Fisheries committee  This isn't my direct area of expertise, but I am aware of some of the work. To my knowledge, herring are a part of the diet for seals on the Scotian Shelf and in the gulf.

Fisheries committee  What else eats herring?

Fisheries committee  I don't want to sound facetious, sir, but a lot of things, just about everything.

Fisheries committee  Historically, the largest source of predation on Atlantic herring was groundfish, meaning cod, haddock and halibut. Other fishes were the main source of predation. Of course, we've seen changes in the ecosystem and the community structure such that groundfish don't exist in the same numbers.

Fisheries committee  There are a number of current—

Fisheries committee  I'm aware of spawning grounds in the habitat for herring in the gulf and the Scotian Shelf area, and I'm not so sure for the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador. For stocks within the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence and along the Scotian Shelf into the Gulf of Maine, herring spawn on sandy bottoms, on banks.

Fisheries committee  The ongoing work within the northern gulf will be available on a regular basis through the provision of our science advice. Some of the new projects that I'm talking about are very new. They started in the past year or so. The information can be publicly available, but we usually need a few years before we can build an analysis on it.

Fisheries committee  Generally speaking, within fisheries science, if we're providing advice on an allowable catch or trying to evaluate the status or trends within a population, we do need a time series of catches. Usually we would like to have something that's independent of the fishery, but we do use fishery information as well.

Fisheries committee  Yes. There's actually a relatively new program, going back four or five years, within DFO science. It's not directly related to fisheries science, but it is looking at climate change and climate change adaptation. There is a new national working group that's looking at ways of improving the incorporation of environmental information into our stock assessments.

Fisheries committee  Thank you for your question. That's a difficult one to ask. I would reiterate that herring is a key forage species in the northwest Atlantic. It plays an important role in the ecosystem in transferring energy from plankton and zooplankton up to larger animals. Some studies have suggested it's a so-called keystone species.

Fisheries committee  Right now, in the southern gulf, we have an acoustic index. We have a catch rate series, meaning catch per unit effort, and we have some gillnet information. By and large, from a science perspective, we have a fairly robust picture of current status. Trends are a little more difficult to work on, particularly projections into the future.

Fisheries committee  Again, I'm responsible for stocks that occur within the maritimes region, so I'm not up on all the particulars that are occurring within the northern gulf and their science planning, but more broadly speaking—and I refer back to the question we just answered—the science sectors within the regions are working more closely together, particularly around acoustic surveys.

Fisheries committee  To date, science has not identified a single issue that would explain that result. There are a number of things that come into play. There is continued harvest, so there are continued removals both in the commercial fishery and in the bait fishery. Then there's a second aspect, and that's the productivity aspect of the population itself, the ability of herring stocks to rebound on their own.

Fisheries committee  Thank you for your question.

Fisheries committee  I don't really have, I think, a direct answer for that. The one thing I can add is that as a result of implementation of the new Bill C-68, major fish stock provisions, throughout the Atlantic zones—so within the four regions—science is undertaking work that is related to this, and herring is one of our case studies.