[Inaudible—Editor]
Evidence of meeting #65 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 mpas.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Evidence of meeting #65 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 mpas.
A recording is available from Parliament.
9:35 a.m.
Professor, Fisheries Economics Research Unit, Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries, University of British Columbia, As an Individual
[Inaudible—Editor]
9:35 a.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Scott Simms
Dr. Sumaila, at some point you may want to work it into your answers, but I have to move on to the next questioner.
Mr. Donnelly, for seven minutes, please.
June 8th, 2017 / 9:35 a.m.
NDP
Fin Donnelly NDP Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to all our witnesses for being here on World Oceans Day and talking to us about this important topic of how we protect our oceans and achieve the target of 10% by 2020.
Dr. Sumaila, I'll start with you. You talked about economic benefits. You referenced small-scale, community-based fisheries. We heard on Tuesday in the committee about competing world views, for instance, the current paradigm that we're in versus, I'll call it, the new modern, emerging, sustainable world view, or that other world view. We've been discussing the idea of balance of economics versus environment and what that balance might look like.
We've just heard from WWF in terms of the state of global fisheries, and I think you have statistics about how so many fisheries are in decline, overfished, or at capacity.
The question is, how do we manage to make this shift? You talked about the short-term impacts of MPAs. How do we move in that direction, given our current world view and recognizing that, yes, maybe we have to change, and maybe we are out of balance? How do we move in that direction when we have fishermen who have to pay their mortgages?
9:35 a.m.
Professor, Fisheries Economics Research Unit, Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries, University of British Columbia, As an Individual
It's like any investment program. When you are in serious imbalance, like we are with the fisheries, we need to take drastic action. Drastic action means that society has to be willing to invest, one way or the other, in order to get us back in balance.
Our analysis is showing that if we are able to put in marine protected areas, to bring in sustainable management, we'll get lots of benefits in the future. We do have numbers for this, showing that the problem is how to move from here to there. This is where people like you come in. In the rebuilding, for example, see that there is enough money to compensate fishers to help them to adjust to the short-term costs while we move society to the higher-level benefit. We're talking about billions of dollars.
Fisheries are really important, if you think globally. The reasons some of us are working so hard for sustainability are many. Number one, we take about 120 billion tonnes of fish a year out of the ocean. If you convert that to the number of mature cows, just to make you realize, that's about 120 million mature cows. I'll call them fish cows, if you like, that we pull out of the ocean each year, which is more than all of the cows we kill on our farms. We employ about 260 million people. Many are young people who will have no jobs, so imagine the security problems that we'll all face.
We need to invest. When I say we, the public and private sectors need to invest, soften the blow to our fishermen. I have a lot of sympathy for fishermen, because they are important. They are people, just like the rest of us. They need to keep their lives going. But we need that investment to move this to a higher level for everybody.
9:40 a.m.
NDP
Fin Donnelly NDP Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC
Thank you.
You referenced a number of studies in your presentation and your remarks. If you could provide this committee with those, or follow up with those, that would be extremely helpful.
9:40 a.m.
Professor, Fisheries Economics Research Unit, Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries, University of British Columbia, As an Individual
Very good.
Also, regarding the last question about the numbers, we have actually calculated numbers for the impact of oil spills in the Gulf of Mexico. We did calculations for the northern gateway to see what would happen to the fishing revenues and so on, if we had oil spills. I can share those, too.
9:40 a.m.
NDP
Fin Donnelly NDP Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC
Thank you. I appreciate that.
Dr. Leys, you gave us a fascinating and specific look at the glass sponge reefs in Hecate Strait.
One thing you caught my attention on, which I think the committee could pick up on, is consultation. I think you made a fairly straightforward observation that making information about every decision available on the website, essentially making those decisions public, would be extremely helpful. That is often overlooked. I think it's something we need to look at because when we were up north and on the west coast, we heard that the consultation process for determining protection in whatever areas of the ocean is key. Trying to achieve that consensus is extremely difficult, so I think your point about decision-making and making that public is really important.
I don't know if you want to add anything really quickly.
9:40 a.m.
Professor, Department of Biological Sciences, University of Alberta, As an Individual
Really quickly, the credit should go.... It should not be forgotten that Fisheries and Oceans has a very good system. They have the CSAS, Canadian Science Advisory Secretariat, and they have the SAR, a science advisory report, that comes out of that. That is made available. There's a lot that goes on in there, after that, that really could come up. Even as a teacher, if you try to teach this and look for the information online.... Colleagues have that information. They say, “Look at the website.” You look, but there's nothing there. They say, “Oh, it's another document. We can make that available.” It is there, but I think additional effort is needed to make that communication more readily accessible.
9:40 a.m.
NDP
Fin Donnelly NDP Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC
Absolutely.
In my remaining one minute, Mr. Crowley, could you repeat your second recommendation? You gave us three. The third one is minimum standards. I want to ask about minimum standards, but perhaps you could remind me what your second recommendation was.
9:40 a.m.
Vice-President, Arctic Program, World Wildlife Fund-Canada
It was to recognize and develop the concept of indigenous protected areas.
9:40 a.m.
NDP
Fin Donnelly NDP Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC
Thank you.
On minimum standards, do you think the recommendations you're talking about for the Arctic should apply or could apply to the Pacific and the Atlantic?
9:40 a.m.
Vice-President, Arctic Program, World Wildlife Fund-Canada
Certainly with regard to oil and gas, the case is quite clear. With regard to other impacts, you have to look to the objective you're trying to achieve with that marine protected area. Certain things will not be compatible. Certainly, bottom trawling that impacts on the benthic environment is unlikely to be compatible in most MPAs, but you do have to look at each one to see what you're trying to achieve.
