Evidence of meeting #27 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 iceland.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Director General, Department for Fisheries and Aquaculture, Government of Norway
Yes, and a little less than half of it is the Norwegian quota. You have to divide by three and multiply by two, and then we have something like 280,000 tonnes of fish after heading and gutting them.
If we multiply 280 million kilos, and I'm not sure I can do that—
Director General, Department for Fisheries and Aquaculture, Government of Norway
—280 million kilos multiplied by 20 kroner should be something like 5.6 billion Norwegian kroner. In Canadian dollars, it would be divided by six.
Director General, Department for Fisheries and Aquaculture, Government of Norway
It is $900 million Canadian.
Conservative
Director General, Department for Fisheries and Aquaculture, Government of Norway
Please do not use these figures.
Conservative
Liberal
Pat Finnigan Liberal Miramichi—Grand Lake, NB
Thank you so much for taking the time to appear in front of this committee. It's a very interesting topic for us, especially on the east coast with the northern cod.
Do the northern cod migrate outside? Right now Russia, Norway, and Iceland are the main fishers in that area. Do the cod migrate outside those waters? If so, are other countries fishing and affecting the cod population?
Marine and Freshwater Research Institute
For the Icelandic cod, a very small fraction is caught by the Faroese on the border of EEZ. It's been known for a long time that young cod from Iceland often drift over to east Greenland, where they grow up and then sometimes go back and spawn when they're adults in Icelandic waters. It's been quite a long time since that happened. At the moment, though, there are cod coming up in east Greenland that are most likely of Icelandic origin.
There is no agreement between Iceland and Greenland regarding that. Understandably, the view in Greenland is that they should fish it before it goes back to Iceland. There is obviously another view in Iceland on that. These cod do not respect borders, but they are not a huge part of the cod stock.
Liberal
Director General, Department for Fisheries and Aquaculture, Government of Norway
Yes, these are different cod stocks. There is, as far as I know, no intermixture between the Icelandic areas and the Norwegian and Russian areas in the eastern part of the North Atlantic.
The northeast Arctic cod between Norway and Russia do not migrate outside Norwegian and Russian waters, except for a small area in the Barents Sea in international waters. Over the years, we have had some problems with third countries fishing outside the quotas in that international area in the loophole, as it's called. I am looking at my Icelandic friends who have a bit of history there.
Today Norway and Russia have bilateral agreements with our neighbours in the North Atlantic and eastern Atlantic so that there is no fishing outside the fixed total quota by countries in the northeast Atlantic. Now and then we have vessels from other third countries in the loophole area in the Barents Sea, but it's not a problem anymore. There are very few; it happens once in a while but not more than that.
Liberal
Pat Finnigan Liberal Miramichi—Grand Lake, NB
Moving on, if I understand correctly, the quotas are attached to the vessels, i.e., the fishermen own the quotas. Are there any quotas attached to processors and corporations, or do those quotas belong to the fishermen? Are they able to pass them down to the next generation? Can you elaborate on how that's being done?
Marine and Freshwater Research Institute
I think that's where the difference between Iceland and Norway is greatest. In Iceland it's actually owned by the company. The company can move the quota from any vessel they choose. It belongs to the owner of the company and it will be inherited by his children, not the fishermen's children. The political sticking point in Iceland is that you can actually move all the quota from one fishing village and put it in the next.
Director General, Department for Fisheries and Aquaculture, Government of Norway
Yes.
The system in Norway is a little bit different. We give out licences to companies owning vessels. This is a licence that allows you to fish according to the regulations that might be set each year, but nothing more than that.
The quota, meaning a quantity of fish, is given out in a yearly regulation set by the ministry. The licence can be sold from one vessel owner to another vessel owner, but only if the authorities approve and the new owner meets the requirements to hold this kind of licence.
The system does not have that high degree of privatization that you have in the Icelandic system, but the quantity of fish each and every vessel can fish is given out in yearly regulations.
Conservative
Conservative
Mel Arnold Conservative North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC
I have a couple of quick questions. I'll ask both of them at once and I'll ask both officers for the answer.
The total allowable catch is determined from the percentage of the biomass, from what I understand. I believe, Gudmundur, you mentioned that it had been up as high as 25%. It's back now around 20%. Please correct me if I'm wrong on that.
Conservative
Mel Arnold Conservative North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC
How do you determine how and what time of year that biomass is measured?
The second question, when we get to it, is how is the catch monitored? Do you have observers on the vessels? Are there patrol boats that do spot monitoring, and so on?
Perhaps we could start off on how the biomass is measured, what time of year, and how that's determined.
Marine and Freshwater Research Institute
Of course, we do the stock assessments, which are based on two surveys and a collection of data from the commercial catches. It goes through an age-based assessment.
The biomass is estimated at the beginning of the year. It's basically just a fixed point in time. The biomass is basically estimated from a model. They assume certain natural mortality and stuff like that, of course, over the year. It's fairly standard stuff.
The catches are monitored. When a vessel comes to harbour, the catch has to be weighed by the authorities there, the directorate of fisheries, which monitors them. They are also of service from both.... There's not 100% coverage, far from it, actually. The coast guard sometimes enters vessels and is the law enforcement along with the fisheries directorate.
You have to land in a legal harbour, so to say, or in a registered harbour, and have the catch weighed. There are various bookkeeping checks that are run routinely to check whether the amount you report for exporting is the same as the amount you landed, and so on.
Director General, Department for Fisheries and Aquaculture, Government of Norway
Yes. For Norway it's rather similar to what was explained by Iceland when it comes to the estimate of the biomass. It's more than two surveys. Depending a little on how you count, it's a different kind of survey, looking for different things: the spawning, the results of the spawning, the number of juveniles we find in the Barents Sea, and the more general ecosystem surveys, both Norwegian and Russian.
I'm not sure if it makes sense to say that we estimate the biomass at a certain point during the year, but it is a question of estimating how big the biomass ready for spawning will be this year. That is the most important figure in this.
We have a little higher fishing mortality in our management harvest control rule as it stands now. I'm not sure if it corresponds directly to percentages, but the fishing mortality rate we have in our management, together with the Russians on cod, is at present 0.4% and that will be 30-something per cent, I think. I'm looking at the Icelandic scientist who knows more about this than I do from Norway.
We are currently working together with Russia on a new management rule for the cod fishery, the third generation for our cod, and have been looking into even higher fishing mortality rates for the cod stocks as the conditions have been so very good the last five, six, seven, eight years.
We have our coast guard controlling the activities of that sea. The coast guard has something like seven or eight vessels, I think, that are more or less constantly patrolling the waters under the Norwegian fishery's jurisdiction. We also have a system of control with landings of fish, both physical controls and more automatic controls, as we have a system of landing notes, which are processed through our first-hand sales organizations and into the directorate of fishery, where they have a number of automatic controls trying to find the landing notes with something in them that differs from a normal pattern.
Different kinds of automatic controls line up on the computer screen with a red flag saying this should be looked into.
