Fisheries Committee on April 26th, 2022

[Dr. Bernard Vigneault]

Thank you for the question.

For shrimp, we use abundance indices. We haven't determined an absolute biomass value. These are indices that were established several years ago as we set a precautionary principle for the species.

[Serge Cormier, Liberal, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

How much biomass is there, approximately?

Do you have quantitative data, in tonnes?

[Dr. Bernard Vigneault]

We're working on a method to extrapolate a total amount of biomass from our indices, but I don't have the figures with me.

[Serge Cormier, Liberal, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

We'd appreciate you sending us those.

I recently saw some figures on redfish, which are abundant in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. You say that redfish have consumed between 168,000 and 221,000 tonnes of shrimp over the past two years.

Is that correct?

[Dr. Bernard Vigneault]

Unfortunately, I don't have the scientific data for that region of Quebec in front of me, but yes, redfish is a major shrimp predator, and its population has increased in recent years.

[Serge Cormier, Liberal, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

In 2021, redfish fed on 168,000 tonnes of shrimp, while the TAC for shrimp was at 18,000 tonnes. Again, it's the process that I’m questioning.

Math was not my favourite subject in school, but these two numbers are easy enough for the average person to understand. If redfish consume 168,000 tonnes of shrimp and the TAC is 18,000 tonnes for shrimp, how can we expect the resource to recover?

If redfish feed on that many shrimp and quotas are cut, how does that help the stocks?

I'm trying to understand how you evaluate these things.

[Dr. Bernard Vigneault]

Actually, when there is known pressure on the stocks, whether it be natural or fisheries-related, we factor that in and deliver cautious scientific advice.

You mentioned redfish predation, which is considerable. There are also factors related to warming and anoxic waters in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, which have significantly reduced the habitat for Gulf shrimp over the last few years. We do not expect these conditions to improve in the short term. Our scientific advice was based on all of these parameters.

[Serge Cormier, Liberal, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

As you can imagine, these figures are debatable, in fact, the industry also questions them.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you, Mr. Cormier. You've gone over time.

We'll now go to Madame Desbiens, for six minutes or less, please.

[Caroline Desbiens, Bloc, Beauport—Côte-de-Beaupré—Île d’Orléans—Charlevoix, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to ask the scientists some questions.

First, how do you proceed when you send boats out to assess the resources?

Could you give me an idea of how that's done?

[Dr. Bernard Vigneault]

Thank you for the question.

We use a range of methods to do field surveys. We conduct surveys aboard ships and fishing vessels in the marine environment, scuba diving surveys, remote camera surveys, and river surveys for salmon, for example. That means there's a whole range of methods for collecting evidence and data, which are incorporated into the scientific advice that we produce to support decisions.

[Caroline Desbiens, Bloc, Beauport—Côte-de-Beaupré—Île d’Orléans—Charlevoix, QC]

I'd like to ask our witnesses a question along the same lines as what Mr. Cormier was talking about.

Is there regular communication between the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and the Department of the Environment on climate change, for example?

Is any predictability possible?

Do your scientists communicate with them?

[Dr. Bernard Vigneault]

We do indeed communicate with them.

We work in collaboration with several other departments, but first and foremost, we work with Environment and Climate Change Canada on all aspects of modelling ocean conditions and the impacts of climate change. We also contribute to their weather forecasts.

[Caroline Desbiens, Bloc, Beauport—Côte-de-Beaupré—Île d’Orléans—Charlevoix, QC]

Thank you.

The natural mortality rate for herring and mackerel is said to be 60%, which is almost entirely due to seal predation, and fishing only alters 5% to 6% of the stocks.

Do you also have an analysis of what you are going to do about pinnipeds?

What are the possible solutions to reduce predation of herring and mackerel?

[Dr. Bernard Vigneault]

Thank you for the question.

In all cases, when we produce scientific advice, we assess the causes that explain the trajectory of fish stocks, whether it is due to fishing or other causes. We often find that natural mortality, for all sorts of reasons, including predation, is a predominant factor compared to mortality caused by fishing.

