Fisheries Committee on June 13th, 2017

[Prof. Mark Carr]

I have three responses.

The first comment you made was that only strict no-take reserves were considered in California. That clearly is not true. You can see that is the case as soon as you look at a map of the network of protected areas. If you look at the maps, there are red protected areas, which are the no-take areas, what are called “marine reserves”. Then there are large blue areas that are called “marine conservation areas”. In fact, some of those marine conservation areas were made specifically to allow recreational fishing but prevent commercial fishing. Others allow both recreational and commercial fishing, as long as they were perceived not to impact the integrity of the ecosystem.

A classic example of that is salmon fishing. If you look at the network off California, the reserves were inshore. Then they were extended offshore by these conservation areas that would allow the take of salmon where there was perceived to be little effect on the rest of the ecosystem from removing salmon within those areas. So clearly, that's not true.

However, with regard to his comment about the amount of fishing area removed by the MPAs, where the recreational fishing in California is greatest, as you can imagine, is off southern California. Unfortunately, off southern California is also the least amount of rocky reef habitat relative to central, north–central, and northern California. In southern California, for the protection of those productive rocky reef ecosystems, there was greater conflict because there was simply less data available on whether to fish or to put into protection.

However, when he says that 40% value, I think he is focused on that southern California area. It's clearly not true. Along the 1,300 kilometres of California, there's no way that 40% of the recreational area was taken out of commission. The—

[Robert Sopuck, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB]

Sorry to interrupt, but I don't have much time.

The American Sportfishing Association is a very credible group. It has funded thousands of conservation projects across the United States, so I'm not sure they can be dismissed that easily, but I catch your point.

Regarding catch-and-release angling, where the hooking mortality rate is either 5% or lower, is that considered by you to be a fairly innocuous activity in just about every MPA?

[Prof. Mark Carr]

As you can imagine, it depends on that particular activity.

For example, you can catch and release in shallow waters where you don't have barotrauma issues. You can't do it in deeper waters. You have to figure out with what species and where that seems to be an appropriate activity.

[Robert Sopuck, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB]

I'll buy that.

What kind of evaluation has been conducted in California regarding the effectiveness of MPAs?

[Prof. Mark Carr]

There are three sorts of longevities of protected areas in the State of California. The oldest ones—and there are only about four of those that were created back in the 1990s—have been around for quite a while. The next were a series of no-take marine reserves around the northern Channel Islands off the coast of Santa Barbara. Those were created prior to the statewide network of protected areas. The statewide network is the youngest protected areas of those three categories.

It it takes a while for the consequences of protection to be manifest—you have to wait for individual species to grow up and increase in number—but where it's been examined in the northern Channel Islands, there have been impressive responses by species within the protected areas. Importantly, what you see in those protected areas are increases in the amount of fish biomass—the number and the size of the fish combined—both inside and outside the protected areas, but the increase is much greater within the protected areas.

[Robert Sopuck, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB]

If I could ask one more quick question, is the displacement of people and some activities a given when establishing an MPA?

[Prof. Mark Carr]

It's a given that many activities will have to be displaced to other locations along the coastline.

[Robert Sopuck, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB]

Of course, the question is, what if there are no other locations?

But I take your point. Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

Thank you, Mr. Sopuck.

Mr. Donnelly for seven minutes, please.

[Fin Donnelly, NDP, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to both of our witnesses for providing your testimony today.

Dr. Carr, perhaps I could start with you. You've been studying MPAs, protected areas, for a long time, since the 1980s—you said for almost 30 years—so you have a wealth of knowledge. You talked about two types: very large protected areas and a network of smaller protected areas.

This committee has been studying this for a while. We've travelled up north in Canada and on the west coast, and intend to travel to the east coast. One thing I've noticed so far from our interactions with the communities is the lack of process and how critical the process is in establishing MPAs.

I think, Byng, you mentioned the inclusion of industry and stakeholders, and how important that is.

Dr. Carr, could you talk about what you would recommend for Canada and this government, with often-conflicting mandates, to consider in implementing a proper process?

[Prof. Mark Carr]

You bet. Remember, I am an ecologist, not a policy-maker. I'm a student of that process, and most of my experience is based out of the California process.

I have to say that the California process, the Marine Life Protection Act, was the most stakeholder-involved process in the history of California. It was extraordinary. Because of that, it was also quite expensive. As I said, remember that the role of the scientists in that process was to provide stakeholders with scientific guidance for the design of the network. Nonetheless, it was the stakeholders, in fact, who actually designed the network themselves.

That really underscores to me the importance of how you engage stakeholders in the process. That was one particular way they were engaged. They can be engaged in various ways, but there's no question, in my opinion, that this engagement of as many stakeholders, representatives of stakeholder groups is critical to both the quality of the product that you generate and the support for what you end up with.

[Fin Donnelly, NDP, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

Can you tell me, how important is it to have a process with a deadline or without a deadline?

[Prof. Mark Carr]

Yes. In California, remember that this act was generated by the governor, “the Governator” himself, Schwarzenegger.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[Prof. Mark Carr]

The process extended for a while. As his term came to an end, it was critical that the creation of the network be finished by the end of his term. The concern was simply that regardless of who became the next governor, there would not be as much interest in the legacy that he was creating by that. We were under a very abrupt deadline as well, and it caused problems to some extent.

[Fin Donnelly, NDP, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

Just to clarify, was the deadline included in the regulations?

[Prof. Mark Carr]

No, not at all. It was a political deadline recognizing that it needed to be done by the end of his term, but there was no deadline in the actual act itself.

[Fin Donnelly, NDP, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

I have a couple of minutes and a couple of more questions. Maybe in the second round I'll ask the second question.

First, in looking around the globe, Dr. Carr, which countries with an established network of MPAs are producing the best results, in your opinion?

[Prof. Mark Carr]

This is a very simple answer because, as I mentioned in the introduction, when it comes to a science-based network design of MPAs, there is one, and it's the State of California's.

There are no other science-based networks of protected areas around the world. Even the Great Barrier Reef, which we think of as one of the more massive systems of protected areas, was not designed as a network the way California was. What's particularly important is that what you're venturing into now in both British Columbia and the east coast will be the second science-based network of protected areas in the world.

Honestly, after having reviewed the proposed science guidance for the British Columbia network, the hope would be.... I think what you'll find is that British Columbia—I haven't reviewed the east coast process—is building upon what California did and in various ways refining it. One would hope that, in fact, it will displace California as a model for how you go about designing networks of protected areas.

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

You have one minute.

[Fin Donnelly, NDP, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

I will ask the opposite. Which MPA areas in the world are having the worst results?

[Prof. Mark Carr]

Even though they're having some results, I suspect that it's in Europe in the Mediterranean and then some of the more northern European protected areas. To be frank, their responses are not as strong as one would hope, in part I think because they were not designed as a network.

The history of creating protected areas is of haphazard efforts of making one here and making one there, not thinking of them as a system or a network. As a consequence, they don't create the benefits that a network does. The idea of a network is that the whole is greater than the sum of the separate MPAs. The product of these haphazard MPAs is just how well each one of those does individually. They don't contribute to one another the way a network does.

It's that history of creating MPAs without a broader context, a spatial planning approach, that has led to a lower conservation value.

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

Thank you, Mr. Donnelly.

I just have a couple of points of clarification. You mentioned a network of MPAs across California in contrast to the Great Barrier Reef. You are talking about Australia. Is that correct?

[Prof. Mark Carr]

Yes. I'm sorry.

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

Thank you.

No, no, that's okay. I just want to get a couple of things on the record.

The other one is, when you say “Governator”, you're not talking about Jerry Brown, are you?