Fisheries Committee on Oct. 25th, 2022

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

I call this meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting number 37 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans. This meeting is taking in place in a hybrid format, pursuant to the House order of June 23, 2022.

Before we proceed, I would like to make a few comments for the benefit of the witnesses and members.

Please wait until I recognize you by name before speaking. For those participating by video conference, click on the microphone icon to activate your mike. Please mute it when you are not speaking.

For interpretation for those on Zoom, you have the choice at the bottom of your screen of floor, English or French. For those in the room, you can use the earpiece and select the desired channel. Please address all comments through the chair.

Finally, I'll remind you that taking screenshots or photos of your screen is not permitted. The proceedings will be made available via the House of Commons website.

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2) and the motion adopted on January 20, 2022, the committee is resuming its study of the North Atlantic right whale.

I would now like to welcome our first panel of witnesses. I may get the names of the associations wrong, but I'll give them a try.

Representing the Association des crabiers acadiens, we have Robert Haché, general manager. Representing the Brazil Rock 33/34 Lobster Association, we are joined by Daniel Fleck, executive director, and Shawn Muise, director and captain. Representing the Coldwater Lobster Association, we have Heather Mulock, executive director.

Thank you for taking the time to appear today. You will each have up to five minutes for an opening statement.

I will invite Mr. Haché to go first, please.

[Robert Haché, General Manager, Association des crabiers acadiens]

I would like to know whether people have access to my tables.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Mr. Haché, give me one second. I have to ask the committee something.

Mr. Haché has a PowerPoint that he wanted to put up on the screen. It's basically some diagrams and pictures to help him with his presentation and to help us understand what he's talking about. It's in both official languages but it hasn't passed linguistic review, so I need unanimous consent in order to allow it.

I'm not hearing any objections, so Mr. Haché, you can start when you're ready.

[Robert Haché]

I assume that people have the slides in front of them. I invite you to refer to them as we go along.

Good afternoon. My name is Robert Haché and I am speaking on behalf of the Association des crabiers acadiens, an organization of 44 midshore fishing companies that receive 61% of the traditional crab allocations held in New Brunswick.

The map you see on the monitor represents fishing area 12. The numerous rectangles that cover the area each measure 14 kilometres by 21 kilometres.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

You've gone on mute.

[Robert Haché]

I'm sorry about that.

When an area is ordered closed, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, the DFO, closes nine rectangles, thus creating...

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Turn on your video.

[Robert Haché]

Okay. I'm sorry about that.

That creates a 42 kilometre by 63 kilometre exclusion zone. The pink dots represent the traps fished in 2013. The distribution of the traps over the sea bottom delineates the preferred snow crab habitat in area 12. As you can see, snow crab are not found everywhere in area 12.

The distribution of traps in 2021 is comparable to what it was in 2013. That is also the case for the fishery composed of 38 fishers who belong to our association in 2022. The 2022 data provided by those fishers was analyzed by Marcel Hébert, a biologist specializing in the snow crab stock in the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence. Mr. Hébert is now part of our team, having worked for 30 years in the snow crab scientific branch at the Department of Fisheries and Oceans in Moncton.

The next slides were produced by Mr. Hébert.

Here, you can compare the changes in area closings between 2021 and 2022 and observe that the fishing exclusion zone in 2022 covered virtually the entire preferred habitat of snow crab.

We will now look at the distribution of vertical ropes in the water between May 1 and May 7, between May 22 and May 28, and between June 24 and June 30.

A small blue circle represents 15 ropes in the water, a medium-sized circle contains 75 cables, and a large circle contains 150 ropes. We can see that during the seven days preceding the first area closing, our fishers were working in the preferred crab habitats.

Let's look at the May 28 map, which shows the distribution of ropes during the previous seven days. Note the large presence of ropes in the red striped rectangles, which close on May 28 and our fishers will have to leave within 48 hours.

