Evidence of meeting #25 for Fisheries and Oceans in the 42nd Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was pots.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Ken McDonald Liberal Avalon, NL
Maybe you could answer this one as well, Dr. Hutchings.
What holdback on the growth of the stock is caused by predation? Are we doing enough to try to balance it out, and to deal with the predators not getting too big compared to what they're taking from the stock? Should there be a balance of the predators versus the stock, to allow the stock to grow?
Killam Memorial Chair in Fish, Fisheries and Oceans, Department of Biology, Dalhousie University, As an Individual
Balance can be a tough word sometimes. Balance means different things to different people in different contexts.
I would say there are perhaps two ways to look at this. One is, after the massive reduction in cod when we were left with a relatively small amount of cod compared to what was there certainly in the early 1960s, as I said earlier, they become more vulnerable and more susceptible to natural changes in the environment. Some of those could well be increases in the number of predators on occasion in particular areas. It also depends on how cod are spatially distributed relative to where their predators are.
In one sense, I think predation could well be reasonably identified as one factor affecting the natural mortality of cod in the absence of a fishery. I think that probably makes sense as part of the natural history of cod.
I find it interesting that we see cod having increased substantially over the last decade to a level that's the highest it's been in 25 years despite the fact that its primary predators, arguably harp seals, are also close to their maximum level of abundance.
On the degree to which predation affects recovery, I think it would be scientifically credible to say that it has had some effect, likely slowing the rate of recovery in the past, but I don't think it is preventing recovery given that we're seeing cod on a fairly positive trajectory relative to what we've seen recently, and given that the harp seal population is as high as it is.
Liberal
Ken McDonald Liberal Avalon, NL
Dr. Hutchings, are we as a government, or is DFO as a department, doing enough to assess the real stock that's out there, the real biomass, and doing it regularly enough to get a good count, not just on the cod but also on their major food sources? Do we know where that balance is? Are we up to date? Are we doing enough to be well-informed on both sides?
Killam Memorial Chair in Fish, Fisheries and Oceans, Department of Biology, Dalhousie University, As an Individual
It's difficult to know sometimes how much effort one should expend in gaining more information relative to how much more information it's going to provide.
DFO has been undertaking broadscale groundfish research surveys throughout the northern cod region since 1983. They were designed for cod. They're pretty good at sampling other bottom-dwelling species. To your point, they don't sample the midwater species very well. That requires some other form of technology to sample those prey items in a fisheries-independent manner, meaning that you're not relying on catch data alone. That's been a challenge. DFO has some acoustic survey information for capelin for example, and it also has inshore spawning location information, but the two sets of data have given discordant perspectives over time. One could make the argument that perhaps we need more acoustic surveys. I think that will require another significant investment of funds. I think one would want to look to other countries that have such acoustic technology in place—Norway comes to mind—and evaluate the degree to which more investments of that nature are likely to produce the kind of information that will give us a more confident feeling for the status of cod.
All that is to say, I think your point is a very good one. This is the kind of question that we'd like to have better information on, but it's a big ocean and it can be very challenging to get reliable information of that nature.
Liberal
Ken McDonald Liberal Avalon, NL
Mr. Laughren, do you think we should extend the current limit of what we control, like the 200-mile limit? Should we go beyond that? What about enforcing that? Are we doing enough on that now, or should we be doing more?
Executive Director, Oceana Canada
Save the easy one for me.
I don't think that's a great investment of our political will at the moment. I think the control over NAFO in particular has gotten better, but not without issue. It has gotten a lot better over the last 10 or 15 years, due to the leadership of Canada, I would say. We do have new tools coming into play. Here's a great chance for a plug. Oceana Canada just launched global fishing watch, which brings all fishing efforts and all fishing boats on to publicly available—
Liberal
Ken McDonald Liberal Avalon, NL
Mr. Laughren, I'll have to leave that plug where it is because that's going to be your final point.
Executive Director, Oceana Canada
I'll stop there. No, I think we should be focused on applying policy as we have it in Canada
Conservative
Robert Sopuck Conservative Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB
Dr. Favaro, can you conduct size selection of cod because you're bringing them up alive? Could you introduce something like a slot size so that larger, more valuable fish could be released? Or does the act of bringing the fish to the surface from that depth cause significant mortality?
Research Scientist, Fisheries and Marine Institute, Memorial University of Newfoundland, As an Individual
This is one of the exciting things about pots. They're probably among the most controllable of fishing gear, meaning that you can make escape panels, you can change the entry size, you can make the entry rigid, or you can make it soft. If it's rigid, you set a maximum size for the animals that can get in there.
