Fisheries committee  The pinnipeds have definitely learned about these concentrated hatchery releases. They show up the day before the hatchery releases and pound the juvenile fish coming out of the hatcheries. However, as far as we know, that takes only a relatively small percentage of the total smo

Fisheries committee  On a general coastline basis, from Washington all the way up to Alaska, the problem areas where stocks are declining are also the areas where marine mammal densities are highest. I'm doing an analysis of the Cowichan River, which is really interesting. We calculate that there we

Fisheries committee  For the majority of B.C. salmon populations in general, they're not a big factor. The key problems are localized, particularly on the south coast of B.C., where we have half of the total coastline harvest seal population in the Georgia Strait in a very small area. We also have a

Fisheries committee  Yes, that is accurate. The main need for seal reduction is in the south coast area right off of Vancouver, but there are also requests from first nations people in the north who fear that seals and sea lions are having a serious impact on a lot of the small stream populations of

Fisheries committee  The main method we would use to monitor whether it is succeeding is monitoring the first ocean year survival rate—the set of stocks directly—using what is called coded wire tagging. You tag a large number of small fish and you look at how many make it back. That would be the firs

Fisheries committee  That workshop mostly consisted of marine mammal researchers. The agenda was strongly biased towards people doing marine mammal studies, and they want more money to do more research. None of the studies they proposed would prove anything. The idea of an experiment that I've promo

Fisheries committee  Yes, there's been a history in wolf control programs of not doing the control programs properly—not continuing to control long enough over time or killing the wrong wolves and not controlling the wolves that control the behaviour of wolves. Those have failed to produce, in some c

Fisheries committee  One of DFO's scientists, Peter Olesiuk—and I have repeated it—did a back calculation of how big the seal population had to have been back around 1880, right after the second smallpox outbreak really decimated first nations people. That's based on adding back into the population,

Fisheries committee  As I said, as these pinniped populations have built up in B.C., we've seen the standard mammalian density dependence in the survival rates of juvenile animals. They've dropped down and so on. However, we're also seeing a recent decline in the abundance of harbour seals. That's mo

Fisheries committee  It looks like the climate changes going on are actually favouring some of the main prey of the seals and sea lions on our coast. They haul out on rocks, so ice isn't an issue for them. The hake population, which is one of their main foods, is doing very well. Part of the herring

Fisheries committee  If the harvest regime included Steller's sea lions, which are currently protected, we think it would have a substantial benefit to the herring fishery, particularly on the west coast of Vancouver Island and up in Haida Gwaii. The fisheries in those areas for herring have been clo

Fisheries committee  They're indigenous. They're found in the middens of first nations people up and down the coast going back as far as middens can be examined.

Fisheries committee  When first nations people first invaded B.C. at the end of the Pleistocene, they did so not as fishing people but as hunting people. They never lost those hunting traditions.

Fisheries committee  Is that a question for me?

Fisheries committee  Like other mammal populations, they produce the largest annual surplus that can be harvested on a sustained basis when they're reduced to something around half of the level they achieve when they're not harvested. If we calculate that, it means if the seal population was reduced