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Fisheries committee There are two aspects to that. It breaks down into two themes. Some of it relates to fieldwork, meaning field studies, mainly targeting.... It's very difficult to determine what eats what in real time in the ocean, so there are a few techniques that one can use. If we are linking back to seals, it's basically lavage.
March 12th, 2020Committee meeting
Dr. Kent Smedbol
Fisheries committee There is not a simple answer to that; a number of factors can come into play. From a science perspective, we're confident in the design of the data sampling and the surveys. Speaking generally, not specific to the 4T case, having intermittent breaks in our sampling may lead to an increase in uncertainty in the provision of our advice, but it is unlikely to have an effect in terms of bias, in that it's unlikely to have a directional change in the advice that we would give, but it does tend to decrease the robustness of that advice.
March 12th, 2020Committee meeting
Dr. Kent Smedbol
Fisheries committee As I stated earlier, I'm a fish guy and I'm from the Scotia-Fundy region, so I'm not sure of the details related to snow crab within the gulf. I'm certainly happy to take that question back and pass it on to our experts from that region.
March 12th, 2020Committee meeting
Dr. Kent Smedbol
Fisheries committee If you were to ask a scientist, we would always say we would like to do more science and we can collect more data and we can do more analyses. That said, we are confident with the science work we have. In the northern gulf, we have acoustic surveys for herring, and we have catch monitoring.
March 12th, 2020Committee meeting
Dr. Kent Smedbol
Fisheries committee I'm from the Bedford Institute of Oceanography in Dartmouth and I'm responsible for stocks within the Scotia-Fundy region, the maritimes region, so I don't have all the details for the work within the Quebec region and the northern gulf. That said, I know there are ongoing collaborative projects between science and fishing organizations.
March 12th, 2020Committee meeting
Dr. Kent Smedbol
Fisheries committee Thank you for the question. There isn't a simple answer to it. There are a number of things that could come into play. One, of course, is continued fishing. The second is that in the last decade or so we have seen general warming in ocean conditions from the Gulf of Maine into the Bay of Fundy, the Scotian Shelf and the Gulf of St.
March 12th, 2020Committee meeting
Dr. Kent Smedbol
Fisheries committee Thank you for the question. This is an area of active research within the department. We don't have a strong linkage with any particular potential causal agent at this point, other than to say that there are a number of things we're looking at.
March 12th, 2020Committee meeting
Dr. Kent Smedbol
Fisheries committee The first one is increased predation. That is an area of active research. Others are changes in the ecosystem that may be caused by climate change or just a change in the community. None of these have been directly linked to herring production or to herring changes in abundance.
March 12th, 2020Committee meeting
Dr. Kent Smedbol
Fisheries committee They have not yet, to my knowledge. It is an area of active research.
March 12th, 2020Committee meeting
Dr. Kent Smedbol
Fisheries committee The latest efforts have probably been for the last several years. It's been off and on for.... It's a general question within fisheries science. To my knowledge, the specific issue with herring probably has been just the last couple of years, but I don't have an intimate knowledge of all the work that's being done on herring.
March 12th, 2020Committee meeting
Dr. Kent Smedbol
Fisheries committee Thank you very much. As he said, I will be providing a brief overview of status trends for Atlantic herring stocks, and I will also provide a little bit of an explanation on how status is defined in the department's precautionary approach framework. The first thing is that it's important to keep in mind that Atlantic herring is a key forage species within the northwest Atlantic.
March 12th, 2020Committee meeting
Dr. Kent Smedbol