STANDING COMMITTEE ON RESOURCES
Mr. Raymond White
MR. CHAIRMAN: Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to call to order the meeting of the Standing Committee on Resources. We have a presentation from the Seafood Producers Association of Nova Scotia. Mr. Roger Stirling, President, will be making a presentation and following that, or during the presentation, we will have an opportunity to ask questions.
Before we begin, we will start with Mr. Taylor, if you would introduce yourself and your constituency, we will make the rounds.
[The members introduced themselves.]
MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Stirling, I suspect with the interest of what has been happening in the fishery over the last number of years, the committee is probably wanting to get a perspective from you of the state of the industry, in your opinion, and maybe some of the challenges that it is being faced with. I suspect we may even get in some questions about quotas, not expecting that you would know every quota in every location but maybe their implications to the industry as a whole.
So, having said that, I want, on behalf of the committee, to welcome you here and I will turn the floor over to you for your opening remarks.
MR. ROGER STIRLING: Mr. Chairman, I don't have a presentation as such to make. When I was approached by the committee I asked for an indication of items that you might like to discuss and Mrs. Henry was kind enough to put that together for me. I presume you have a copy of the list and maybe what I could do is sort of start with the first item on the list if that is how you would like me to proceed.
MR. CHAIRMAN: That is correct. Make sure that everyone has a copy. If not, we can make some and circulate them.
MR. STIRLING: Then any other items anybody would like to discuss, I will try to comment on or answer questions.
MR. CHAIRMAN: While we are doing the first item on the list, we are going to have copies made for the members.
MR. STIRLING: The first item on the list is the question of seals, specifically the underutilization of the seal cull and other species. We have had a long-standing position on seals. We think seals should be harvested like any other marine resource as part of the eco-system. We should take, naturally, a conservative approach to that harvest. However, given the, I guess political realities is probably the right word, that surround the seal fishery, we feel that whatever we are going to do with respect to seals, we have to very carefully explain and I guess have a good public relations program with respect to what we are doing on seals. To take any approach to seals without that element we think is not realistic given the other parties that seem to have fairly strong views on seals. We certainly would be opposed to any suggestion that there shouldn't be a scientifically-based, ecologically-based fishery on seals the same as there is on any other fish species or resource. That, in a nutshell, is our view on seals.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Are there any questions or comments from the committee members - maybe if we did them by topic it might be easier to keep focused - on seals?
MR. BROOKE TAYLOR: I just had a question. I wonder, Mr. Stirling, do you have a number, yourself, that you think would be fair in terms of the seal harvest, on behalf of the Seafood Producers? Does your organization have a figure, certainly based on biological data and things of that nature?
MR. STIRLING: There are several species of seals and I think the one where there tends to be a quota involved is the harp seal fishery. I think the quota there last year was - I may stand to be corrected - it has for a while been 180,000 tons. I think there was some suggestion of increasing it to 250,000 tons. We don't have a figure ourselves, per se. What we try to do is listen to what the scientific advice is with respect to what a reasonable level of harvest would be, the same as we do on any other fish resource and we tend to follow the scientific advice. It is very rare that we disagree with the scientific advice.
We have an opportunity, of course, to participate in the development of the scientific advice. The process now with respect to developing scientific advice is much more open than it used to be. One of the complaints that we had for years with respect to the development of scientific advice was that it was developed sort of behind closed doors, we didn't hear any of the give and take with respect to the discussion that went on, but now they have opened
up that process and they have a new process now that is called the research assessment process, I think; it is RAP anyway, it is a different kind of RAP.
MR. TAYLOR: Than the Housing program.
MR. STIRLING: I have participated in that for the last couple of years and I think it is a good process and DFO deserves some credit for having made the change.
MR. DONALD MCINNES: Is the population up? I don't know if I am using the correct terminology or not.
MR. STIRLING: The population of harp seals is increasing all the time. That's why the scientists are recommending that the harvest can go from 180,000 to 250,000 seals.
MR. JOSEPH CASEY: You will probably remember, Roger, when I brought up in the House about putting the seals on the pill. That sounded crazy at the time but I think it has been proven more or less correct. We can't seem to get them to do it. I said in the House that I couldn't see how these do-gooders like the movie actresses could say anything about that because most of them, according to the scandal sheets that I read are on the pill themselves. (Laughter) Anyway, they have done a lot of research on that. In fact, the CBC called me and wanted to know if I would go on the CBC with Brigitte Bardot and I told them yes, no sacrifice would be too great on my part. Anyway, that is just the fun part of it.