Whether the fish can survive and be released again is species-dependent. With cod, there have been tagging studies done elsewhere in the world where survival has been pretty good, but it depends how deep you're fishing them from.
Research Scientist, Fisheries and Marine Institute, Memorial University of Newfoundland, As an Individual
This is exactly one of the things we need to replicate in Newfoundland and Labrador to see to what extent they can survive, how that is related to depth, and how that is related to body size. In other words, are big or small ones more likely to survive?
Conservative
Robert Sopuck Conservative Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB
Yes, the idea of slot limits has worked very well for many sport fisheries, so I think that's something to consider.
Mr. Laughren, quickly, did I hear you say—and you can correct me—that on a worldwide basis, cod are abundant?
Conservative
Robert Sopuck Conservative Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB
Okay. What's the price of cod worldwide? Does anybody have an idea? Is it high, low, what it used to be, or...?
Go ahead, Dr. Hutchings.
Killam Memorial Chair in Fish, Fisheries and Oceans, Department of Biology, Dalhousie University, As an Individual
I think it depends on the quality of fish.
Killam Memorial Chair in Fish, Fisheries and Oceans, Department of Biology, Dalhousie University, As an Individual
In some places it's unchanged from what it was in the 1990s, but in other cases it's considerably more expensive.
Conservative
Robert Sopuck Conservative Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB
Since the cod moratorium in the 1990s, a significant shrimp fishery developed off Labrador. Dr. Hutchings, is there a relationship between the decline of the cod and the increase of the shrimp?
Killam Memorial Chair in Fish, Fisheries and Oceans, Department of Biology, Dalhousie University, As an Individual
The best available scientific information would be consistent with that hypothesis.
Conservative
Robert Sopuck Conservative Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB
Okay, so right now we're in a major issue with the shrimp fishery off the coast with allocation. The reason I asked the value question earlier is that it almost seems like we have a choice between the cod and the shrimp. We had testimony in the previous Parliament from some very upset fishermen who were not too excited about the cod coming back because they had set themselves up for lucrative shrimp fisheries supporting many communities. To me, that's a legitimate choice that governments make.
In your view, Dr. Hutchings, is the shrimp fishery valuable enough that we should do whatever we can to preserve it, and is it somewhat related to predation?
Killam Memorial Chair in Fish, Fisheries and Oceans, Department of Biology, Dalhousie University, As an Individual
I could offer you my perspective on it, since you've asked me for my opinion. Where I buy my fish and where I buy my cod, you can pay a pretty penny for cod and for high quality fish from Iceland and Norway. It's more expensive than the shrimp. We come back to this issue of quality and the quality of the product. I think you can attain a high price to go back to the fisherman from a good quality product.
The other aspect with the shrimp is that the they are a cold water species. We have been seeing this trend of warming water temperatures, and to some extent—we don't know, we can't nail it down precisely—that's probably affecting the shrimp.
Conservative
Robert Sopuck Conservative Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB
I really appreciate that answer because I think it's quite significant for our study. So thank you for that.
Dr. Hutchings, you said that in 1998 the fishery was reopened. It sounds to me as if it was against scientific advice. How did that happen that the fishery was reopened in 1998 and went to 2002?
Killam Memorial Chair in Fish, Fisheries and Oceans, Department of Biology, Dalhousie University, As an Individual
I think, to be fair, after a number of years of closure, there were a lot of reports in different places, notably in Trinity Bay, and the union was bringing these to the fore, to the government's attention, making the point that from its perspective the health of the stock was better than what DFO science was indicating. That pressure, which must have been considerable, I would imagine, was the primary motive for opening the fishery. It wasn't part of a broader management context or science advice, but it was interesting and a bit unfortunate. I can tell you that for those five years the quotas were set somewhere between 4,000 tonnes and 9,000 tonnes. So that's not a lot. That's not a lot of fish compared to the 200,000 tonnes and 300,000 tonnes that were caught in other years. But DFO did some very good tagging studies during the same period of time and, basically, it tagged a lot of cod. Fishermen sent the tags back to DFO from the ones that they caught, and then DFO was able to estimate the percentage of cod that were being removed from these small-scale fisheries, compared to what was there, and it found it was in the order of 30% to 35%, which is a very high rate.
So I would suggest it was that tension between the perception of the health of the stock in some parts of the inshore area and what DFO science was saying.