An example was given earlier of a shipping channel. If that shipping channel can be managed properly within an MPA and not impact on the objective of that MPA that it's trying to achieve, then it should be allowed to continue. If it cannot, then it's a different story.
9:45 a.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Scott Simms
Thank you, Mr. Donnelly. Thank you, Mr. Crowley, as well.
We'll go to Mr. Finnigan for seven minutes, please.
9:45 a.m.
Liberal
Pat Finnigan Liberal Miramichi—Grand Lake, NB
Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to the guests for being here today.
I'm on the other coast, but I guess protecting our marine areas is important around the world. This is very interesting.
Dr. Sumaila, how important do you think the new technology we have today is to gather resources? We've heard from different witnesses that it's very hard to monitor expansive MPAs in the ocean. How do you monitor them? How do you make sure they're not exploited, or how do you know the monitoring is working?
Where do you think technology is today? Do you think we are doing much better today with it and can gather hard data on the numbers we're trying to get?
9:45 a.m.
Professor, Fisheries Economics Research Unit, Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries, University of British Columbia, As an Individual
About three or four years ago, I gave a talk in California. There were tech people there. When I finished my talk, I was asked a question by a young guy who said, “Rashid, what can we do in Silicon Valley to help you guys sustain our futures?” I told him, “Create an app that will count all the fish in the ocean and we will go far.”
Things are really moving in that direction. There is a group called Global Fish Watch, and UBC is working with them now. They use satellite imagery to count the boats on the water, and from there we estimate the quantity of fish they must be taking, and so on. There's a lot going on in that field, and I think it is a big, hopeful thing.
There will be a situation very soon whereby we can sit in this room and actually watch most of Canada's waters and see who is there, who is active, and what they are doing. I'm very hopeful.
9:45 a.m.
Liberal
Pat Finnigan Liberal Miramichi—Grand Lake, NB
Thank you.
Dr. Leys, I don't know a whole lot about the sponge reefs, but from what I understand, they're quite deep in the water. Would you say that the activities on those reefs, now that we have bigger ships and can go farther, would hardly have been disturbed 100 to 150 years ago, and that the activities right now are probably what is harming them, if at all? How can we measure the damage that has been done? As you showed, those are very fragile pieces of nature. Do we know whether some have disappeared already?
9:45 a.m.
Professor, Department of Biological Sciences, University of Alberta, As an Individual
Yes, we do. There are reports on all patrol activities over the years that have been documented. The region I showed you is the northern complex. In 2012 I went to a suite of different spots in the central complex, and I didn't go to the southern complex—it's considerably damaged. The reason I work in the northern complex is that I know I can get really good information for the physiology, the information that's required.
The damage is devastating. I took colleagues a couple of weeks ago on the last couple of dives we did to see some of the places in the northern part of the northern complex where there are broken sponges.
The next questions are what the recovery potential is, what really happens as the next step, and how we can monitor this. We should be protecting these areas even if there is damage.
9:45 a.m.
Liberal
Pat Finnigan Liberal Miramichi—Grand Lake, NB
Some would say, so that happened, what effect does it have on the rest of the ecosystem? We've heard incredible testimony as to how much water they filter, the sediment, and all of that. Did that cause any effects on the rest of the ecosystem? What do we know about that?
9:45 a.m.
Professor, Department of Biological Sciences, University of Alberta, As an Individual
We have mapping data now and crazy numbers of counts of fish. What we can see is that where the sponges are intact—I can send you the data my students have been working up—you have 20 fish per five square metres, little juveniles in among...everywhere. As soon as you get to where there are not sponges, you don't see that.
The halibut move in and out of that area. It's amazing, these halibut that swoop around. It's remarkable to see. You see more at some seasons, because they move through. Where there aren't these structures, these large elevations of sponges, you have fewer fish. Presumably, the correlation is that this is an area in which small fish are hanging out, away from the current. There's a lot of current in that area, so it's a sort of protection for them. It generally is like a bush: it has all the birds in it.
9:50 a.m.
Liberal
Pat Finnigan Liberal Miramichi—Grand Lake, NB
Yes.
Mr. Crowley, at WWF do you do research on your own?
9:50 a.m.
Vice-President, Arctic Program, World Wildlife Fund-Canada
We support research, and we certainly have supported research with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans for years.
9:50 a.m.
Liberal
9:50 a.m.
Vice-President, Arctic Program, World Wildlife Fund-Canada
In our case, with the Arctic program, for instance, we have the Arctic species conservation fund. That fund is directed to conservation objectives. For instance, if it is to better understand where narwhals go and how they react to ships, and one of our conservation objectives is related to that, that's the research we will support. It depends on which applications come in.
9:50 a.m.
Liberal
Pat Finnigan Liberal Miramichi—Grand Lake, NB
We had testimony from first nations communities the other day. They were talking about the economic side of this as well. They haven't said no—from what I heard, anyway—to exploiting the resource on the land and in the water if it means sustainable development.
If they were to say that perhaps oil and gas could be done or perhaps mining could be done, how would you react to that?
9:50 a.m.
Vice-President, Arctic Program, World Wildlife Fund-Canada
For us, with marine protected areas, it's clear. For either seismic activity or oil and gas exploitation, it's not compatible.
We accept that in the north there is a lot of poverty and there needs to be community and economic development. That's why we're beginning work to help communities with inshore fisheries development, for instance, on a small scale. What I've been hearing about in the north, though, through numerous consultations, is the balance they see at the community level to protect it first and then see what may be compatible, as opposed to letting everything in until there's too much, and then it's too late. They're very clear about that.