It's Dr. Moran.
Evidence of meeting #21 for Fisheries and Oceans in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was dfo.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Evidence of meeting #21 for Fisheries and Oceans in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was dfo.
A recording is available from Parliament.
1 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Ocean Networks Canada
It's Dr. Moran.
1 p.m.
NDP
Lisa Marie Barron NDP Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC
Thank you, Dr. Moran.
Dr. Moran, you spoke quite a bit about the importance of having open and freely available data and that it was a core foundation for informing policy and management. We had chief science adviser Dr. Mona Nemer here last week, who highlighted some of the challenges in having open and available data.
I'm wondering if you could speak a bit more about how Ocean Networks Canada uses government data and how a more transparent system would help in your efforts.
1:05 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Ocean Networks Canada
Thank you for that question, because I'd like to bring up some experience we've had with DFO.
After the Baum and Fuller report “Canada's Marine Fisheries: Status, Recovery Potential and Pathways” came out in 2016, DFO Pacific science worked with us. We actually developed what we called a “fishery science reporting system” that addresses the recommendations from that report and addresses some of the comments here from the other witnesses. In fact, it provides scientific information, trajectory information about species, economic value, abundant species, life-cycle information, geography, etc. It also links to all of the open data, both in the federal government and in academic publications.
We developed it. Because we are a big data enterprise, we were able to develop this tool. We were on to phase three and there has been no action since 2018. We see this as a national tool that could begin to open this transparency. It would begin to look like what the U.S. NOAA does in their fishery service. They actually have a very open and transparent delivery of data across all species, called Stock SMART. This would allow all of us to have that information, including the lack of assessment data, which I think has been brought up here again.
I think this could be a way forward. We'd be happy to work again with Fisheries and Oceans science across the country to advance this tool, to open up that transparency, so that everyone understands on both the social science side and the hard science side what the gaps are in that information and what kind of risks we are taking in making these decisions.
I also want to touch on the fact that there was a comment about where we bring in the fishers themselves. There's a model in the U.S. called Sea Grant where, in fact, they are really funding regionally the interests of the fishers—what science they need to help them advance their economic benefit. That might be a model to look at going forward.
Finally, I'd like to comment on the fact that we will not have a lot of ships to capture a lot of these data in the open ocean and in some of the coastal areas, and we are not now moving forward with looking at systems, autonomous surface vehicles, because we can no longer afford to operate these vessels with people on board. This is the future and it's been advancing in the past three years. There are many publications on how these autonomous vehicles are now being used for stock assessment and understanding of evolution of species as the climate changes.
Thank you.
1:05 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ken McDonald
Thank you, Ms. Barron.
We'll now go to Mr. Small for five minutes or less, please.
May 5th, 2022 / 1:05 p.m.
Conservative
Clifford Small Conservative Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
First of all, Mr. Chair, I'm going to direct a question to Mr. Oldford.
Thank you very much, Mr. Oldford, for taking the time out of your busy schedule to come here and help out with our study.
I heard you mention that there's been a big decrease in salmon population in the Salish Sea since the 1970s. What year did the United States bring in the Marine Mammal Protection Act?
1:05 p.m.
PhD Candidate and Scientist, University of British Columbia, As an Individual
I'm not 100% sure what year it was, but my guess is that it was in the early 1970s.
1:05 p.m.
Conservative
Clifford Small Conservative Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL
Maybe it was 1972. I'm not sure, but it was in the 1970s.
Prior to the introduction of the Marine Mammal Protection Act.... We all know that pinnipeds are big predators of salmon. Do you think that basically the elimination of controls on the pinniped population has affected predation in coastal British Columbia?
1:05 p.m.
PhD Candidate and Scientist, University of British Columbia, As an Individual
I can attempt to answer your question.
The facts that we know about pinnipeds in the Salish Sea are that the numbers have increased since the early 1970s. There may have been around a couple of thousand of harbour seals, for example, and today there may be more like 40,000 or so. There's been a very big increase.
