Fisheries Committee on Sept. 26th, 2016

[Kimberly Orren]

Right, absolutely.

The very first thing, of course, is having access to fish, because it's a little difficult to teach fishing without access to fish. Once we get access to fish, that then helps a lot of other programs that we want to do. For example, in Quidi Vidi yesterday, we partnered with Mallard Cottage and Wandering Pavilion and held free sessions on filleting fish and cooking up your fish. We also do other kinds of outreach programs like that, because besides fish being a commodity, it's our cultural food and it's related to food security. People in Newfoundland and Labrador, we find, don't know how to process their fish from whole fish anymore, or even how to cook it up.

Talking about some of the programs like fill-in-the-blank to plate, there are fish-to-schools programs, for example, that we would like to get involved in somehow, but again we don't have the fish. Fish is not served in Newfoundland schools, so what can we do to try to get young people in Newfoundland and Labrador to eat fish? As you can see, if you've driven around here, Newfoundland is probably not going to have a lot of cow ranches, so we're probably not going to be big beef-eaters. The protein we're going to have to count on in the future is seafood.

Food security is an issue. Ninety per cent of our food comes in on a ferry, and in three days we're counting on “storm chips”, and that's not really a very good thing to do. Getting folks to “eat local” and to eat local seafood is very important. Introducing that to young people is why we do events of the kind we did yesterday, when we had our staff go out and give filleting lessons. We get the kids involved in that and then partner up to show how to cook up your fish. Getting fish to schools is important, so it's about finding a way to do that, but we need the fish. There's even doing something like partnering with schools in Toronto to have the kids catch it here and then have the schools in Toronto prepare it, and they would have this whole cultural exchange. There are all kinds of things we could do, but until we get the fish we can't get started.

Also, there's one thing I noticed as we were talking about training for fishing. I've been getting some training for fishing so that I can do this. Besides being the representative, the grant writer, the bookkeeper, and all of that, I'm also a boat captain, and I'm going to fishing school. I'm at the marine institute, and oftentimes I'm the only woman in class. That's a concern. A number of the Canada summer jobs students we hired this past summer were young women, and they're interested in fishing. We thought we would start a Girls Who Fish program. That's for young women aged 8 to 80.

Sorry, old white guys around the table, but our heritage doesn't belong just to old white guys around the table: it belongs to youth and women too, because that's also important. When we engage everybody in a conversation, we start coming up with new ways to solve these very tangly problems.

[Gord Johns, NDP, Courtenay—Alberni, BC]

The “connecting people to place” piece is really what's important.

[Kimberly Orren]

That's right. We talk about “sense of place” for tourists all the time, and we forget about sense of place for our young people.

Newfoundland and Labrador continues to lose young people as soon as they graduate from school. Memorial University has wonderful programs that are very inexpensive, but the kids get the education and then leave. Our young people have a high crime rate and a high homelessness rate. A recent report by Choices for Youth showed that connections to community and heritage help prevent homelessness. One thing we're trying to do is to also work with Choices for Youth to develop heritage programs for them too. All of—

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

Thank you, Ms. Orren. I'm going to have to cut it right there, because I have to go to the next question.

Go ahead, Mr. Finnigan.

[Pat Finnigan, Liberal, Miramichi—Grand Lake, NB]

I'm not sure who I should ask—probably Mr. Doyle—but anyone can answer.

We've heard a lot about gillnets and their indiscriminate.... I guess they catch anything that goes, and we hear about other species that are important to that whole balancing act for the environment, for the ecosystem. Would it be a good statement to say they should be banned? I'm going to ask that really bluntly.

[Tony Doyle]

There are a lot of fishermen who fish with gillnets and fish responsibly. You can fish cod with a gillnet in a clean fishery. Cod will hang out on fishing grounds where flounder or other species don't.

In regard to landing quality fish with a gillnet, the reason I did it this year was to prove to myself if it could be done, and there was only one occasion when I had fish that I had 20% grade B and 80% grade A. All of the other trips I had were all 100% grade A out of gillnets. I only had the net set for three hours and then I took it back and took the fish out without damaging it, pulled the gill, put it in a wash tank, and let it bleed. Then once it was gutted, I put it into slush, as Mr. Cobb said, and it was back to the plant within three or four hours.

It can be done; you just have to be careful in what you're doing. They're used all over Newfoundland.

In regard to banning nets, they tried it on the west coast a few years ago. A lot of fishermen voted to use hook and line only, and lot of fishermen didn't like that decision and wanted to use nets, and they got it reversed. There's always a disagreement on net fish or open line fish.