This thing is bad all over. I do not understand why DFO has not done this; if they don't want to kill the seals, put some on the pill. Do you know what I mean? They have worked out - you probably know a lot more about this than I do - at Dalhousie they can give them a pill now that is good for five years, puts them out of business for five years. They can administer it at 50 feet or more, with a gun. You probably think you have to be a pretty good shot but anywhere they hit the seal, as long as it is fat; if it gets inside the skin, in the fat - you know what I mean, it does its work.
In Annapolis Basin, where I watch it probably more closely than others, it is the basin seals, or what do you call the inshore seals? Harbour seals.
MR. STIRLING: Grey seals or harbour seals, yes.
MR. CASEY: There are some big ones coming in from Maine now. Every day they destroy salmon in the aquaculture. They can get at them, it doesn't matter what you do. They put seal scarers in there. It cost $14,000, a thing that makes a noise and it keeps changing its tune all the time. But, by golly, they get used to that; they kind of enjoy the music, I think. They are getting around there and killing salmon, about 100 a day. That is a pretty big loss in the production. When you have 70,000 fish in there but if you lose 100 almost every day, it cuts out the profit considerably. Something should be done by the department. You can
shoot them if they are bothering you but you have to be a fisherman. Here is something else, an aquaculturalist or whatever you want to call them, is not considered a fisherman so they cannot take a gun out to the site and shoot a seal, yet they are raiding fish. That is another thing the RCMP won't allow. These things are important because this is costing a lot of money. I just want to get your comment on it.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Taylor.
MR. TAYLOR: Mr. Chairman, I find Joe's comments pretty interesting. I heard you make that presentation in the House, I think it was during the late debate. In the name of gender equality I am wondering, do you administer that pill to the males and females or just the females? How do you - you can easily discern the difference probably.
MR. CASEY: I have an answer I can give you but I had better not do it, this is in Hansard.
MR. TAYLOR: My question, Mr. Chairman, actually is to Mr. Stirling, the underutilized . . .
MR. STIRLING: I hope it's not the same question.
MR. TAYLOR: No, it is not the same question. The underutilization of the seal cull, what is presently happening to the seal cull, in terms of the carcasses and things of that nature? The harp seal, for instance.
MR. STIRLING: The harp seal, part of DFO's policy now is that you have to use all of the seal. Previously there was a fishery for the pelt and, in Newfoundland, for the flippers. You have heard of flipper stew, I am sure. Then, of course, in some parts of the world there is a focus on the seal penis, which you have probably heard of as well. The requirement now is to use all of the seal.
There are some changing markets for seals as well. There seems to be some interest in the Chinese market, which is relatively new. So there is some optimism with respect to finding markets for seal meat and maybe some new markets for seal skins.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Kenneth MacAskill.
MR. KENNETH MACASKILL: Mr. Stirling, we know that the fish stocks are down and the food chain that the seals rely on but still the seal population is increasing. There is no evidence that there is any cannibalism among different species of seals, is there?
MR. STIRLING: Not that I have ever heard of, no.
MR. CASEY: They are all on a low fat diet. (Laughter)
MR. STIRLING: There has been a lot of work done on seal diet, what the seals eat. There have been some problems with it, a lot of it has been done in sort of waters close to shore. Not a lot has been done with respect to offshore areas. I think what the research shows is that the seals are opportunistic eaters. So, they tend to eat whatever is available to them rather than being selective in terms of particular species. They definitely eat codfish, no question about that.
I cannot remember the numbers but on the Scotian Shelf, and here we are talking about grey seals as opposed to the other species, the scientists estimated that the seals were a significant factor either in the downturn of that resource on the Scotian Shelf, which is a significant cod stock, or it is probably more correct to say that the seals are a very significant factor in the regeneration of that stock. As the stock comes back, they tend to eat the fish that might be available there and I am talking about codfish.
The other thing that has been seen that I can recall with respect to seals consumption of fish is that they tend to take sort of big bites out of fish rather than eating the whole fish. So, you have to look at the total amount of fish that they eat then multiply that by some factor in terms of the amount of fish that they are destroying.
MR. CHAIRMAN: We will move on to the next topic, but if I could close that topic by saying that coming from a fishing community that has both the inshore and offshore in my constituency, this certainly is a controversial and very emotional topic, both involving the inshore and the offshore fishery. I think particularly with the downturn, the fishery people look at anything that impacts negatively on the fishery and some people have identified this as one of those factors. That probably intensifies the opinions on all sides of this particular issue.
The second one, Mr. Stirling. I would like to introduce Mr. Bruce Holland from Timberlea-Prospect who has just joined us.
MR. RICHARD HUBBARD: Mr. Chairman, I just want to ask Mr. Stirling a question. You are talking about increasing the quotas. The reasons for the increase in the quota would be a market demand that is out there?
