Fisheries committee  We would like to address three issues in our presentation: the need for ongoing research on invasive species in the Great Lakes; how to deal with the threat of the Asian carp; and the need for ballast water standards. I'd like to share with the committee the latest research on a

Fisheries committee  I'll talk about ballast water regulations. The largest source of aquatic invasive species and pathogens entering the Great Lakes is through ballast water out of ocean-going vessels. It was recognized over a decade ago that ballast water exchanged with salt water offshore was not

Fisheries committee  I would agree, very much so. Canada had adopted a voluntary ballast water and saltwater exchange program long before that, as had other countries. This is not a leading-edge activity that was done by Canada. It was back about 10 or 12 years ago that the IMO, as a global organiz

Fisheries committee  The Great Lakes, on American waters.

Fisheries committee  I do not know how they will be able to do that. It may well end up being the end port. If the ship is coming into the Great Lakes and it is going to stop with its load at a Canadian port, it may well be allowed to do that. If it's going to then go and pick up product at a U.S. po

Fisheries committee  The U.S. Coast Guard will be producing their report by 2015, in which they will outline these options: how they would go about producing a permanent barrier, as well as any other options they have been able to come up with. Until that time, the U.S. will continue to have to spend

Fisheries committee  The Canada-Ontario agreement works.... It's actually the Ministry of National Resources and the Ministry of the Environment that do a lot of the work on the Great Lakes. That's kind of Ontario's part of it, in that they actually have the scientists in the boats. They collect the

Fisheries committee  Certainly for the ballast water standards, I don't think it's going to cost you a lot of money to do that. In reality, you're just synchronizing yourself with the U.S. Ships are going to have to do it anyway. They're going to have to be doing it globally, too—and that's coming—un

Fisheries committee  It's a very rocky bottom on certainly a lot of the lakes. In essence, there's not a lot of silt. It's interesting. If you talk to the commercial fishermen who are still using nets for their catches, what they've seen is tremendous growth in the amount of algae. It literally blo

Fisheries committee  I don't think they are. Most of the rainbow trout in Georgian Bay and in the North Channel come from aquaculture operations. They are escapes, and we have a huge volume of escapes from these operations. What happens, actually, is that mussels grow on the side of the nets, which

Fisheries committee  No, you're right.

Fisheries committee  No, the middle lakes: Lake Michigan, Lake Huron, and Georgian Bay. The charts presented show the biomass, the amount of energy in the lakes. What you see is this drop that took place around 2003, the big change that went down, and since then those lakes have been running at the s

Fisheries committee  Nearshore has not changed that much. The nearshore fishery, which would be made up of largemouth and smallmouth bass, you'll find that at certain times of the year all the walleye will be in the nearshore. That has not changed a lot. The biggest change in the Great Lakes has bee

Fisheries committee  They have, but not as much as the round goby. The round goby is prolific. It started on the nearshore, but you find now it's in deep water as well. If you looked at bass, whitefish, lake trout, walleye, if you were to open up the stomach of a lake trout, 65% of what you would fin

Fisheries committee  They are coming back.