[Anthony Cobb]

Thank you for the question. I think it's yet another tangly issue. I think it really comes back to markets. It's really a question of what the market wants. Certainly, in our instance, we have fishers from Fogo Island that fish all three fish methods now for cod—handlining, codpotting, and gillnetting. We're certainly seeing a significant difference among the three products in terms of the final product that gets landed and processed.

Where we're seeing the biggest difference is from the market for handlined fish, handlined cod. Whether it's a handlined salmon or a line-caught salmon from British Columbia, a handlined cod from Newfoundland and Labrador, or an Arctic char from the north, those catch methods result in very high-grade fish, verily the very best fish in the world, and the markets will reward us for that with tremendous premiums.

I think we just have to listen to the market on this.

[Pat Finnigan, Liberal, Miramichi—Grand Lake, NB]

Ms. Orren, some would ask if is it realistic—and I'm not being sarcastic—to think you can go back to the days when you would just go out and catch a few fish with methods that have been here for a long time. I understand your point, because in farming it is the same thing. We have the latest technology, and the yields we can come up with are unheard of, but in my small province we started going back to the farm and supplying the local cafeteria with local food. It's not only the economic side but the social side of how to eat properly, the health side of it, and all of that. Is that where you want to go? You can't go back 100 years, saying we've done it like that.

Can you elaborate on the most important thing that you're trying to achieve by teaching young kids how to fish the old traditional ways?

[Kimberly Orren]

Why is it important to teach children to fish using the old traditional ways? If you're out in a big modern boat and your electrical system fails, your battery backup fails, your GPS isn't working, and you can't get satellite because there's a storm up, do you know how to use a compass? Do you know how to pull out those charts now and use a chart?

If we're talking about getting people to fish, getting out on the water, and being maritime, marine-oriented, living in the middle of the North Atlantic, can they pull out a chart and use a compass to find their way back home again? That's what I'm talking about.

I don't think the skills are old; they're basic. Put a kid in a boat with some oars, learn how to row a boat, see how it feels, and get your sea legs. Then they scale up to a boat with a bigger engine. Then they get into that big modern boat. I don't see it as being old. These are basic skills so when they get into that big boat, they know what to do.

Thank you for the opportunity to clarify that.

[Pat Finnigan, Liberal, Miramichi—Grand Lake, NB]

Okay. I understand.

Mr. Doherty, when we're looking at the whole picture, of course it's not just about the cod disappearing, but about why. It's food. We heard from DFO last week that with the waters warming, different species are going to move north, so how important do you think it is that we look at this? What do the capelin eat? That's the next step in the food chain. How important do you think it would be to look at the whole ecosystem and not just at the numbers of cod out there?

Could anybody elaborate on that?

[Anthony Cobb]

I think there are a couple of examples in the materials I provided this afternoon. I think there are some answers in those two particular studies. I would like to encourage the panel to collect the body of research that's been done on our ecosystem, particularly as it relates to cod's presence in that ecosystem, since 1992. A massive amount of independent scientific research has been done in the intervening years and decades. I think the answers lie there.

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

Thank you, Mr. Cobb.

Thank you, Mr. Finnigan.

Mr. Arnold is next.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I thank all of the panellists again for being here.

We're hearing a lot so far about managing the fishery, managing fishermen, and so on. I'm hoping that through the course of this study, we get around more to managing the fish stocks, because everything is dependent on that. Of course, managing fishermen is part of that, but without the fish there, all you can do is simply cut back on opportunity.

I've seen that happen with wildlife management in my home province. Instead of having science and the programs in place to enhance wildlife stocks, we simply cut back on opportunity. The same is true with salmon stocks. Without knowing what it takes to make sure that we keep those stocks healthy, we simply cut back on opportunity. I'm hoping this committee study will lead to some of that, so if there's anything anybody has at any point that steers us in that direction, I really hope they come forward.

Mr. Doyle, I want to thank you for being here as an on-the-ground fisherman. You seem to have a lot of experience and a lot of on-the-water knowledge about the cod stocks. I'm just wondering what else you've noticed out there in relation to other species, whether predator species or prey species. Those are obviously all part of this. We were just talking about the ecosystem part of it. Can you provide anything that way?

[Tony Doyle]

Thanks for the question and the opportunity.

