It's not as extensive as it was in the 1980s when the entire 2J3KL area was largely sampled, since we have fewer ships and we have fewer people, but it is a good index of the overall biomass of capelin in the system. It has been calibrated relative to the previous estimates to get a sense of whether what we see in 3L is reflective of what we see further north. You can miss some instances, but we also use the bycatch in the capelin research vessel surveys that are done in the fall to give us a sense of whether the capelin are broadly distributed or not. You will miss the fish that are on the bottom when you're doing that, but nevertheless it does provide an index.

We also recently hired two new research scientists, who are going to be working on capelin. One will be dealing mostly with coastal sampling and one will be dealing mostly with offshore sampling. There has been a resurgence in that area. You could say that you could put more people on that, but scientists always say that you could put in more resources and you could get more data.

[Ken McDonald, Liberal, Avalon, NL]

Thank you.

My next questions would be to Bettina from the WWF.

First, as a group and as people who are interested in where stock levels should be and how much quota should be taken, what level does your group think the biomass of the cod should be at to sustain a commercial fishery?

Second, how do you see your role as a group in the future commercial fishery?

[Bettina Saier]

The beginning of the commercial fishery is set by a limit reference point that is being developed by DFO, and we fully comply with their recommendation on when to open a commercial fishery. There was a modest increase in catches for the stewardship fishery, which we think is also compatible with the approach that we believe in.

The second question was about our role. We're not officially a science organization. We see our role as promoting a sustainable approach in partnership with DFO, DFA, the FFAW, harvesters, and so on. What we can bring best to the table is some international experience as a global conservation organization. We do fisheries improvement projects all over the world. What we can bring is experience from other parts of the world on what works and what doesn't work. That's probably our main role.

We do lead the fisheries improvement project in collaboration with the FFAW. That's very hands-on. As I mentioned in my testimony, we have a meeting today, and we have this ambitious goal of getting an action plan together for the 2J-3K-3L stewardship fishery within a few months.

We're catalysts for positive change.

[Ken McDonald, Liberal, Avalon, NL]

Thank you.

Pierre, I noticed, going through the slides and when we talk about predation on the cod, there's a mention that the seal was not determined to be something that caused the decline in the stock. I see—and I heard a presenter earlier today say—that the size of the seal herd, whether it's the grey seal or the harp seal, is 10 million plus. The comment was made this morning that if each seal ate one codfish a day, there would be millions of cod fish going out of the biomass we're trying to grow. If they're not having that much of an effect on the cod, what exactly are they eating? They have been known to eat cod and feed on cod, but every time we bring the size of the herd up to the officials as being a problem with the cod not rebounding very fast or taking from 1992 to now to see any jump in the stock, they disagree. What's keeping them back?

If the cod are not there, did the seals decide on a different diet all of a sudden to feed on?

[Dr. Pierre Pepin]

There are a few things to clarify here first.

The harp seal stock is at about six million or seven million animals, not quite 10 million. Since the collapse of the cod, the overall population abundance has doubled, so it's been a substantial increase. It went from about 3.5 million to about seven million animals.

The predominant prey for seals are the forage species—capelin, shrimp, other species. Although they do eat a little bit of cod in coastal areas, when you take into consideration where they spend part of the year and how much time they spend in the inshore—and granted, it's difficult to get good data for the offshore area, particularly over time—right now, if you look at what they're primarily consuming, it's mostly capelin, sand lance, and polar cod, which is a pelagic species, not a demersal species like the one we have. That's what they primarily feed on.

If you look at the overall predation pressure that they're putting on the cod stock, it seems not to be a major driver. This is not to say that they're not having an impact, but it's not a major driver. The major drivers are the availability of capelin—the right forage species for cod—and predation. Although it is definitely happening, it's not the major factor.

I'm a statistician to some extent, so what I talk about is signal to noise. If things give you a very big signal, a very big change, you can often detect their impact. In the case of things that don't change that much, it's very difficult to actually see their effect in the data—

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

Thank you, Mr. Pepin. We'll cut it there, but I have a couple of things. What did you say the pelagic species you specified was? I didn't quite get it.

