Evidence of meeting #82 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 mpa.
A recording is available from Parliament.
9:15 a.m.
Conservative
Ron Liepert Conservative Calgary Signal Hill, AB
I don't know anything about fish, but I like to eat them.
9:15 a.m.
Voices
Oh, oh!
9:15 a.m.
Liberal
9:15 a.m.
Voices
Oh, oh!
9:15 a.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Scott Simms
I'm sure it is, on every plate in every restaurant.
Mr. Lansbergen brought up a good point, the difference between forestry and fish. I can honestly say that, quite frankly, being involved in fisheries management or around it for a long time, there's no problem managing fish if they could stop swimming. It would be much better, right?
Now we go to Ms. Jordan, for seven minutes to start.
9:15 a.m.
Liberal
Bernadette Jordan Liberal South Shore—St. Margarets, NS
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I want to thank all the witnesses for being here today.
Dr. McKinney, thank you so much for your really interesting presentation. In your testimony you said you established dozens of MPAs, mostly to protect nursery areas and commercial species. Was there commercial fishing in those areas? You talked mostly about anglers and recreational fishing. One of the challenges we face here with MPAs is the number of commercial fisheries that will be impacted. Did you have to deal with the commercial fishery, as well as the anglers and recreational fishery, or was it strictly a recreational fishery?
9:15 a.m.
Executive Director, Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies, Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, As an Individual
No, it was primarily commercial for the nursery areas in that perspective. In our state, shrimping is a significant industry, and we have two types of shrimping industries: an inshore fishery within our bays and estuaries, and an offshore fishery, where the shrimp move when they become adults. The problem with the inshore fishery is that the fishers are very overcapitalized and will fish anywhere they can and drag a net wherever they can, and so they were taking very small shrimp from areas in nurseries that could not make it offshore.
As a result, we went through about a five-year study period to figure out where the most important nursery areas were, and we closed and changed all of them. We have an ongoing monitoring program. We have one of the best monitoring programs in the world, with 30 years of continuous data. Now it's more like 45 years, and we were able to detect changes in those populations in those nursery areas very quickly over a period of a year, so we could adjust the size of those areas.
I'm sorry for the long answer.
9:15 a.m.
Liberal
Bernadette Jordan Liberal South Shore—St. Margarets, NS
No, that's great. Thank you.
I'm not sure if your MPAs are set up the same way that ours are. Are they permanent, or are they reviewed over so many years and then you determine whether or not an area can be re-opened? Or are they strictly closed now, and thank you very much?
9:20 a.m.
Executive Director, Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies, Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, As an Individual
No, all our marine protected areas are sunsetted and must be positively reinstated. Five years is our typical period. We've done one that went for 10 years. That gives us an opportunity to make sure that the agency staff is doing their job, that they are collecting data on a regular basis, and having to prove that yes, this is still necessary.
9:20 a.m.
Liberal
Bernadette Jordan Liberal South Shore—St. Margarets, NS
At the end of five years, have any of them ever reverted from being an MPA?
9:20 a.m.
Executive Director, Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies, Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, As an Individual
Yes, two of them have. One, as I mentioned in my testimony, was a marine protected area that we set aside because of powerboats with their props going across shallow seagrass—most of our water is very shallow—creating scars that would erode those types of things. That was one we put in place, and within the five years, the legislature was convinced that it would work, that it was effective. They decided to take that law and make it statewide. As a result we were able to sunset that MPA because the same protection for that MPA went to our entire state of several million acres.
9:20 a.m.
Liberal
Bernadette Jordan Liberal South Shore—St. Margarets, NS
Thank you. I have one final question for you.
We all recognize the value of recreational fisheries and commercial fisheries. Was your process driven from the grassroots? Was it the fishers who came to you and said, we need to start protecting these areas, or was it a top-down effort to do this? We've heard different testimony throughout the country about what does and doesn't work, and when there's a grassroots movement to protect an area, there seems to be a lot more buy-in from communities. I'm just wondering if that was your experience as well.
9:20 a.m.
