International Trade committee  It is vessel strikes and gear entanglements, but it's also climate change, so the population basically grew from fewer than 200 animals to almost 500 by 2010. Then we started to see a decline that has coincided with increasing temperatures in the Gulf of Maine that affected their plankton and meant that the animals had to go look for food somewhere else.

International Trade committee  Yes, I'd say it's correct to say there isn't as much enforcement, but the measures are not exactly the same. For example, in the U.S. they use what they call the sinking groundline rule in pot fisheries, so you have a number of pots on the bottom in a trawl, like charms on a bracelet, and there's groundline that connects all of those pots.

International Trade committee  We focus our stewardship activities with the two industries that have had the biggest impact on the North Atlantic right whale—the shipping industry and the fishing industry. We do that right from almost backyard, dockside chats with fishermen, not only where we live and operate, but also where we go to respond to entangled whales.

International Trade committee  Yes. We launch teams into the Gulf of St. Lawrence now and have done so every summer since the whales relocated there. We are not doing research as much in the Bay of Fundy as we used to, and not at all south of Nova Scotia, simply because we're going to where we expect to find the whales.

International Trade committee  Yes, it is. In addition, our measures are adapted each year. There are a number of Fisheries and Oceans and Transport Canada-led advisory groups and technical working groups that look at the data each year, and they assess the protective measures that are in place. They have evolved quite a bit over the last six or seven years.

International Trade committee  You have the distribution down pat. The only known calving grounds are down off the coasts of Florida and Georgia. The animals migrate up toward New England and Cape Cod Bay in the spring. They have just departed that region and are now, as usual, heading across the Gulf of Maine and just starting to show up in the Gulf of St.

International Trade committee  There are definitely measures in both countries that are different. Some are narrowly tailored to the particular area or the particular habitat where the whale is. In Canada, we have static measures to reduce vessel strikes that are in place from the end of April until the middle of November.

International Trade committee  The Americans are trying to level the playing field for protective measures against human-related mortality among right whales from both vessel strikes and entanglements. Perhaps there was a time when some of their measures exceeded ours, but since 2017 Canada has really increased its level of protection for right whales.

International Trade committee  There have always been a lot of politics around right whales on both sides of the border. However, I will say that in Canada the measures that the Canadian government is taking to reduce the risk of entanglement and of vessel strikes are unprecedented anywhere in the world and exceed what is being done in the U.S.

International Trade committee  My comments will be restricted to whales, as I'm a whale biologist, not a fisheries biologist. What we have noticed since 2010 is a change in the habitat of North Atlantic right whales. Right whales typically came up into the Bay of Fundy and could be found there between June and December, but primarily in August, September and October each year.

International Trade committee  Thank you, Madam Chair and committee members. My name is Dr. Moira Brown. I'm a senior scientist with the Canadian Whale Institute located on Campobello Island, New Brunswick, off the shores of the Bay of Fundy. I'm also a scientist emerita at the New England Aquarium in Boston, Massachusetts.

Fisheries committee  Well, I'm not necessarily familiar with all of the criteria they use to do this, but I think they made a huge mistake in lumping U.S. and Canadian fisheries all into one red-listing measure. These are very different fisheries, pursued at very different times of the year, with very different protection measures for right whales.

Fisheries committee  Yes, we do, and a lot of that is published in scientific papers. In the U.S., since 1996, they've had the Atlantic large whale take reduction team, which has been focused on trying to reduce the risks of gear entanglement for right whales in U.S. waters. They've done broad sweeping measures, such as sinking groundline from Florida to the Hague Line, and measures like that.

Fisheries committee  There really is no difference between Canada and the U.S. in what causes serious injury and mortality in North Atlantic right whales. It's entanglement in rope and it's vessel strikes. There are a number of programs whereby both Canada and the U.S. are addressing it by using different methods, such as rope on demand or weak links.

Fisheries committee  Thank you, Mr. Kelloway. I'm going to start with your last question first. How do our measures compare to the U.S.? The closures that Fisheries and Oceans Canada is putting in place in Canadian waters due to the presence of right whales is unprecedented. It is a solution that removes rope from the water that overlaps with whales, but it causes a great burden to the industry.