This has happened in parallel with many of B.C.'s other marine mammals, such as killer whales, sea lions, sea otters and humpback whales. Bigg's killer whale or West Coast transients are predators of pinnipeds as well, so there's been a big increase in the numbers of those groups.
You mentioned that they prey upon salmon. We do know it is a fact that juvenile coho and chinook may comprise 1% to maybe 6% of the harbour seal's diet. There's some uncertainty there. For pinnipeds in B.C., unlike for most predators, we do have a good long-term time series on the numbers.
1:10 p.m.
Conservative
Clifford Small Conservative Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL
I realize that the salmon doesn't make up a big part of the pinniped diet, but it doesn't have to be much when you have species under threat like steelhead and salmon in B.C.
Do you think the minister has had a recommendation made to her that there should be some type of management of pinniped populations to protect salmonid species in British Columbia and, in fact, in Atlantic Canada as well?
1:10 p.m.
PhD Candidate and Scientist, University of British Columbia, As an Individual
Yes. My understanding is that that's been proposed or brought forward to the minister.
1:10 p.m.
Conservative
Clifford Small Conservative Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL
That's interesting.
My next question, Mr. Chair, is for Mr. Reynolds. He spoke a lot about sea lice. If I were a salmon, I'd be much more afraid of a pinniped chasing me than a sea lice. You also talked about trade-offs in some of these management decisions. Could you give us an example of a trade-off that might be made in terms of addressing the risk of pinnipeds on salmonid populations?
1:10 p.m.
Chair, Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada
You're looking for what would be the downside of controlling pinnipeds?
1:10 p.m.
Conservative
Clifford Small Conservative Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL
I heard you mention people harmed by trade-offs and decisions. What human aspect would there be to controlling pinniped populations?
1:10 p.m.
Chair, Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada
I'm not sure. I'm not an expert on pinnipeds. I've never studied them, so I'm not really sure what the trade-off would be there. But I can see where you're coming from when we compare, say, the trade-off of livelihoods affected by reduced fishing and so on. I don't see those sorts of trade-offs but otherwise I suspect perhaps the biggest barrier might be the concern of many members of the public who like pinnipeds.
1:10 p.m.
Conservative
1:10 p.m.
Chair, Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada
Yes, and how the minister weighs that, of course.... That's a tough question to deal with and not really a scientific one.
1:10 p.m.
Conservative
1:10 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ken McDonald
Thank you, Mr. Small. Five minutes doesn't last long when you're having fun.
We'll now go to Mr. Hanley for five minutes or less.
Go ahead, please.
1:10 p.m.
Chair, Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada
Mr. Chair, I'm sorry. It's John Reynolds.
1:10 p.m.
Chair, Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada
I'm sorry, but unfortunately I really do need to return to my COSEWIC meeting, so if it's okay, I would like to be allowed to be let off the hook here.
1:10 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ken McDonald
Yes, it's a good analogy for this committee to let someone off the hook.
1:10 p.m.
Voices
Oh, oh!
1:10 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ken McDonald
Thank you for your participation. It was greatly appreciated and feel free to sign off whenever you want.
We'll now go to Mr. Hanley for five minutes or less.
Go ahead, please.
1:10 p.m.
Liberal
Brendan Hanley Liberal Yukon, YT
My thanks to Mr. Reynolds and the rest of the fascinating witnesses. To think that six months ago I wouldn't have been able to tell you what a pinniped was.
Mr. Chair, I will be sharing my time with Ms. May, so I'll have two and a half minutes.
I want to go back to Mr. Oldford.
Thanks for being here. I notice in your profile that your research interests include parameter estimation, uncertainty analysis and modelling ecological networks. It seems that one of the linchpins for how science in DFO gets translated into options and recommendations is through this scientific advice report. But where you have varying quality of science and uncertain data, I wonder if you can describe some of the challenges in collating uncertainties and inconsistencies into advice based on science, and how you would use the tools such as uncertainty analysis and parameter estimation to inform that advice.