Fisheries Committee on May 18th, 2017

[Prof. Callum Roberts]

There are examples. I've studied one in St. Lucia, in the Caribbean, where they set aside 35% of their coral reef habitat on the southwest of the country. Over a period of seven years, we saw an increase in the fish stock inside the marine protected areas, which were no take, by five times. Outside the protected areas in the fishing grounds the fish stocks increased by three times, and the fish catches more than doubled in those surrounding areas despite the fact that the area for fishing was smaller.

This is a case in which these are local people who had no other options. They decided that they were on a high road to nowhere with declining fisheries. They needed to step in and do something to turn the situation around, and they used marine protected areas as the core of their strategy, particularly no-take zones—

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Thank you. I'll have to leave it at that, Dr. Roberts. I have limited time as well.

Dr. Côté, your colleague Dr. Cox was with us from SFU a few weeks ago and allowed for the fact that MPAs are a tool, but not necessarily the only one and not necessarily the best one. I wanted to get a quick overview from you of what alternatives exist or what complementary activities exist to MPAs.

[Prof. Isabelle Côté]

I think that was shown fairly clearly in one of Dr. Worm's slides in his presentation. It showed a range of other management measures that include, for example, regulating take, regulating gear, and so on. There are a variety of other measures that regulate various aspects of fishing that can work very well alongside marine protected areas.

As I said to another person who asked the question, I think those two are very complementary, and I think if you want to manage the oceans well, you need to use all the tools in that tool box.

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

What about alternatives to MPAs?

[Prof. Isabelle Côté]

Do you mean in terms of spatial management?

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Yes.

[Prof. Isabelle Côté]

Anything to do with fisheries management, regulating gear, regulating quotas, and all of that, I see all of those as tools that are complementary to spatial closures.

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Dr. Worm, you mentioned that there has to be adequate staffing, etc. I believe you've offered to send along some papers that would outline that, but let's also talk about measuring and monitoring regimes. Are there structures in place that, again, tend to work well in telling us what we need to know?

[Prof. Boris Worm]

Most definitely. A good management plan would have a plan for assessing and monitoring, and that would be carried out by a staff that is funded adequately, as pointed out in that publication. I will also send around a publication with a table about the variety of tools that can be used. I will say that there are no tools that can be used instead of MPAs. As I've pointed out, in eight out of 10 regions that rebuilt their fisheries, MPAs were a key tool, in concert with other tools. But they can't be replaced by anything else because they do something that's unique, which is to fully protect all the species in the ecosystem.

Also, with respect to your question about monitoring—

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

If I could, I have just a second or two left, if any of you have any reflections on the impact of aquaculture on some of the objectives that we're trying to achieve, again, it's maybe something that you could send to us off-line, because aquaculture is an area that we really do need to focus on, particularly on B.C.'s west coast, where it's quite an issue.

Thank you.

[Prof. Boris Worm]

Also, here on the east coast aquaculture is a big concern to lots of fishermen now, this and open-net pen aquaculture. It is broadly seen as incompatible with some of the goals of ocean conservation, and protected areas as well.

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

Thank you.

Mr. Arnold, you have five minutes, please.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Again, as everyone else has said, thank you very much to the witnesses for being available.

My first question is around the area of protection, or the area of jurisdiction more so. Do all countries share the same jurisdictional boundaries offshore? We have our 200-mile limit that we are responsible for. Do all countries share that same spatial responsibility as Canada does with our big offshore areas?

[Prof. Boris Worm]

Yes, all countries do.

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

Okay.

Canada has a huge coastline and a huge claim to a large landmass, with Alaska taking a big chunk out of that. Has Alaska been meeting these targets or goals anywhere near the 5% or 10% or the 30% that some of you have been recommending? Obviously, their fisheries activities have a huge impact on some of our west coast fisheries. Has Alaska been in line with some of these goals?

[Prof. Boris Worm]

Alaska is a well-known example—which I have in the table that is in my presentation and in the paper I will forward—and has a reasonably good track record in fisheries management. It does not have a very strong track record in marine protected areas. It has not yet fulfilled the 10% goal, which, by the way, is a national goal. It's not a regional goal. Even if Alaska would not fulfill it, the U.S., as the national entity responsible for Alaska, could fulfill the 10% goal, and will fulfill the 10% goal, often also by protecting offshore territories like the U.K. did with the Chagos Islands. The U.S. has done the same, but not in Alaska.

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

Thank you.

I'm going to carry on a little bit further with something that Mr. Doherty started down the path towards. Often a lot of our data that we achieved or gained for management of our fisheries, for understanding the biomass that's out there, comes from our harvest, our recreational and our commercial harvest fisheries. How would you propose that we obtain that data if we impose these absolute no-take areas, with no recreational, no aboriginal, no commercial fisheries? When we have limited resources to run the country to manage all of our fisheries, how would you obtain that data if those activities were removed?

[Prof. Boris Worm]

One possibility that we just implemented for the Galapagos Marine Reserve is that you look at the fisheries around the marine reserve over time. What we see there is very interesting because it's a large protected area that has been protected for some time, about 17 years now. Fisheries around the area are doing better and better, but only around that area.

In the rest of the eastern tropical Pacific, they're not doing better. It's around that area that those areas do realize. By monitoring the fisheries—again through this tool I mentioned, automatic identification systems but also through on-board observers—you could document large benefits on tuna fisheries, which have now led to fishermen's associations supporting the reserve, rather than being against the reserve, as they initially were, because they see those benefits realized. We can document those benefits even without fishing inside the protected area.

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

Have the other two witnesses any comments?

[Prof. Callum Roberts]

I can add a little bit.

There's a great deal that you can do to measure and monitor things inside protected areas without killing them—you do it by scuba diving, you do it by remote video, for example. This is a great way to bring in the university academic sector to assist with research, to look at the management, and to examine how well the management is working. We've been doing it in the Firth of Clyde on the west coast of Scotland since the protected area there was implemented, and we have some excellent data.

You don't have to kill fish to be able to measure their population sizes or to look, for example, at where they're moving.

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

Dr. Côté, do you have anything to add?

[Prof. Isabelle Côté]

Indeed, I completely agree. There's an increasing number of non-lethal methods to estimate the density of fish and other invertebrates. That includes, for example, using sound to estimate population abundance.

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

Mr. McDonald is next, for five minutes, please.

[Ken McDonald, Liberal, Avalon, NL]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to our witnesses.

Dr. Côté, I know my colleague was questioning the economic and social effects of establishing MPAs and making them no-take zones. You made reference to 10% being nowhere near the level we should be. We should be more up around 30%.

Being from Newfoundland and representing an area that's very connected to the fishery, if I as an MP—or even the chair, Mr. Simms, who is also from Newfoundland—were to institute a 30% MPA with no take around the island of Newfoundland, we wouldn't be able to go back to Newfoundland and we would be shutting down many small communities. To say that there is economic benefit from it that moves outside the MPA.... I mean, you're still outside the area in which people traditionally made their living and supported their families and supported their communities.

I remember the days of the cod moratorium 25 years ago that shut down the cod fishery, which Newfoundland was well connected to, and it devastated rural Newfoundland, literally. Communities basically became non-existent because of it. To say, in a place such as Newfoundland, 30% with no take is, I think, beyond reachable on many of our coastlines and in many of our communities.

Could you comment on this?