Last, on the June 30 map, we see that fishing is now concentrated in two small sectors of area 12 and virtually the entire preferred habitat of snow crab is excluded from at least mid-June.

Does the preferred whale habitat coincide with these closures?

Do the whales observed justify the extent of these closures and excluding fishers from productive fishing grounds?

To understand this better, let's look at the changes in whale movements in area 12 in 2022.

To do that analysis, Mr. Hébert examined the changes in closures in area 12 between April 24 and May 7, between May 14 and May 28, and between June 16 and June 30.

The first closure took place on May 7 at the entrance to area 12.

On this map, we see the distribution of whales, the green dots, observed during the 15 days preceding May 28. We see that they are concentrated toward the centre of the area, where food is abundant. Note that the blue dot in the middle of the red striped rectangles does not represent a whale, it represents the position of an acoustic buoy that heard a whale singing somewhere within a radius of several kilometres. The Department of Fisheries and Oceans is going to close nine rectangles surrounding that buoy in 48 hours, and our fishers will have to leave the site.

On that map, we see that during the 15 days preceding June 30, all of the whales observed were already concentrated in the centre of the area, in their preferred habitat, and that a very large number of rectangles stayed needlessly closed on the periphery, thus barring access by fishers to the preferred snow crab habitats.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Mr. Haché, I'm going to have to end it here. We've gone well over the five minutes of allotted time. I let you go somewhat over because of the little delays in between.

We'll now go to Mr. Fleck and Mr. Muise for their joint statement, please, for five minutes or less.

[Daniel J. Fleck, Executive Director, Brazil Rock 33/34 Lobster Association]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Good afternoon, committee members. I wish to thank you for permitting me to appear before you to share my experiences regarding the North Atlantic right whale and how it relates to lobster fishing in southwestern Nova Scotia.

Members are licensed to fish from Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, along the south shore to Digby, Nova Scotia, in lobster fishing areas 33 and 34. Lobster fishing areas are commonly referred to as LFAs.

The lobster fishery in LFAs 33 and 34 is conducted from near shore in shallow waters to a distance of 50 miles offshore, at depths of greater than 100 fathoms or 600 feet in waters that experience the world's highest and strongest tides.

Brazil Rock Lobster Association, in collaboration with staff from Acadia University, has been involved with and is still conducting at-sea testing of whalesafe gear, which is intended to reduce potential harm to whales. Four vessels with staff from Acadia University have been experimenting with various apparatus during the closed season and are scheduled to continue these trials within the open season. To date, none of the whalesafe gear has offered any measurable successes. In fact, the gear has demonstrated a risk to crew on board the fishing vessel when it fails.

Captains configure their lobster traps in various manners that typically range from individual traps on a buoy to trawls that are groups of traps on a ground-line that may contain up to 20 lobster traps with anchors at each end, and each individual has their preferences.

There are 1,662 commercial lobster boats in areas 33 and 34. The commercial season in both areas is the same. It runs from the last Monday in November to the following May 31. This is a winter fishery conducted when whales are not present in these areas.

The use of ropeless gear would not be practical in LFAs 33 and 34 because the fishery is conducted during Atlantic standard time, when the sun sets at 4:30 in the afternoon and rises at 7:30 a.m. With long winter nights, the fishery is largely conducted during hours of darkness. With such limited visibility and with no ropes or buoys to indicate the locations of gear previously set by other captains, the trawls would be set over one another. This situation would make it difficult if not impossible to retrieve the tangled trawls, leading to the establishment of ghost gear, which are traps that are lost, remain unattended at the bottom and ultimately kill lobsters of all ages and sizes, including egg-bearing females. The suggested use of vertical lines with breaking strength of 1,700 pounds or less is also impractical and inadvisable in such situations, as the rope would break under the strain of trying to retrieve the combined weights of entangled gear.

