Good morning, everyone.
l'd like to thank the committee for undertaking a study on the wild Atlantic salmon, and for inviting the Mi'gmaq Maliseet Aboriginal Fisheries Management Association to give testimony this morning.
As executive director of the association, and as a biologist by training, I am going to try as best I can to share with you the importance of addressing the challenges involved in the sound management and conservation of the Atlantic salmon, a species at the heart of the identity of the Mi'kmaq and Maliseet peoples.
I will start by briefly introducing our organization, and will then share certain results from the study we completed this year on Mi'kmaq and Maliseet ecological knowledge of the Atlantic salmon. I will end with certain challenges and preoccupations related to the management and conservation of that population.
Our association is a non-profit created in 2012 through DFO's Aboriginal Aquatic Resource and Oceans Management Program, or AAROM. Our members are from three first nations located in Quebec's Gaspésie and Bas-Saint-Laurent administrative regions, namely, the Mi'kmaqs of Gesgapagiag, the Mi'kmaq Nation of Gespeg and the Maliseet First Nation of Viger.
Our mission is to promote the sustainable development and conservation of aquatic and oceanic ecosystems on our member communities' territory and in their areas of activity, while fostering their interests and promoting their involvement in co-management processes.
The association is a forum for discussions and information-sharing between members, and advances the development, autonomy and innovation of Mi'kmaq and Maliseet fisheries, while fostering the inclusion of traditional aboriginal knowledge in the scientific approach.
In 2013, we embarked on a research project to document traditional Mi'kmaq and Maliseet knowledge about 14 species at risk in the marine portion of the St. Lawrence. In all, 28 participants from our three member communities took part in the study. They were selected or recommended because of their knowledge of the species under study, including the Atlantic salmon, known as plamu in the Mi'kmaq language, and polam in Maliseet.
Our study showed that the Atlantic salmon is at the heart of the Mi'kmaq and Maliseet peoples' culture, and is considered a vital link with the culture, with a way of life, and even with survival on reserves, according to certain respondents.
The Atlantic salmon has always been an integral part of the Mi'kmaq diet. According to our study, the fish is mainly used for food purposes in Gesgapegiag and Gespeg. Most of the time, it is shared within the community, or between relatives, friends and elders. Atlantic salmon is also shared at traditional ceremonies such as powwows.
Most of our study participants learned to fish for Atlantic salmon at a very young age, thanks to their family and friends. The rivers where the Atlantic salmon is fished by our participants are numerous: the Cascapedia, the Little Cascapedia, and the Nouvelle and the Bonaventure near Gesgapegiag; the Malbaie, Saint John, York and Dartmouth near Gespeg; and the Rimouski and Mitis in the Lower St. Lawrence, among others.
The participants' observations regarding the status of the population vary by river and by period. Overall, significant declines have been observed in several rivers in recent decades.
During our study, the participants noted several conservation challenges and made several management recommendations. I'd like to present those to you.
Firstly, to preserve the salmon's habitat, forestry practices need to undergo significant improvements and must be supervised more rigorously, because they are tied to siltation in resting pools and spawning areas, with run-off, and, when the snow melts, with flash flooding.
Another issue that affects habitat are the jams and obstacles to spawning, which should be catalogued and addressed to enable the salmon to follow their migratory route.
Overfishing risks, not only in the rivers, but in the oceans as well, are the third issue. This overfishing calls for increased monitoring. In this regard, I should mention Greenland's commercial salmon fishery in the Atlantic, which is clearly extensive enough to have a deleterious effect on the salmon population.