Executive Director, Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies, Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, As an Individual
I know it is. It's a combination of them. Every year, our program, our fisheries division, would review all our scientific information that we collect on a regular basis and make proposals of various types, some establishing MPAs, others fishing regulations. Then we go through an elaborate process where we bring in stakeholders and have them review it, but they also have an opportunity to propose changes in different rules. We listen to that and by the end of that process, what usually comes out is a combination of proposals from our scientific staff and from the community about the things they were seeing.
We did both.
9:20 a.m.
Liberal
Bernadette Jordan Liberal South Shore—St. Margarets, NS
Thank you.
Mr. Lansbergen, welcome. Congratulations on the new job, moving from the forestry committee to our fisheries committee.
9:20 a.m.
Liberal
Bernadette Jordan Liberal South Shore—St. Margarets, NS
It's always important to be involved in natural resources.
You talked a lot about the sustainability of the fishery. We've heard varying testimonies over the past number of months that being sustainable isn't enough. It's not enough to just keep something the same way; we need to grow it. What does a sustainable fishery look like?
9:20 a.m.
President, Fisheries Council of Canada
That's a good question. I'm not quite sure how to answer that at this point in time. As you said, everyone has a different perspective. For us, certainly in the fisheries sector, it would be to make sure that we're not doing damage to the fisheries stocks, that the stocks are sustainable, that they are stable if not growing.
I guess how you do that is a bigger question. We operate under the rules and regulations of DFO as well as our own moral obligation to do no harm and to leave the oceans better for our children than they are today. How you do that, I think, is always a challenge. It's very easy to point to past instances where, collectively, we've failed. How to go forward to make sure those types of things don't happen again is very challenging.
Also, in my experience with the forest industry, we can think that we're doing the best job, based on the best available information and science, but Mother Nature will remind us that she reigns supreme and change things on us. That's the difficulty.
9:20 a.m.
Liberal
Bernadette Jordan Liberal South Shore—St. Margarets, NS
Thank you.
Ms. Jessen, I'd like to go to you now for a second. You talked a lot about other countries that have brought in MPAs and are very successful with them.
We've heard testimony from people from the U.K., professors who were involved with marine protected areas who have said that although it's great that they are protected, they're not being enforced. There's a challenge because it's not enough to just say, “This is what we've done, and here are your boundaries”. You have to be able to enforce it.
Can you elaborate on that a bit because we hear of all of these other countries that have done wonderful things by having these percentages met, but are they are actually seeing the difference in the long term to those boundaries if the areas are not being enforced?
9:25 a.m.
National Director, Oceans Program, Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society
Certainly enforcement is a key element in the long-term management of a marine protected area. There are many elements to that, and there are different ways to do it. I know that in Australia they use overflights, and there are a lot of electronic tools that fishing boats now need to carry in order to ensure that they're not going inside marine protected areas. As the technology improves, I think there are a number of ways to ensure that the rules around the marine protected areas are enforced.
9:25 a.m.
Liberal
9:25 a.m.
Conservative
Mel Arnold Conservative North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC
Thank you, Chair.
I have talked to Mr. Doherty. I've been in touch with him a little bit. He is slowly recovering, but it's a tough go for him. Thank you for recognizing that.
First of all, for Mr. McKinney and Mr. Lansbergen, comparatively speaking, are Canada's and North America's fisheries better managed than other international fisheries around the world, particularly those in developing or underdeveloped countries that may not have the same management regime as we have in Canada? Are MPAs more necessary or more effective in those areas where there are less managed fisheries? I'd like to hear your comments on that.
9:25 a.m.
Executive Director, Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies, Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, As an Individual
I appreciate that. I'll start. The simple answer is absolutely, yes. We are fortunate, both in Canada and in the U.S., in that we have developed our wildlife management approaches based on the North American model, which has evolved over about a 130 or 140 years.
I've studied fisheries all around the world, and we have some of the best managed fisheries in the world. It's just evident with what we have and the abundance in dealing with it.
That is primarily because of the tenets of that model, which basically looks at fish and wildlife resources as a public trust resource that should be managed on a scientific basis for access to all. It's just like any approach. It's had its ups and downs over the years, but it has produced some of the most significant conservation victories, if you will, in the world.