Mr. Speaker, in response to (a), the Eastern Canyons Marine Refuge, ECMR, is unique in that it hosts one of the largest known aggregations of large gorgonian cold-water corals in Atlantic Canada, as well as a series of adjacent submarine canyons that connect the shallow waters of the continental shelf to the deep waters of the abyssal plain. The ECMR also hosts the only known living Lophelia pertusa coral reef in Atlantic Canada, as the Lophelia Coral Conservation Area, LCCA, was subsumed into the ECMR boundary.
There is a body of science literature demonstrating impacts of bottom contact fisheries on sensitive benthic areas, including cold-water corals. The literature demonstrates that bottom longline gear has negative impacts on cold-water corals. Longline gear impacts on cold-water coral can be significant, especially during deployment and retrieval or as a result of lost gear. Through extensive consultation, DFO has been able to address the concerns of industry and a level of consensus was achieved, which includes a relatively small groundfish bottom longline-only fishing zone that requires 100% at-sea observer coverage and a commitment to further work to address gear drift for harvesters operating adjacent to closed areas. The upper slope area with small and large gorgonian coral in the ECMR overlapped with Atlantic halibut longline landings between 2008 and 2017. Bottom longline fishing is able to operate in rocky outcrops that are normally inaccessible to trawls. These outcrops represent important habitat of most of the cold-water corals present in the ECMR.
In 1999, DFO added cold-water coral to the list of bycatch species recorded by fishery at-sea observers working on vessels fishing in the offshore of Nova Scotia. From 2000 to 2021, coral bycatch was reported on bottom longline trips within areas of known coral presence on the Scotian Shelf, that is, the Eastern Canyons area, Northeast Channel area, and Gully canyon area. The occurrence of coral bycatch on bottom longline trips in the Eastern Canyons area is 1%, and when scaled to the ECMR working boundary of July 27, 2021, the occurrence of bycatch in the area increased to 1.3%.
The science literature, as well as direct observations of coral habitat on the Scotian Shelf, indicates that most damage to cold-water corals from bottom longline is not observed in bycatch, but rather remains on the seabed as coral “knock-over”, coral “break”, “hooks” in corals, and/or “lost” longlines, and DFO scientists have researched this topic. Thus, the bycatch from observer data is likely only a fraction of the total impact of longlining.
In conclusion, the body of peer-reviewed science literature, as well as DFO science studies and fishery observer data, demonstrates that bottom longline fishing gear does have negative impacts on cold-water corals. Recent results that there was very little new recruitment of Lophelia pertusa, up to 11 years after the implementation of the LCCA closure, potentially indicate that impacts have a long timescale that may affect reproduction.
In response to (b), climate change research in the ECMR area has been ongoing, with efforts by DFO in recent years to integrate climate change considerations within the regional conservation network planning process. Potential impacts of climate change to the ECMR and other Scotian Shelf bioregion network sites include rising ocean temperatures, ocean acidification, and reduced dissolved oxygen availability. ECMR protects a large, deep-water frontier area, thought to have areas exceeding 2,000 metres in depth, with the shallowest depths of the canyons on the scale of hundreds of metres in depth. Due to the depth of the site, impacts of storm activity on benthic organisms like corals are expected to be indirect and associated with sediment supply from the shelf. Though the impact of these episodic storm events is expected to be minimal, more direct studies are required.
Basin-scale habitat suitability modeling has shown that North Atlantic deep-sea corals could experience a significant reduction in suitable habitat by 2100 as a result of climate change. A regional reassessment of the predicted distribution of the gorgonian coral Paragorgia arborea has recently been conducted for the northwest Atlantic, including projections to 2046-65 that include future ocean climates, and areas were identified in the upper slope in the eastern portion, including areas in ECMR, that will remain within suitable ranges for Paragorgia arborea at least through to the mid-century. Studies identified the existence of suitable habitat in the shallower portions of ECMR under present-day conditions and presented differing future projections.