Fisheries committee  Yes. If you're trying to protect representative ecosystems, larger is definitely better. I think there is pretty good consensus on that. We know marine systems are dynamic and they shift, so larger is better. We set up protected areas for a number of reasons, for example, to hav

Fisheries committee  Yes. I think it's important that we separate commercial and recreational fisheries, first of all.

Fisheries committee  Lots of things can affect commercial fisheries, and as we've already seen across Canada, if you have major fluctuations in fish stocks—declines in fish stocks—coastal communities are devastated by that. Setting up marine protected areas that attract people for tourism, for viewin

Fisheries committee  Clearly, yes, and I could offer to help you make contacts on that, because the IUCN works with countries, and it's the 187 members of IUCN that can help provide that information.

Fisheries committee  I do. I'll at least start.

Fisheries committee  I'm from Moncton, so I know that area really well. The Northumberland Strait was once one of the most productive marine systems on the planet. It's a shallow water system with a lot of benthic production and, at least in my lifetime, we've seen dramatic changes in the kinds of f

Fisheries committee  No. I think all 20 targets are important.

Fisheries committee  Can I address your first question on the rockfish conservation areas, first?

Fisheries committee  The rockfish conservation areas are actually quite small. I'm sure Sean can elaborate on this, but they are included in that 1%, all the rockfish conservation areas. There's not a huge area that's protected that is uncounted at this point. I wanted to make that point clear. In t

Fisheries committee  There are 20 Aichi targets, and the purpose of the Aichi targets is to halt biodiversity loss globally. Aichi target six is on good fisheries management. There has been a huge focus on target 11. It kind of rose as the tall poppy for protected area and received a lot of attention

Fisheries committee  Yes. I will submit what I consider to be the key papers on this. The interesting thing is that when you start extracting a lot of fish biomass out of an ecosystem, you change the ecosystem rather fundamentally because you change the trophic structure of the ecosystem. You often

Fisheries committee  Biodiversity is not distributed evenly on the planet. It's distributed very unevenly. We've heard about sponge reefs and coral accumulations. They're distributed. They are obviously important to protect, and on that I think we're in absolute agreement. There has been a tendency

Fisheries committee  DFO has great scientists and has—

Fisheries committee  I don't think my opinion on that is worth a whole lot to this committee, frankly, about how it should be bureaucratically organized. Having independent science is really important, but if you divorce it too far from the decision-making system, you're in trouble as well.