In short, since whale safety is not a concern at this time of year because the whales are not here during the season when fisheries are conducted, to legislate a preventative measure for a situation that does not exist in an area only serves to place a tremendous financial burden upon small, independent, self-operating fishing enterprises. It is not required in this situation.

I will defer the remaining time to Mr. Muise.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[Shawn Muise, Director and Captain, Brazil Rock 33/34 Lobster Association]

Good afternoon, Mr. Chair. I'd like to thank you for having me.

I've been involved in testing whalesafe gear throughout the summer in the most perfect conditions, which is not what we will be seeing this fall. I can honestly say that I've been able to break everything they have told me to test at well under the 1,700-pound breaking strength, with no consistency. Some gear may break. We have numbers that we will give out in our statement when we write it, but one may have broken at 500 psi and the next one may have broken at 1,100 psi, so the same piece of equipment didn't break at the same strength, which was concerning.

The big concern to me and my crew was safety. When gear broke as it came out of the water and my crew was standing at the rail, some of the plastic would break and shatter. We didn't find it safe. Also, the real concern is the amount of ghost gear. It will be significant if we don't get this right with all the trapped lobsters in the traps that can't escape for quite some time.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you.

We'll go to Ms. Mulock for five minutes or less, please.

[Heather Mulock, Executive Director, Coldwater Lobster Association]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for the opportunity to speak before the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans.

My name is Heather Mulock, and I'm the executive director of Coldwater Lobster Association. Our association represents approximately 200 captains throughout lobster fishing area 34, the largest LFA in eastern Canada, with 979 licence-holders, the most licences of any LFA.

Since 2018, Coldwater Lobster Association has worked closely with DFO, ENGOs and private companies to seek out mitigative measures to reduce the potential for marine mammal interactions. You'll notice that I'm using the term “interactions” rather than “entanglements”. This is due to the fact that there are no confirmed cases or documented evidence of North Atlantic right whales ever being entangled in lobster fishing gear in LFA 34.

It is important to note that LFA 34 is a winter fishery. Our season is six months in duration and begins in the last week in November, when North Atlantic right whales have already left Canadian waters and are well on their migratory path to warmer American waters.

Coldwater Lobster Association has exhibited a strong commitment to science-based research and applied research testing, particularly with the testing of whalesafe fishing gear. Our association has tested various innovations, including two versions of “rope on demand” systems, or ropeless gear; variations of weak rope; plastic in-line weak links; hollow braided sleeves; braided weak links and loops; various splices and tucks; and non-buoyant ground-line. We've even deployed passive acoustic hydrophones to monitor the presence or absence of baleen whales in our waters.

Industry buy-in for any gear innovation is critical if solutions-based partnerships and trust are to continue. How the gear is constructed, its practical usage, safety concerns and so on must be taken into consideration throughout the evaluation process. Because of the unfavourable results from some of our at-sea gear trials, most of the whalesafe gear types have only amplified our grave concern for the safety of our crew and the risk of increased gear loss.

LFA 34 is primarily a trawl-based fishery, with the average trawl having between 15 and 18 pots per string. This alone significantly reduces the vertical lines in the water column. Aside from our gear trials, ghost gear retrieval initiatives, mandatory rope marking and reporting of lost gear, fish harvesters in LFA 34 have adopted regulatory measures of their own accord, including a 3:1 ratio for their end lines, as well as a maximum rope diameter in our ground-line. Most recently, the LFA 34 advisory committee put forward a proposal to DFO to further reduce the maximum ground-line diameter to 9/16 of an inch, a measure that, if adopted, would exceed what is currently enforced by NOAA.

As my industry colleagues have pointed out in previous testimonies, every fishing area in Atlantic Canada is different. Lobster fishing areas and crab fishing areas fish at different depths, different bottom topographies and varying tide strengths. The sea state of some of these fisheries is considerably different due to the time of year the fishing activity takes place. What may work as an innovative solution in one area may not work in another area. LFA 34 presents unique challenges that cannot be overlooked.