I've been fishing a long time, as I said, and through the late seventies and early eighties I can remember coming home from Baccalieu in the afternoons and late evenings, and we'd look out in the bay, looking over this way toward St. John's, and on occasion after occasion we saw large tuna leaping out of the water. Then they were gone for 30 years. I never saw one for 30 years and never heard of anybody seeing one until three years ago. Now they're back, and they're back big time. There are a lot of them. There's a lot of tuna. I talked to a fisherman from Old Perlican the other day, and he and his partner were out in a speedboat gutting the fish and throwing the guts overboard. The gulls were eating the liver, and as the remains the gulls weren't eating were sinking, a school of 10 or 12 tuna, smaller tuna, was around the boat eating them up.

On Friday, out the north end of Baccalieu, where I fish, a tuna leaped out of the water no more than about 50 feet from the boat. When we were hauling the net, one fish rolled out of the net and was floating and trying to get down, and within seconds this tuna came from under the boat somewhere and just grabbed it. It was the biggest tuna I've ever seen, and I've seen some at 1,000 pounds.

They landed them here in the bay years ago. There was one landed that was 800 pounds by the rod-and-reel guy from Portugal Cove. He landed it in Bay de Verde on Friday evening, but this one that took the codfish was way bigger than that. There's a lot of tuna coming back in the area, and that's a predator fish too, but it's also unfortunate that none of our fishermen have the opportunity to fish it, because we don't have a licence for it. Most of the licences now are in P.E.I. and the Nova Scotia area.

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

What about other species besides tuna?

[Tony Doyle]

There are a lot of sharks: porbeagle, mako, and blue sharks. I have seen mostly porbeagle and blues. There have been cases in the last couple of years when we were fishing with the handline and we just had to pull up and leave the fishing grounds because the sharks just wouldn't leave us alone, biting the fish in half and tearing it off the hook. If you stay in the area, you'll eventually hook the shark, so we just pull up and move to another area and get away from them.

My explanation for the sharks is that we didn't see them in gillnets or see them in the handlines through the eighties, but since 1992 there has been no fishing gear on the northern Grand Banks. There have been no gillnets. There is no one out dragging with the dragnets. There has been no one out trawling, no longlines, so I guess all of this stuff had an opportunity to replenish, even though scientifically they say that the stocks of sharks are reduced from what they were, say, 10 years ago, but we are seeing more of them. The predator fish are showing up.

Again, as I said earlier, the capelin, which is a forage fish, is sporadic. The herring and the mackerel are something that we really need to get more information on and see what is happening there—

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

I am sorry, Mr. Arnold. I have to cut it off there. We are going to have to shut it down there. I am sorry, Mr. Johns. We never got to you, but we have run out of time.

Obviously we took a lot of time from the beginning, but your thoughts are with us, and your statements were great. I thank you for that.

I always look for a point of clarification, and sometimes in this province there are some expressions we use that I take for granted. Maybe I and some members here, such as Mr. McDonald, might know for sure, but Mr. Cobb, could you briefly explain the concept of head-on gutted?

Sorry, Mr. Cobb, but apparently they do understand. I didn't mean to deride your intelligence. I apologize.

[Anthony Cobb]

That's okay.

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

Head-on is basically the state of the fish that we sell it in when it is gutted. You get the idea.

That said, we are going to have to break for a bit. When we come back, we are going to have our next panel.

Are there any comments or questions thus far? Let's adjourn until 2:30.

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

Everyone, welcome back. We are now going to resume with the hearings. We have panel number four.

There was a lot of talk this morning about science. We previewed it and here we are. We've reached this point.

We have Monsieur Pierre Pepin, senior research scientist with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, based right here in St. John's, or as we normally call it, the White Hills.

We also have, from the World Wildlife Fund, which was mentioned this morning, Sigrid Kuehnemund and Bettina Saier. It's nice to see you, Bettina. You are no stranger to this committee or to the oceans caucus.

Of course, as we mentioned, Merv Wiseman is joining us for testimony.

Mr. Wiseman, I'm going to start with you. Please go ahead.

[Mervin Wiseman, As an Individual]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and committee members.

This all came on very short notice for me. I actually heard about the standing committee's work on Saturday at meetings in Moncton, so I don't have a formal presentation. I didn't even know this morning that I might even get on. Pardon me for that. I hope I'm a little bit coherent as I start to piece together two or three things. I'll try to do it as quickly as I can without speaking too fast.

