Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the committee, for the opportunity to be here today.
The Government of Canada remains committed to increasing the protection of Canada's marine and coastal areas from the current 7.75% to 10% by 2020. My role includes managing regional initiatives under this marine conservation agenda. To achieve this target, we will continue establishing marine protected areas and marine refuges to safeguard the health of our oceans for future generations.
I'm here today to talk about the Eastport marine protected area, which was one of the first Oceans Act MPAs established in the country.
During the early 1990s, harvesters in the Eastport area recognized serious declines in lobster. This decline was attributed to redirected fishing efforts following the groundfish closures known as the cod moratorium. In 1995, the Fisheries Resource Conservation Council recommended that harvesters take measures to increase egg production, reduce exploitation rates, and improve stock structure, and that local stakeholder groups and management officials collaborate to sustain their resources. In response, the Eastport Peninsula Lobster Protection Committee was formed in 1995 to implement a conservation strategy for lobster on the Eastport Peninsula.
Based on some initial successes in this initiative, such as increased community involvement and v-notching to protect egg-bearing female lobsters, the committee developed a joint project agreement with Fisheries and Oceans Canada in 1997 to close two areas of prime lobster habitat. Those were Round Island and Duck Islands. That was done under the Fisheries Act. This agreement also established the 400-square-kilometre Eastport Peninsula lobster management area, limiting access to lobster fisheries to the seven local communities.
In 1999 the committee approached Fisheries and Oceans Canada to establish these two closed areas as an Oceans Act MPA as a way to provide long-term protection. At that time, marine protection as a concept was still developing, and the department pursued this area in order to lay the foundation for future conservation efforts.
Following years of data-gathering and consultations, Eastport was designated as an MPA in 2005. The main conservation objective for the Eastport MPA is to maintain a viable population of American lobster through the conservation, protection, and sustainable use of resources and habitats within the area.
A science monitoring program has taken place inside and outside the MPA since 1997 to determine the size of the lobster population. This includes collection of data from commercial logbooks and at-sea sampling to determine catch per unit effort and size structure of the population. Catch per unit effort is an indirect measure of the abundance of a target species. A tagging program compares the average size of lobster inside versus outside the MPA. In addition, specialized traps have been introduced to monitor very small and very large lobsters. Future research will examine lobster movements and spillover MPA effects and will estimate egg production inside the MPA.
DFO has heard concerns with respect to the size of the MPA and its contribution to the conservation of biodiversity. The science monitoring program has shown higher abundance of large egg-bearing females and increases in mean size of both male and female lobsters within the population. It also continues to show a stable catch per unit effort both inside the MPA and in the surrounding Eastport Peninsula lobster management area.
The Eastport MPA continues to meet its goal of maintaining a viable population of American lobster and includes the participation of stakeholders in the management of the resource. To support effective management within the MPA, a management plan was released in 2007 and updated in 2013 in consultation with the Eastport MPA Advisory Committee, which is co-chaired by a member of the EPLPC and DFO. A third management plan will be released in 2018, covering the next five years.
Following the initial management plan release, annual service-level agreements were developed with the conservation and protection branch of DFO in order to increase patrols during vulnerable times of the year. As of 2007, additional patrols of the MPA were conducted. Compliance with the management measures in the Eastport MPA has been high due in part to the enhanced patrols and increased stewardship from the local communities and fishers.
Regular consultations have occurred with a variety of local stakeholders and other groups on the Eastport MPA. An annual general meeting of the Eastport MPA Advisory Committee and regular science-focused and public meetings serve a critical role in adaptive management of the MPA.
This community-driven MPA has brought fish harvesters, government, community youth, academics, and science together. As a result, there has been sharing of information and knowledge for better management of the area and its lobster fishery. Since the establishment of the Eastport MPA, we continue to become more knowledgeable on the marine environment and how marine protected areas and refuges can help play an important role in the department's ongoing conservation effort.
While scientists have documented the benefits of individual MPAs such as Eastport, the site selection process for MPAs is evolving. In recent years, potential MPA sites have been more informed by science—such as the consideration of ecologically and biologically significant areas—and future MPAs will be identified in the context of marine protected area networks.
Thank you for the opportunity to speak today, and I look forward to your questions.