Fisheries committee  If you look across the salmon fishing areas that we currently have in Canada, there are 23 in eastern Canada and 11 in Quebec, and those areas actually correspond to biological units, they actually use management differently. In the Maritime provinces as well, we have management

Fisheries committee  What I should say about Atlantic salmon is that we have had a limit reference point called the conservation requirement, since the late 1970s. We have closed commercial fisheries in Canada because stocks were not meeting this objective. We have a history going back over 40 years

Fisheries committee  That would probably never happen because it's a—

Fisheries committee  It's probably not doable because a lot of the rivers are very small in—

Fisheries committee  Yes, they're rivers. They flow into the ocean, and have very small populations. Not only are they hard to assess, but there are so many of them that, practically, it is probably not that useful to assess every one. There are key rivers we can assess within a region, and use those

Fisheries committee  Yes, but within all the salmon fishing areas in eastern Canada we probably have some rivers where there is monitoring taking place. We know if we have key rivers within areas where stocks are being monitored, and we assume from those stocks that they probably match the neighbouri

Fisheries committee  There is a concern we have. When a salmon goes to sea, there's a big selection happening. Let's not kid ourselves. A lot of fish are dying, for a number of reasons, but it's not random. The fish that are coming back are the ones that have the right package to survive the conditio

Fisheries committee  Perhaps it depends on where they are dying, right? One of the questions we have is that fish leave the river, then adults come back, and somewhere out there, from the estuary through the bay, they die. There is tracking work that was started by the Atlantic Salmon Federation, w

Fisheries committee  Probably Kevin could speak to that in terms of international surveillance in the North Atlantic. There is quite a bit of international collaboration in licensing vessels, monitoring vessels, looking at landings in different ports in Europe, for example. There is no evidence from

Fisheries committee  I hope you enjoy your trip.

Fisheries committee  There's so much to see there as you know from being from the area. There's also a lot of activity both by non-government organizations and provincial governments. There are all kinds of activities related to protections. Protection barriers are operated by the province where salm

Fisheries committee  It is a compelling picture that there were oscillations up until about the early 1990s, and something changed. We've looked at that in various fora with national scientists and we can point to that period in the late 1980s and early 1990s as almost like a regime shift. Something

Fisheries committee  If you look at the northern rivers, the Labrador rivers, the northern Newfoundland rivers, you probably won't see that dramatic fluctuation in abundance. Western Arm Brook is a small river on the northern peninsula of Newfoundland. It's been monitored since the early 1970s, and i

Fisheries committee  I can speak to Atlantic salmon in Europe because I know from the work that's going on in Europe as well as through ICES that the declines have also been noticed in the European stocks of Atlantic salmon. We see the same pattern of decline where the southern populations, let's say

Fisheries committee  I have two points. One is that we know from some published studies and from research we've been conducting the last three years in Miramichi that some smolts are found in striped bass stomachs. We've done diet studies, we've looked at predation studies, and that work is being a