It's been a very interesting day. I thought the topic would be a little more restricted, but I see that it's very broad-based and I know that there are many connecting dots. We're here to talk about the northern cod stock. In the process, we're talking about education, quality, innovation, science, and a range of things, so it's an issue of connecting the dots.

I want to specifically speak about fishing vessel safety today. Before I get to that, there are a couple of points that I want to make with regard to the principle of adjacency and also with regard to a framework structure for working within an environment of shared jurisdiction, as we talked about.

On the principle of adjacency, I know it was talked about this morning, but I feel that it's worth reiterating. For the sake of full disclosure of who I represent, aside from my biosketch that I gave you, I am the policy chair for a party in this country. In the process this year, at one of the national conventions I coordinated the issue around adjacency, and a resolution was passed at a national convention on the declaration of adjacency and what all that means. I bring that up because in the process of doing that, there was a lot of collaboration and consultation in bringing all that together.

In getting it through an assembly of about 3,000 people, I thought it was a monumental idea coming from a specific province and a region and so on. To navigate this through, I needed to talk to aboriginals in British Columbia. I needed to talk to aboriginals in the north and other places in the Maritimes, and so on. What I thought would be a hard job was grabbed onto very quickly. It was something that resonated right across this country, and especially with the aboriginals, who talked about their communities and the social and economic tethers to the community that having the resources available to them should bring.

When it did reach the floor, it got unanimous consent. I wanted to mention that because of its national scope and the way that it resonates nationally. It's not just something out of Newfoundland and Labrador. There was recognition of this declaration of adjacency. Not only that, but it also pointed to the fact that it has been absent for a long time, and that maybe we should put the lens on some things that have happened over the last few years to make some adjustments against that particular backdrop.

In talking about structure in an area of shared jurisdiction, maybe we should say shared relationships. There was mention this morning of the C-NLOPB. As we begin to navigate down the road of shared responsibility, whether it's in harvesting or processing, we need to put some structure around it.

I also have an agriculture background. I was federation of agriculture president here in the province for about six years. My good friend Patrice would know all about this; we've been colleagues in the past on projects. Within the scope of agriculture, it started out to be an agriculture policy framework agreement. In the scope of that agreement, it considered the issue of a shared mandate, including the issues of quality, food safety, food security, innovation and science, and business risk management. It was, in fact, more than a federal-provincial-territorial agreement, more than a bilateral agreement. It was actually a tripartite agreement whereby the producers themselves all became part of a very comprehensive, structured approach on a five-year basis, with proper funding in place and proper bilateral structures. I think it's a great model to consider—fed-prov-territory in collaboration with all the stakeholders—for a framework agreement for fisheries.

Third, one of my key objectives in being here today is to talk about the issue of fishing vessel safety. I have 35 years with the Canadian Coast Guard, most of it in the area of search and rescue. We've had some serious mishaps, fatalities, incidents, and so on, in the fishery. In fact, over 70% of the maritime search and rescue incidents are related to the fishery. I was given the fishing vessel safety file as part of my rescue coordination duties, and I dealt with that for about 10 years, regionally as well as nationally.

A lot of the roots of the issue around fishing vessel safety go right back to DFO management, especially the issue of size restrictions. There's a management tool that's being used extensively—probably more than any other management tool that I'm aware of—around how we manage the fishery, and it has to do with size restrictions.

We had a serious fatality last year in Placentia Bay. The Transportation Safety Board just finished its report about a month and a half ago. It tied the activities of the three fishermen who were lost to the fact that they were in a small vessel. While they were fishing in a 22-foot speedboat, tied up at their dock was a 45-foot longliner that they weren't allowed to use. A lot of contortions have gone on to try to remove this. In fact, the old tool of using size restrictions as a fish management tool is in full contradiction with Transport Canada safety rules and regulations.

We had another fatality almost three weeks ago, and again we're dealing with the issue of size restrictions. Regarding vessel modifications, some vessels are being instructed to remove as much as two inches off the bow of the vessel, off the stern of the vessel. The buoyancy of the vessel is affected, and the whole process costs literally hundreds of thousands of dollars. The full scope of it is more than I can talk about here in these 10 minutes.

I'll just leave it here for your consideration.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

Thank you, Mr. Wiseman.

Ms. Saier is next.

[Bettina Saier, Vice-President, Oceans, World Wildlife Fund-Canada]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My name is Bettina Saier. I'm the vice-president for WWF-Canada's oceans program. With me is Sigrid Kuehnemund, lead specialist. I'd like to thank the committee for the opportunity to contribute to the northern cod study.

