Fisheries Committee on Sept. 27th, 2022

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Burns, in your opening statement I think you said that there are 336 animals and that their numbers are in decline. In the early 1970s, DFO was reporting that there were 250 right whales, and that was the first time that DFO and the industry worked together to change things. They changed the season dates. The Coast Guard moved major shipping lanes to direct shipping to Saint John, New Brunswick, because they were mainly feeding around Brier Island. That feeding pattern has obviously changed now.

If you take the longer-term view, I'm not sure that it's fair to call them a species in decline. That's a 34% increase in the species since the 1970s because of all of the various things and the monitoring that has happened. I wouldn't say it's a species in decline. Perhaps it has been declining in the last couple of years, but it hasn't been declining over the time from when we started to implement measures to protect them.

[Adam Burns]

Certainly over the longer term, this population has become significantly smaller than it has been historically. In recent years, for example, the population had been increasing, and then it started to decrease again. That's why we would characterize the current trend as decreasing.

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

What has it decreased from and in what period of time?

[Brett Gilchrist]

In 2017, when we had the increase in mortalities and the new distribution in the Gulf of St-Lawrence and that magnitude of aggregation, it was around 400 animals. After 2017, it dropped to 356 in 2019. It's approximately 336 now.

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

How many of those have died in U.S. waters?

[Adam Burns]

We could provide you with that information. It's primarily the New England Aquarium that does a lot of this tracking. Sometimes an animal is essentially declared dead because it hasn't been observed for a number of years. The level of surveillance in Canadian and U.S. waters is sufficient to justify a scientific assumption that the animal is deceased after a certain amount of time.

These are obviously estimates. We don't see every animal every year. It's not a hard number like a census, but it is a fairly accurate assessment.

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

There is a natural mortality. They can live 40 years or longer. In all the science you've done, do you have a sense of what the natural mortality rate is?

[Brett Gilchrist]

Unlike other species, the known life history of right whales is not actually well known, because they are not known to die of natural causes. They are typically dying at around the 40-year mark because they typically get killed by entanglements or a ship strike.

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

The majority of the causes of death, though, over the last few years, as per your earlier testimony and the necropsies that have been done, have been undetermined.

Is it not possible, because of the decomposition, that by the time we notice them, find them and do the necropsies, they could have died of natural causes from other things that happened during their long lives, in spite of the fact that they may have scars like you or I may have?

[Adam Burns]

You know, we're not veterinarians. We're not experts to speak to that. I wouldn't want to speculate on the potential causes for undetermined cause of death.

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

I appreciate that. Thank you.

I do think it's a concern, though. The biggest category is “undetermined”, and there's only been one entanglement in crab gear that was a cause of death over the last five years.

I will move onto the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

This is probably more of a statement than anything. As you've testified and as others have testified, they were provided with the information on what we're doing. Obviously, from the report, they chose to ignore it, for whatever their political reason. I'm not sure that anyone in Canada or the U.S. should take any lessons from them. They are an aquarium and they do have a shark pen where they keep sharks. They do keep sea otters. They do keep seals and sea lions. Perhaps somebody should be doing an investigation into the ethics of what they're doing and whether or not anybody should attend that aquarium or fund their supposed research.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you, Mr. Perkins. Your five minutes have expired.

We'll now go back to Mr. Cormier for five minutes or less.

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

Actually, Mr. Chair, I'm going to give my time to Mr. Morrissey

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

That's very kind of you.

[Bobby Morrissey, Liberal, Egmont, PE]

Thank you, Chair.

I want to go back to the question my colleague raised, which you did not get a chance to answer. Because you have very sophisticated sighting technology that has been very effective at closing a zone for fishing, why do you not use the same very sophisticated technology and sighting mechanism to reopen a zone?

[Adam Burns]

I'll preface my answer once again by saying I am not a marine biologist. However—

[Bobby Morrissey, Liberal, Egmont, PE]

With all due respect, I did not ask you as a marine biologist. I asked you as the assistant deputy minister of fisheries why you used the data to allow you to make a very informed decision—and fishers want to see the department continue in that way—but you will not use the same very sophisticated technology to reopen an area when it's obvious there are no whales present.

[Adam Burns]

It does relate to North Atlantic right whale behaviour. As I understand it, North Atlantic right whales' vocalizing, their singing, is a behaviour that is not something they do all the time. While the presence of singing, the detection of singing, is a clear and positive confirmation of their presence, the absence of it is not confirmation of their absence. That is to say, in many instances whales can be present in an area and not be vocalizing. It's the nature of the North Atlantic right whale behaviour, so it is—

[Bobby Morrissey, Liberal, Egmont, PE]

You're saying it's only one of your detection methodologies. You do not—

[Adam Burns]

That's correct, and so—

[Bobby Morrissey, Liberal, Egmont, PE]

—rely on one method. You rely on multiple—

[Adam Burns]

That's correct, so the reopening of the area under the dynamic protocol is based on aerial surveillance. If we do the overflights and determine that whales are no longer present in the area, as long as it hasn't resulted in a season-long closure, those areas would be reopened. The areas that are under the dynamic—

[Bobby Morrissey, Liberal, Egmont, PE]

Why would you stick with the season-long closing when it becomes obvious to you through your detection sources that the whales had already moved? I'm questioning this. No one today has a higher awareness than fishers that we must take all steps to protect the whales, and really, because of the situation in the U.S., that awareness has gone even higher, and we're doing that.

By the same token, the department has access to very sophisticated technology, paid for by the taxpayers of Canada, and that methodology should be used to allow the fishers to reduce their fishing effort and reduce their carbon footprint by not sending them all over the place to avoid these zones. The department has access to this, so why are you not using it for the benefit of the fishers?

[Brett Gilchrist]

The aerial assets dedicated by both Transport Canada and Fisheries and Oceans Canada's conservation, protection and science branches are targeting areas in which there are closures. The first step is a dynamic closure. Just to be clear, seasonal closures don't kick in right away. They occur only if there are repeated detections or aggregating of right whales in a given area.

What our comprehensive surveillance program has determined is that there are areas in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, for example, where they aggregate for extended periods of time, and they'll move and come back throughout the summer. The right whale period in the Gulf of St. Lawrence is largely between May and November, and in that period they are moving around and aggregating in various spots in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

Our Transport Canada colleagues also base their measures on aggregations and how often the whales aggregate. The challenge is that aggregation changes every year, but we do see high numbers of aggregations in given spots in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. That's largely where the seasonal closures end up, not surprisingly, because there are repeated detections of right whales there by our assets, both acoustically and through aerial surveillance.

[Bobby Morrissey, Liberal, Egmont, PE]

By accessing the aggregation information you have, you determine when to do the first closure. The same criteria are being used. I do not believe you've adequately addressed why you could not use the same information to reopen zones and allow fishers to fish closer to home and reduce their fuel consumption. That's an issue, and I simply ask you to take that idea into consideration.