Thank you.
My name is Chris Sporer. I'm with the Pacific Halibut Management Association, which represents the majority of commercial halibut licence-holders on Canada's Pacific coast. I'd like to thank the committee for the opportunity to speak to you today as part of your study of the criteria and process being used to identify and establish marine protected areas in Canada.
What I'd like to do is give you a brief background on our fishery, show you five maps, and then make three key points.
Canada's Pacific commercial halibut fishery is dominated by small family-owned businesses and significant first nations participation. Approximately 25% of the 435 limited entry commercial halibut licences are held by first nation tribal councils, bands, organizations, and individuals. Vessels participating in our fishery range from 31 feet to 80 feet, but most fall in the 36- to 45-foot range. We're basically a small boat fishery.
The fishery is managed on an ecosystem basis as part of the groundfish integration program. Under groundfish integration, each vessel is fully accountable for every single fish it catches in both target and non-target species—so that's halibut and non-halibut species—regardless of whether the fish is retained or released at sea. It's all verified through a monitoring program that includes 100% at-sea monitoring and 100% dockside monitoring. This program ensures that total fishing mortalities—retained as well as released at sea—stay within allowable harvest limits and encourage fishermen to fish selectively. Today our fishery is as much about not catching other species as it is about catching halibut.
I'd like to say that we do support the international commitment and Canada's target of protecting 5% of our coastline by the end of the year and 10% by 2020, and we believe that commercial fishermen can and should be partners in achieving this goal.
The committee has heard from a number of witnesses, and we agree with the comments on the need for a science-based, evidence-based process that is collaborative, open, and transparent, but we also share the concerns expressed. On the Pacific coast, we are not seeing science- and evidence-based decision-making, transparency, or collaboration.
We also support reconciliation with the indigenous people of Canada, but we share the apprehension expressed by other presenters that the convergence of protected areas and the reconciliation looks like reallocation of the fishery resource by zoning without compensation.
These issues have already been raised by other witnesses, so what I'd like to do is focus on the five maps and our key points.
The first map shows crucial halibut fishing locations, using data from 2012-16. As you can see, the fishery takes place almost entirely in what is called the northern shelf bioregion. The red, orange, and yellow areas are the high-catch areas.
For the second map, the PHMA has added the main fisheries closures and protected areas that were in effect during 2012-16, which show that the fleet had already been displaced from some of those areas and had to move and fish somewhere else.
For the third map, the PHMA added the Hecate Strait and Queen Charlotte Sound glass sponge reefs; you can see them on the map in pink. Those were designated in February of this year. The fourth map shows—you can see the polygon—the Scott Islands marine national wildlife area, which is intended for the protection of seabirds and is expected to be designated later this year.
We'll go to the fifth map and what it shows. You could toggle back and forth between the fourth and fifth map just to show the change. This shows some but not all areas that have been identified for protection through other processes that excluded the federal government and fisheries, and that are now on the table for consideration as part of the northern shelf bioregion MPA network planning process. As you can see when you toggle back and forth, there is a significant overlap of these identified areas with commercial halibut fishing locations. If these identified areas were adopted—or even just some of them—it would devastate our fishery in some areas. It would mean the death of it.
I've shown you these maps and I want to make three key points.
The first key point is that, as you can see, commercial fishing only takes place in a few areas of the coast, and this is for economic fisheries management and safety reasons. Fishermen try to fish in productive areas where there's a high catch per unit effort, which helps them keep their costs low in terms of fuel, food, fishing gear, and monitoring costs.
At the same time, due to the management regime and the monitoring regimes we have in place, halibut fishermen can fish only in certain areas of the coast. They can fish only in spots where they can catch halibut while avoiding or catching very little of the other species and staying within the limits for those other species. Safety considerations are also a factor in the choice of fishing locations. Smaller vessels may be available to fish only at certain times of the year and in certain areas.
The second key point I'd like to make is that closing certain areas of the coast without careful consideration could displace fishing effort, with possible negative ecological impacts.
By the end of 2017, we will have protected 16.5% of the northern shelf bioregion. If additional areas are closed to fishing, the ecosystem approach that we've adopted in our fisheries management would be disrupted. Fishermen would no longer be able to choose their location based on the relative abundance of species, and the fishing effort would be displaced to other areas. Vessels would be forced from spots where they can catch halibut with little or no catch of other species and forced into areas in which they may encounter greater amounts of vulnerable or long-lived species such as Bocaccio or yelloweye rockfish, putting pressure on these less abundant and weak species. We are under very strict requirements for those two species, for example.
Further, if fishermen are forced from productive, high catch per unit effort areas to less productive ones, this means increased fishing time and the need to use more gear to catch the same amount of fish. If you increase fishing time, that means more fuel. That means greater carbon emissions. More gear means increased benthic impacts and the risk of bycatch, for instance, of things like seabirds, something that we've worked very hard in our industry to minimize.
The MPA process needs to take into consideration and evaluate the ecological consequences of displacing fishing effort, but it also needs to take into account all the sustainability measures that have been implemented to date. At present they're not being factored into the analysis.
The third key point I'd like to make is that closing areas of the coast to fishing without careful consideration could have significant social and economic impacts on indigenous and non-indigenous fishermen and their families and coastal communities. At present that is not being fully factored into the discussion. The federal government has committed to working with stakeholders to identify new areas for protection while minimizing socio-economic impacts.
To meet this commitment, there needs to be comprehensive analysis that needs to factor in the cumulative impacts of all of these protected areas, not just looking at each area in isolation but looking at the cumulative impact of protecting all of these different areas over time. When they're looking at displacing fisheries from an area, they need to look at this not just in terms of the lost revenue but also in terms of what it costs the fishermen and their families if they're having to move from productive areas to less productive areas, in terms of fishing costs, revenues, and the value being extracted from the fishery.
For the vast majority of Canadians, the commercial fisheries are the only way of getting access to wild seafood. We provide food to Canada and the world. We can have biodiversity and healthy, sustainable commercial fisheries that can continue to provide food. Protected areas, as many other witnesses have pointed out, are one of the management tools in the tool kit that can get us there, but we need to get them right and we need the right process to get there.
Thank you.