For half a century, WWF has worked to protect nature. The World Wildlife Fund is Canada's largest international conservation organization. It has the active support of more than 1,500 Canadians. We connect the power of a strong global network to on-the-ground conservation efforts. Our NGO has offices in St. John's, Halifax, Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal, Iqaluit, and Inuvik. WWF-Canada creates solutions to environmental challenges that matter most for Canadians. We work in places that are unique and ecologically important so that nature, wildlife, and people thrive together. Working with our partners and drawing on science and innovation, we focus our efforts on increasing marine protection, habitat-friendly renewable energy solutions, wildlife protection, and sustainable fisheries.

With this mission in mind, we'd like to talk to you about the relationship between your study on northern cod and what we do to help rebuild the fishery with strong links to communities and the economy.

WWF-Canada has been working for over 15 years with fisheries stakeholders to help rebuild the cod fisheries in Newfoundland and Labrador. We led a successful fisheries improvement project for the southern Newfoundland cod fishery in partnership with Icewater. A fisheries improvement project is a collaborative tool to improve a fishery so that it meets globally recognized sustainability standards. It basically tests the fishery performance against an independent set of criteria and indicators. In March of this year, the fishery became Canada's first Atlantic cod fishery to achieve eco-certification.

Building on the success of the southern cod fishery, WWF-Canada launched a new fisheries improvement project on northern cod in collaboration with the FFAW in April of 2015. This project aims to bring the historic cod stock off the northeast coast of Newfoundland and Labrador back to a sustainable level and eventual commercial viability for the benefit and economic well-being of communities.

As the northern cod stock shows early signs of recovery, WWF-Canada has been working with fish harvesters, processing plants, scientists, and retailers to develop a fishery that is sustainable, both environmentally and economically. In particular, over the next five years we will be working hand in hand with harvesters represented by the FFAW, the seafood producers of Newfoundland and Labrador, the Fogo Island co-op, and the newly formed Newfoundland and Labrador Groundfish Industry Development Council. Indeed, here in St. John's today, the FFAW and WWF are bringing together relevant stakeholders from the industry, managers, and scientists to create a stakeholder-endorsed action plan for the northern cod stewardship fishery.

This is timely, because the resource is growing—in some areas, fast—and management decisions today will influence the future of this fishery. The fisheries improvement project action plan will be a public document that lists activities, budgets, and roles for strategies to address issues with the fishery, such as the requirement for a robust rebuilding strategy. We're hoping to complete the action plan by October of 2016.

On the basis of WWF-Canada's hands-on conservation work on northern cod, we'd like to share four recommendations on how to help ensure that the recovery will be successful and continue to provide for Newfoundlanders and Labradorians into the future: one, take a go-slow approach based on science; two, implement a modern ecosystem fisheries management approach; three, sustainably manage capelin, cod's main food supply; and four, incorporate social and cultural considerations into decision-making.

On recommendation one, a go-slow approach based on science, the maintenance of low removal levels from this stock over the past decades has been essential for the recovery we're seeing today. Hence, a go-slow approach should continue to guide management decisions. A gradual or precautionary approach will ultimately bring the greatest long-term benefits for this iconic fishery and the people who depend on it. WWF-Canada participates in the DFO-led working group tasked with the development of a northern cod conservation and protection plan. We know first-hand the complexity and hurdles that have been faced in its development.

We remain committed to the promotion of a go-slow approach through the implementation of robust harvest control rules that provide for a slow increase in fishing effort as the stock improves and that expedite a reduction in fishing effort as soon as a decline in the stock level is observed.

We applaud DFO's recent work on improving the assessment method for northern cod. Based on this work, we support the further fine-tuning of northern cod science, in particular the development of biologically based reference points that will mark the growth milestones for this stock.

However, science is only as good as the raw data it is based on. It is a critical time for the government to invest in data collection and monitoring programs to protect the health of the northern cod stock. Improving data collection at sea, ensuring that removals from all sources—including recreational fishery—are accounted for, and using the best available scientific methodology are critical when making decisions on managing northern cod recovery.

Number two is to pilot a modern ecosystem-based fisheries management approach for the northern Newfoundland and southern Labrador shelf. Currently, most fisheries in Canada, including the Newfoundland cod fisheries, are managed in a single-species context.