In many cases, despite the increase in the population of some pinniped species to almost historic levels, we see that this is not a predominant factor in predicting the trajectory of fish stocks. There are also logistical constraints when considering management approaches for pinniped populations.

[Caroline Desbiens, Bloc, Beauport—Côte-de-Beaupré—Île d’Orléans—Charlevoix, QC]

There must be different ways of evaluating resources when it comes to lobster, cod, halibut and capelin, for example. I know no one here wants to hear about capelin anymore, but I'll mention it once more.

Do you have any teams able to assess that?

For example, do you communicate regularly with fishers who work in the field, or does that happen only occasionally?

In your study, how do you consider the information obtained from fishers?

[Dr. Bernard Vigneault]

Thank you for the question.

We have key collaborations and we consider the information provided by fishers in different ways. It can start from the very beginning. In some cases we do data collection in partnership with industry, which provides us with samples and participates in sampling. It can also go as far as interpretation and peer review of the data, where we invite industry experts to provide and validate information about fishing activities, observations and methods used.

[Caroline Desbiens, Bloc, Beauport—Côte-de-Beaupré—Île d’Orléans—Charlevoix, QC]

Do your own observations correlate with those made in the field, or do you often make observations that run counter to the information provided?

[Dr. Bernard Vigneault]

Sometimes there can be significant differences between observations in the field and peer-reviewed scientific opinion. This is not because the observations are not good. It is because correct interpretation of observations require systematic data and models; in short, a broader context.

Often cited cases include forage fish, which tend to aggregate. From the point of view of fishing activity, you can end up with very high concentrations of shrimp or forage fish in one place. However, when we do the assessment of indices or biomass at the scale of the study area, in some cases we can see a decrease in stocks.

[Caroline Desbiens, Bloc, Beauport—Côte-de-Beaupré—Île d’Orléans—Charlevoix, QC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you, Madame Desbiens. That was exactly on time.

We'll now go to Ms. Barron, for six minutes or less, please.

[Lisa Marie Barron, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Thank you, Chair.

A big thank you to all of those who are here today, all the witnesses and all those from the science sector. It's great to have you all here and to learn more about the work you're doing, which is vital to our ability to ensure that sound decision-making is being done.

I have many questions, but there is one in particular I am hoping to find out a little more on from Dr. Miller-Saunders.

Dr. Miller-Saunders, I know, was at DFO prior to my time of being elected as a member of Parliament, and I appreciated reading the information that was presented at that time. The report was published in March, which was initially written, of course, in 2012, around the PRV found in B.C.'s open-net fish farms. I'm wondering if we could learn a little bit more, now that this report has been published, around the importance of this knowledge being presented in a timely manner, and maybe some more information around what happened in that delay.

[Dr. Kristi Miller-Saunders, Senior Research Scientist, Department of Fisheries and Oceans]

The study took place in 2012, and a report was prepared in that same year. The delay was due to a disagreement between me and the industry vets on the interpretation of the science. That delay has continued for 10 years, because apparently there needs to be an agreement on the interpretation of the science before the report can be put in, or before a manuscript can be prepared. That is perpetual over the last 10 years, despite the fact that the agreement is no longer active.

I'm sorry. What was your specific question?

[Lisa Marie Barron, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Expanding on that a bit, I'm trying to understand the process that was taken that resulted in a 10-year span of our not seeing the results of the science that was conducted by you and presented in 2012.

[Dr. Kristi Miller-Saunders]

The importance of that study was that it was the first study to document the presence of PRV in salmon in the Pacific northwest. It definitely could have informed a lot of the work moving forward. However, subsequent to that, there were other studies by other groups on that particular virus. My own program continued to work with different sets of samples to better understand the potential of that virus to cause disease and the prevalence of the virus in our natural wild populations.

Our work has shown that the virus is likely capable of causing disease in both chinook salmon and Atlantic salmon. The same kinds of disease processes that we see in other parts of the world have been seen in our salmon in aquaculture in British Columbia, and we do see some similar types of pathological changes in our wild chinook salmon populations.

Recently, we have a paper coming out that shows PRV is one of the agents most strongly associated with population-level impacts in chinook and coho salmon.