[Dr. Pierre Pepin]

It was polar cod.

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

Polar cod. Okay, right.

Just for clarification, obviously we know what DFO means, but we also use DFA in this province. DFA is the provincial ministry of fisheries. It's formally known as the Department of Fisheries and Aquaculture. We heard from the minister this morning that it's changed its name, but in testimony you will likely hear in Port de Grave and Fogo Island that they'll mention DFO and DFA. DFA is the provincial fisheries.

That said, are you splitting your time? You're going to split three-and-a-half minutes each?

Go ahead, Mr. Doherty.

[Todd Doherty, Conservative, Cariboo—Prince George, BC]

Those were great presentations by all of our guests. Thank you for appearing before us.

My questions are primarily going to be to Mr. Pepin on the capelin.

Mr. Pepin, in 1990 we saw the bottom drop out, to use your exact term, on the capelin. Was there a single event, or what matched with that? I'm going back to page 4 as well. It also correlates to the coldness, the drop in temperature of the water. Have you done any studies on what contributed to that?

[Dr. Pierre Pepin]

In 1990-1991, it was the perfect storm. You had a lot of fishing pressure and you had the coldest winter and the coldest summer. I remember being out on Conception Bay, and we had icebergs in August. It was a very bad situation. The extent of the cold water was very widespread. Most species around here try to avoid water that's less than 1°C, and the cold water covered the entire continental shelf. We saw capelin showing up in other parts of the Maritimes where capelin had never been seen, suggesting that some of the stock may have dispersed somewhere, but that kind of selection pressure, that kind of atmospheric or environmental event, probably killed off a lot of them as well.

The thing is, even though there might have been a couple of million tonnes of fish out in the water at that time, the ocean is vast around here, and we might not have seen where that occurred. It might have been gradual more than anything else. There was a complete collapse. There was some redistribution, but there was probably also some mortality that took place.

[Todd Doherty, Conservative, Cariboo—Prince George, BC]

In his testimony last week, Mr. Brattey said that the capelin study is every two years. Is that correct?

[Dr. Pierre Pepin]

The assessments are done every two years. The surveys are conducted every year, when we don't have problems with the boat.

[Todd Doherty, Conservative, Cariboo—Prince George, BC]

Okay. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

Go ahead, Mr. Arnold.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Again for Mr. Pepin, along the same lines, we had the coldest temperatures here. They closed the European and northern European fisheries, but they were able to reopen them in three years' time. Did they see different ocean conditions there? It doesn't warm up sooner there than it does here.

[Dr. Pierre Pepin]

That's a really good question.

I'm involved, and have been involved, with a program that actually compares the Barents Sea with the Newfoundland shelf to look at the differences in response. One of the things that happened off Norway was that the stock collapse, or what they call a collapse, in comparison to ours was not a collapse. In their collapse, the stock went down to about 20% to 30% of peak. There was this huge biomass that was there to rebuild the stock afterwards.

The other thing that happens in the Barents Sea is they are much warmer than we are. The system is influenced by the Gulf Stream, so the water temperatures are four to six degrees higher than ours, even on the bottom. There's a real difference in the production potential, because we're dealing with cold-blooded animals, and their metabolic rate is related to the temperature and the environment. It's typical to see a doubling of metabolic rates for a 10-degree change in temperature.

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

I'm familiar with that.

You say their collapse wasn't anywhere near to being as severe as what we saw on this coast. Is it possible that we got past the threshold and it took much longer for the stocks to rebuild, but now they're maybe finally getting to where we'll see a faster recovery now that they're above that threshold?

[Dr. Pierre Pepin]

That's an extremely good point.

As a comparison with the extent of the collapse we saw in Newfoundland, the only other fishery I know of in the world that had collapsed that badly was the Hokkaido herring, and that took 60 years to recover back to a reasonable biomass level. We're dealing with the fact that the damage that was done to the ecosystem by a combination of factors was incredible.

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

Have I got any more time left?