There are separate integrated fisheries management plans in place for northern cod, crab, shrimp, capelin, etc. However, these species do not live in isolation from each other, nor from the surrounding ecosystem. The Department of Fisheries and Oceans should commit to the development of a modern ecosystem-based fisheries management approach that considers the broader ecosystem and the relationships between the different species within the northern cod range. Canadian scientists, including those from DFO, have developed a road map to an ecosystem-based approach to fisheries management for the northwest Atlantic and the NAFO. Because of this body of work, Canada is poised to ramp up efforts to develop and implement ecosystem-based fisheries management in the northwest Atlantic.

WWF-Canada recommends that DFO build on Canadian expertise and focus investment in science to promote the scientific study of northern cod, capelin, and the ecosystem unit that sustains them.

Specifically, we recommend that DFO initiate a pilot project to operationalize the modern ecosystem approach to fisheries management for the northern Newfoundland and southern Labrador shelf. This could be accomplished, for example, through the establishment of a scientist-manager working group.

We also have high hopes that Canada's current efforts to review the Fisheries Act will aim to incorporate modern safeguards, such as the ecosystem-based approach.

Recommendation number three is to carefully monitor and sustainably manage capelin, cod's main food source.

You have heard already from Dr. John Brattey, Tony Doyle, and Tony Cobb about the importance of capelin as a principal source of food in the rebuilding of the northern cod stock, and concerns presented to DFO from harvesters about the poor condition of cod—for example, starving cod off the coast of Labrador.

This is a concern of WWF-Canada as well. This summer we completed a new assessment of Canada's forage fish, those little fish with big impacts, such as capelin. It showed that we simply don't know enough about capelin. DFO has to prioritize capelin monitoring through acoustic surveys to be completed every year to provide enough information to sustainably manage the capelin fishery, which is important because of the vital role these small fish play in feeding larger predators such as cod, whales, and seabirds. To help identify how to improve capelin monitoring, WWF-Canada is creating a steering committee to bring together capelin managers, scientists, and fish harvesters from Newfoundland, Labrador, and Quebec.

Capelin numbers and growth are linked to environmental changes, so future management of northern cod must also consider the impacts of climate change on the capelin and cod populations. Increasing the knowledge base of climate change impacts on Canada's fisheries is a wise and much-needed investment.

Recommendation number four is to incorporate social and cultural indicators to manage the recovery of northern cod.

The harvesting industry in Newfoundland and Labrador is not homogeneous. Views on how to best manage the recovery vary greatly between the offshore and inshore sectors. For many inshore harvesters, fishing goes much deeper than a means to earn a living. It contributes to their identity and a sense of place, of community, often based on a rich heritage of fishing. Fisheries policy, however, has not always been transparent on how these important social and cultural values are considered in decision-making, if at all. Values are often hard to define and quantify, but we need to incorporate them into decision-making if we are to achieve sustainable fisheries management for the future.

I would like to close by mentioning that WWF-Canada will be hosting a cod symposium in St. John's on June 22, 2017. Our aim is to promote a new discussion on the future of Newfoundland's cod fishery 25 years after the implementation of the groundfish moratorium. Similar to the Ocean Summit WWF posted on World Oceans Day in Ottawa, our aim is to convene leaders from governments, communities, industry, the scientific community, and civil society for a constructive and solution-focused dialogue.

Once again I would like to thank the committee for allowing WWF-Canada to present on this study. I'd be happy to take questions on the points I've raised.

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

Thank you, Ms. Saier. We appreciate that very much.

Mr. Pepin, you have the floor for 10 minutes. I hope that will be enough.

[Dr. Pierre Pepin, Senior Research Scientist, Science, Department of Fisheries and Oceans]

I'll do my best to finish my presentation in 10 minutes.

Thank you to the committee for inviting me to present.

I apologize for the French version of the document you should have a copy of. The translation's only partial. The labels on the graphs have not been translated. We can get that to you sometime this week. It was a bit of a challenge to get all this stuff done during the course of the week, but everything else is translated.

Today what I'll do is talk to you about the changes that have occurred in the environment and the ecosystem structure on the Newfoundland shelf over the last three, four, or five decades.

If you move to slide number two, this gives you an outline of the things I'm going to be talking about today. It's not an exhaustive list, but they are the key features you have to consider as drivers in responses to the changes that have taken place over time.

If you move to slide number three, here we're going to have a little bit of Biology 101 in terms of giving a sense of what the ecosystem structure is around here.

The timing and extent of ice, the weather, and the fluctuations in these features from year to year are the factors that determine the production of the lower trophic levels. They affect the timing and they affect the magnitude of the overall production of the phytoplankton, which are the microscopic plants on which the food chain depends, and that affects the production of zooplankton.