This uniqueness was evident when one of our collaborative engineering partners from the gulf region came to southwest Nova to accompany one of our captains during our at-sea trials. He saw first-hand the largest surface buoys used in our fishery—an LD-4—not only pulled under the water's surface but dragged by the strength of the tide, after which he said he had never seen that happen before. To add to this, a representative from one of Canada's top rope manufacturers admitted to us during our trials, “Even with extensive R&D, we likely won’t be able to develop a low breaking-strength rope for your region given the tide strength, the hard bottom, and significant gear conflict”. Our captains now face the underlying fear that innovative gear changes will be introduced in 2023 or 2024 with an unrealistic timeline for implementation.

While I'm appreciative of the opportunity to speak to you today on this topic, I fear that we'll most likely meet again in the very near future, but this time to discuss the ever-increasing concern for lost fishing gear in Canadian waters—the unintended yet anticipated consequence from implementing gear changes. We must ensure that the fishery management measures put in place to protect North Atlantic right whales are appropriate for the fishing area in which they are being implemented, and that they're not counterproductive. Introducing management measures that do not work will create economic hardship for thousands of harvesters, exponentially increasing the amount of gear lost annually, all while putting other species at risk with further entanglements.

Thank you for your time today. I welcome your questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken McDonald]

Thank you.

We'll now go to our questioning round.

We'll start with Mr. Perkins, for six minutes or less, please.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you, witnesses, for attending today.

My first question is for the three folks from southwest Nova Scotia.

Ms. Mulock mentioned the tides. For the sake of the knowledge of those watching and for the members here, we're talking about the tides related to the Bay of Fundy, the highest tides in the world. The strength of the tides is so immense, which poses a challenge to any of these items.

Ms. Mulock, could you explain a little more about the proposal you've made to DFO for a reduced line diameter and why that would be helpful?

[Heather Mulock]

Yes, certainly.

In 2020, the LFA 34 advisory committee, which comprises lobster licence-holders within LFA 34, along with DFO representatives, introduced into their fishing conditions a maximum diameter of their ground-line. They put forward that the maximum diameter would be five-eighths of an inch, and that would be for their ground-line and their end lines. That was to meet, to put it into perspective, the Marine Mammal Protection Act, the comparability findings of the U.S. Five-eighths is what the American fishermen are using currently. That's what's in their regulations.

About two months ago, the same LFA advisory committee went one step further and put forth another proposal to DFO to increase that again. They put forward a maximum diameter of 9/16 of an inch, with allowance for a small section of rope at five-eighths of an inch near the anchor. This proposal was forwarded to DFO, and we await, hopefully, approval of it.

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

Thank you.

Mr. Fleck, you mentioned that none of the gear worked, neither the ropeless gear nor the weak rope gear. Do you have any idea how much that ropeless gear costs?

[Daniel J. Fleck]

I've been quoted a figure of approximately $4,000 for one end of the ropeless gear.

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

Would that $4,000 be for each one of the 400 traps the licence-holders in LFA 34 would have?

[Daniel J. Fleck]

Yes, sir, that is correct. That is the potential between that and the equipment required to auto-coil the rope when it comes back on board to repair it so it can be reset.

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

It didn't work either.

[Daniel J. Fleck]

No, sir. It was a tremendous failure.

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

What is the primary reason for that failure? Were you testing it in the summer, or in the winter during the actual season?

[Daniel J. Fleck]

I've been involved in both at different times, in the summer and into the fall, but not really in the winter season. It was impossible to get the gear to come back. It would not auto-deploy when triggered. We suspected that, so we had a traditional line on the other end so that we could recover it when it would not deploy automatically when actioned to do so.

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

Ms. Mulock is right. We've heard from officials that from southwest Nova Scotia all the way around to the gulf, no lobster gear in the last five years has been found wrapped around a single right whale, and there was only one incident with crab gear.

Mr. Muise, you said it was dangerous for your crew. Could you explain a little more about what happened?