Fisheries committee  In the interests of time, I will waive my time on that and point to the testimony.

Fisheries committee  You had a series of questions there. I'll make sure I get to them. Again, in looking at marine protected areas, the first step is, what is your objective? What are you trying to accomplish? Once you define that, it tells you what information you need to look at, be it habitat or particular species and those types of things.

Fisheries committee  Well, if you're establishing some percentages, then to me that makes some sense to me that you have a goal in mind and it needs to be stated. To be just looking at percentages, no, I think that's not an approach. I'm not saying that those who are using those percentages aren't looking at it that way.

Fisheries committee  I'm not going to say no anywhere, but in cases I've worked with, I feel that the sunsetting issue is a way to make sure that attention is being paid to what you were trying to achieve in those MPAs, and also to continue to basically aim at agencies that may be responsible for that—the agencies that collect the data and information that would justify an MPA's continuation or not—to make sure they put in the resources and time to continue to look at and justify that need.

Fisheries committee  Well, the base idea for that is that we use peer-reviewed literature—that type of literature—and then you have a better feel that whatever information has come out of it has been looked at in an objective way. You start with that business first, and then there's the next part of that.

Fisheries committee  Yes, and in particular, for the types of MPAs I've worked with, commercial fisheries always wanted to do that. Of course, whether they knew that they would be dealing with nurseries there.... That happened. Basically, you have to make sure that all of the stakeholders at the table are given equal time and access.

Fisheries committee  No. My experience has been that overfishing issues have been more at the commercial level and those types of things, not in recreational fishing. That's certainly been my experience. I'm not going to say that it does not exist in other places, but fortunately I've not had to deal with that.

Fisheries committee  The purpose of a marine protected area is to set aside special regulations for some particular purpose, and there can be a whole range of issues, but your goal there is trying to conserve or protect some specific species or habitat.

Fisheries committee  That's probably a fair statement. I always come at these kinds of issues, whether they're marine protected areas or fisheries management, in a very linear way, which most scientists would. That is, what's your objective? What are you trying to achieve? What are you trying to protect?

Fisheries committee  That did happen, and it was in Louisiana. It was Paul.... I can't think of Paul's last name, but he was a famous chef who started it. At that time I was managing the fishery, and the fish he started with was called a redfish, which is the class of drum. The market value of those went off the chart, and we had to look at that.

Fisheries committee  Yes, sir. I've actually closed areas in recreational fishing as well, but not because of recreational fishing impacts. For commercial areas, the MPAs were to protect nursery grounds for shrimp, primarily, which is our primary species, because that's where the eggs settle and the young larvae grow up.

Fisheries committee  I think this is a result of my looking at the scientific literature on this, and I quoted one study my testimony, where they've looked at that type of thing. I think the point is that if you have access to what we would call “traditional fisheries management” tools for how we manage this, and you can effectively enforce them—it would be a combination of the two, I think—you can achieve everything you want as far as restoring or maintaining those fisheries is concerned, and not allowing them to be fished or areas to be closed.

Fisheries committee  Well, I'm not going to say I'm an expert on Canada, but fisheries are fisheries around the world, and the most significant one is usually overfishing. They have been overfished, or there has been habitat lost in those sectors. I am almost sure that those are the two issues that Canadians as well as U.S. biologists have to deal with.

Fisheries committee  I can do that. In fact, it was a significant part of my testimony before the Senate committee in the U.S., and we talked long about it. I have written that up and I'd be glad to share that submitted testimony with you.

Fisheries committee  I appreciate that. I'll start. The simple answer is absolutely, yes. We are fortunate, both in Canada and in the U.S., in that we have developed our wildlife management approaches based on the North American model, which has evolved over about a 130 or 140 years. I've studied fisheries all around the world, and we have some of the best managed fisheries in the world.