Both these groups contribute to the growth and production of the forage species, which consist of the young stages of fish, capelin, and shrimp, and all three of these components are important prey for the dominant predators in the system, which consist of a variety of groundfish. The dominant ones are indicated here, but there are a host of others, as well as seabirds, cetaceans, and seals.

One of the things to keep in mind when you're looking at an ecosystem is that it's dependent on its standing stock, but more importantly, it's more dependent on its production. The standing stock currently on the Newfoundland 2J3KL areas is about 1.5 million tonnes if you take all the bits and pieces into consideration, and the total consumption that takes place in that system is in excess of 15 million metric tons per year, so there's a lot more production you're not seeing when you're looking at standing stocks.

If you move to slide number four, one of the things we do around here is spend a lot of time trying to get a sense of what the environment is doing. For that we derive a state-of-the-ocean index, which is a composite of 28 time series that include information on meteorological conditions; the extent, timing, and other features of ice; the temperature of the ocean; the extent of the cold intermediate layer, which is a major oceanographic feature around here; and the salinated water, which reflects the balance in terms of the freshwater input into the system.

The most important feature of this graph is the change we saw from the early 1990s to about 2010, when we went from the coldest period on record to the warmest period on record. This is a dramatic change in terms of the overall conditions in that environment, and although there were periods of warm and cold prior to that, this was a rather dramatic change.

In the last few years we've seen a little bit of a cooling off, and that will have consequences to the dynamics of the species we're looking at, but nevertheless, it's an important feature to keep in mind. However, it is in contrast to what's going on in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, on the Scotian Shelf, and in other parts of the northwest Atlantic, which actually seem to be staying warm and continuing to warm as a result of changes in atmospheric forcing.

If you move to the next slide, which is a little bit more complicated, if you look at the panel on the left-hand side, it shows you the change in the abundance of the different functional feeding groups. By functional feeding groups I mean groups of organisms that feed on the same kinds of things. For instance, piscivores are all feeding on other fish species, and cod is a dominant piscivore in the system, so the changes you see in the blue portion of the graph are actually mostly changes that have occurred in the biomass of cod. The important thing to get out of this, though, is that from the 1980s to about 1994, all the groups collapsed, not just cod. Everything else in that system collapsed. Everything disappeared.

In 1995 we had a gear change, so we've had to adjust the estimates a little bit. At that time, we actually started capturing invertebrates in our nets, and that's why there's a red section there, but what you can see is that from about 1995 until about the mid-2000s, invertebrates increased in abundance, while the other groups weren't doing a whole lot. Starting at about the mid-2000s, the invertebrates started going down, and the groundfish species started to increase in abundance. That's an important thing to keep in mind.

The right-hand panel shows you the acoustic estimates of capelin abundance. Prior to the collapse in 1991, there were about 4 million tonnes of capelin in area 3L, which is just the northern part of the Grand Banks, not the entire area. In 1991, the bottom fell out of it. There were no capelin. They disappeared. They either died or went somewhere else. That was a very dramatic change in the ecosystem. The food base for many of the predators disappeared off the face of the earth—literally—and until the mid-2000s we saw virtually nothing happening. There's been a slight increase, but we're at about a quarter of where we were prior to the collapse.

On the next slide, the top panel shows the trend in abundance, a slightly different index of abundance—the average biomass per tow—of four of the dominant groundfish species: cod, halibut—often referred to as turbot—plaice, and redfish. What you can see is that the most dramatic change has been in cod. It showed a very marked decline, but all the other species declined.

After the period when things settled down, around 1994, the abundance of the other species stayed relatively constant. There was a slight increase in the abundance of turbot, but there wasn't anything else that took over. That's the important thing: there was no filling of the niche that had been occupied by cod.

What we were able to do from these data was identify areas that were dominated by cod, shown as the red symbol in the middle panel on the left-hand side. Redfish is the purple one, halibut is blue, and plaice is green. When you look at the spatial distribution shown in the lower panel of the six panels grouped in five-year chunks, what you can see is that prior to the collapse, most of the Newfoundland shelf was dominated by areas that were dominated by cod.

During the collapse, there was a fragmentation of the environment. The distribution of the communities became very fragmented. Areas where there had been cod disappeared and were basically literally fished out. Following that, there were several years before we actually saw any kind of rebuilding of the cod. What happened is that the community got dominated largely by the halibut and redfish communities, as well as by the expansion of some of the coastal species, which are less abundant in total biomass.

