I also represent the Fundy association of weir fishermen who are herring weir fishermen in southwest New Brunswick, in the Bay of Fundy. Between the two associations there is a total of 180 members, all small boat, inshore, independent, multi-species fishermen, fishing lobsters, scallops, herring, groundfish, river fisheries, and more.
I'm going to focus on the legislative amendments and then Lois is going to expand on some of our other issues.
We agree that the pace of establishing MPAs has been quite slow. It took 10 years for the Musquash MPA in our region, and that is problematic. Fishermen are deeply concerned about the health of the marine ecosystem they work in. There are occasionally big industrial development projects that threaten the environment they work in, and it would be very helpful if MPAs could go in more quickly. However, we do have some concerns with the legislative amendments as they're written.
One of our concerns is that we feel there may be better opportunities for corporations to work with governments under these amendments. For instance, if an MPA were put in by the minister quite quickly, inshore fishermen associations with very little resources and without lobbyists would have to, very quickly, try to lobby the minister around some of these areas. Whereas corporations are very well placed to do that kind of work quickly, we are not.
We have a couple concerns about freezing the footprint. Freezing the footprint, as it is today, is not a big problem, but when I read how the ongoing activities are defined, there is a great emphasis on activities that were done in the past year. That could be a problem, for instance, for our scallop fishery, which is a dragger fishery that would not be allowed in an MPA, most likely. Scallop fisheries move from fishing ground to fishing ground, so some of the most important scallop fishing grounds are not fished every year. They're fished maybe every three years or five years. They might fall through the cracks. There wouldn't be a lot of time for fishermen to change their fishing strategy or to replace the income from that segment of their livelihood if an MPA were put in very quickly.
We also have a sea cucumber fishery here. There is an area of interest—it's actually not officially an area of interest yet, but we found out yesterday it's in the draft network plan—where we have scallop dragging and sea cucumber fishing, and it is one of our most heavily fished areas in our whole district. The challenge we face is that the amount of fishing that happens there is going to make it very difficult for us to adjust to losing those fishing grounds. In the sea cucumber fishery, 90% of their fishing grounds are within the area in which there is an interest in having an MPA. It would be very difficult if they got word very quickly that they had to find a new source of livelihood.
As far as the amendments around oil and gas, our association and our members feel that oil and gas development should be prohibited categorically in a marine protected area. Not only are we concerned about the footprint of the MPA, but we're concerned when we hear oil and gas companies talk about directional drilling going down outside of an MPA , going horizontally, and then doing their work actually underneath the MPA. We feel there needs to be stronger wording on that. It should be completely prohibited, in our opinion.
There is also the compensation aspect of the amendment for oil and gas. We have concerns that fishermen in the sea cucumber fishery, for instance, who don't have a lot of other licences to draw on, could lose their whole livelihood with an MPA in their area, and there's no discussion of compensation. In fact, we were told that this will not be an option for them, yet the oil and gas industry will receive compensation. So we have some concerns there.
In general, the speed at which this can happen could be a problem for us, but we think there need to be standards. We agree with Dr. Rashid Sumaila that there should be some clear standards as to what's allowed and not allowed in an MPA. That will help us adjust and know what to expect. We also think that there needs to be a more adaptive management approach.
I'll hand it over to Lois now.