What we saw in mid-2000 to about 2013 was a reappearance of cod-dominated areas, but on the southern portion of the range where we had normally seen the cod. Although this has not been updated to 2015, what's happened is that the area in the northern part, which used to be dominated by cod, still has not recovered.

You saw this next slide last week during a presentation by Dr. Brattey. This is the estimate of cod. What you can see is that although there's been a resurgence in the last 10 years or so, we're nowhere near where the stock used to be.

The next slide shows another thing that changed during the collapse of the cod, which is the shift in the diet. The only things you really have to concentrate on in this panel are the red and the yellow sections. The yellow section represents the relative proportion of capelin in the diet of cod.

You can see that prior to the collapse, the diet of cod was dominated by capelin. During the collapse, there was a shift towards shrimp, because there was virtually no capelin available. In the mid-2000s or so we saw that most of the diet consisted of shrimp, as that was basically the prey that was available.

Since then, we've seen a resurgence in capelin and a decrease in the overall abundance of shrimp in the diet of cod, and not only for cod but for other species of major predators in that system as well. There has been a bit of a shift towards other species as well, which we don't quite understand yet.

Slide 9 shows that we investigated the dynamics of cod during the pre- and post-collapse periods. That was modelled using three key drivers: the capelin abundance, the fishery catches, and the seal predation. All these were estimated based on information, not guesswork. What ended up happening is that both capelin abundance and the fishery were statistically significant drivers of the changes in cod biomass in the region, but seal predation was not, no matter what combination of variables we actually included in the model.

If you look at the panel on the left-hand side, the blue dots are the abundance of cod from the research vessel survey estimates and the yellow dots are the abundance of capelin. You can see that the two track rather well.

If you turn to slide number 10, these are the dynamics of shrimp. We did not have good, reliable estimates of shrimp prior to 1995. You can see that the abundance of shrimp increased significantly—this is SFA 4, so it's areas 2J and 3K, basically. The abundance of shrimp increased until about the mid-2000s. It has been in decline ever since.

If you look at the middle and left-hand panels in the graphs here, they're a little bit complicated. I'll try to walk you through them.

The red line indicates the annual production, normalized or standardized so that we can put everything on the same scale. The red line represents the production of shrimp, and you can see that it fluctuates a fair bit from year to year, but the general trend from 1995 to 2015 has been a decline. When we started, we had high production in that system, and that's the increase in the biomass as well as the fishery catches relative to the previous year. That's generally been in decline.

In the middle panel you can see the composite index of environmental condition, which has been flipped so it makes the figure a little bit less noisy. Warm is down, towards the bottom, and cold is up, towards the top of the graph. You can see that it tracks fairly well with the changes in production from year to year. It's also reflected in the timing of spring phytoplankton booms. The dynamics of that whole ecosystem, from lower trophic levels to upper trophic levels, is reflected in this graph.

However, at the same time, if you look at the right-hand panel, the blue line or the black line shows the abundance of predators, and the green line shows the estimate of consumption. Again, they've been standardized to put them on the same graph. You can see that during the period when there was a decline in the production of shrimp, there was an increase in the number of predators and the overall consumption by predators. The most recent decline that we see in the graph, on the right-hand side in the green line, is basically because there's been a shift from shrimp to capelin in the diet of the major predators.

The next slide shows you the time series of capelin, which we discussed earlier. I'll walk you through the bottom graph. It basically shows the relationship between the production of the capelin stock and the timing of the ice retreat in the spring, just to give you a sense of how important the environment is to the dynamics of this stock. There are two lines on this: one is the pre-collapse and one is the post-collapse relationship with the timing of ice. It basically reflects that there's been a regime shift in the system that we don't really quite understand at this time.

The final panel here shows you the time series of catch per unit effort for crab in relation to the availability of cold water during the first year of life. You can see that in all situations there's fairly good tracking between the availability of cold conditions and the production of the crab stock.

On the final slide, to summarize, the biomass of Atlantic cod and other groundfish species as well as capelin has increased since the mid-2000s. The abundance of northern shrimp and crab have declined as a result of warming ocean conditions. The recent cooling trend may be beneficial to shrimp and snow crab, but the impact on groundfish and capelin is still uncertain.

We're going to continue to monitor the environmental conditions and investigate species interaction. We're currently conducting research to better understand and forecast the effects of changes in ecosystem structure on these key species.

Thank you.