MR. STIRLING: I think the primary reason for the increase in the quota, and again we are talking about only seals that are under quota as the harp seals and hood seals which are seals off Newfoundland, as distinct from the grey seals or harbour seals that we have around here. The primary basis for the increase in the quota is the scientific advice based on the conservative models that they used and the precautionary principle and so on and so forth, that the harvest for harps could go from where it has been for a while at 180,000 up to 250,000. Now, there are two things here; one is the quota that you set for the seals and the
other is how many of those seals are actually taken. The latter is a function of the market and there are some encouraging developments in the Far Eastern market that may enable us to take a greater percentage of the quota than we have in the past.
The fishery, in the past, used to be focused on a large vessel fishery and there used to be some vessels operating out of this province that participated in that fishery, a fairly significant presence from this province actually. Karlsens, for instance, was a company just down here on Water Street with a long history in the sealing fishery and some other participants here as well. That fishery was closed down several years ago and has not been allowed to come back. That was basically sort of a collector boat type of fishery. Now, it is strictly what is called a landsmen hunt. Every spring, you see the news reports of landsmen going out on the ice flows off Newfoundland, or in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, out of Magdalen and so on, to conduct that fishery.
Views on moving toward different species and working towards diversification. With the downturn in the traditional groundfish species, cod and haddock in particular, there has been a very strong move throughout the fishery, in Nova Scotia in particular. I think Nova Scotia has been a leader in this even though our groundfish resources in the southwestern part of the province were not completely shut down. There has been a very strong emphasis on new species. There is actually a whole advisory process that has been developed for new species with, I think, three regional committees for the Scotia-Fundy region; one in southwestern Nova Scotia, another in eastern Nova Scotia and another one in southern New Brunswick. I believe I have that correct. Then there is an overall Atlantic Advisory Board.
There has been a process developed for new species. Rather than sort of saying, here's a new species, everybody rush in and prosecute this fishery, there is a very deliberate process that has been set up, I think it is in three stages. I have not looked at it in detail recently but there is an exploratory stage, then there is an interim stage and then the final stage would be some kind of a commercial fishery again, subject to quota and allocations and so on.
Sea urchins, to name a species, is probably one of the bigger success stories. This is a fishery that prosecutes the roe of the urchin for the Japanese market or the eastern market. New species of crab are being prosecuted, both in eastern Nova Scotia and southwestern Nova Scotia. We have had a long history of developing new species, of course, going back well before the downturn in the traditional groundfish resource.
Another success story that certainly had nothing to do with downturns in resources is the surf clam fishery out on the outer edge of the Scotian Shelf. That was a brand new fishery that was developed from nothing several years ago by one of our members.
There is quite a bit of interest in a number of other species. Saury is a species that we are looking at now that is in stage one in the discussion process. Another species that has been the focus of quite a bit of attention lately is krill which is a forage species. There has been a very limited fishery on krill. I cannot give you any tonnages on it off the top of my head. I think it is a couple of hundred tons, that sort of thing. There is quite a bit of concern about prosecuting a fishery on krill. I think there is a feeling that we should be very cautious because it is a forage species and more and more in the industry on the science side we are concerned about what the interrelationship is between species. If you fish a species at this level, what impact does that have as you move up the food chain?
MR. CASEY: Krill is something that needs to be watched very carefully. That is in the food chain. If you take that away, what the heck is going to happen to whales especially? I understand they consume krill. I do not know which species of whales, but some of them do. We will be in real trouble to take that because there is not as much money to be made off that as there will be off the finished product of whatever eats it.
What about silver hake? You did not mention them. Are they being utilized by Canadian companies off the Banks here now? That has been controversial over the years and discussed a lot.
MR. STIRLING: That is a species we have been trying to do something on for several years, maybe as many as 10 years now. I cannot remember exactly when we started on silver hake. Yes, there is some progress being made on silver hake. I am not totally up to date on it.
MR. CASEY: Canadian ships or foreign ships?
MR. STIRLING: Both. There is still Cuban participation in that fishery. I think it is just Cuban vessels now but there are quantities of krill being caught by Canadian inshore vessels as well.
MR. CHAIRMAN: If I could add to that topic, a full production line for producing silver hake was moved from Newfoundland to Canso. In about a week or two, they will be going into full silver hake fishery and working closely with the Japanese, they have produced a product which meets their stringent requirements. I think the Seafreez plant will produce more silver hake this year than any other plant in the Atlantic area.
MR. CASEY: When this was first looked at, they were worried about the time element between the time they were caught and when they were processed. They are a very oily fish. Has that been overcome fairly well? They used to think they had to process them at sea, you couldn't bring them ashore at all, but apparently from what you are saying, Mr. Chairman, they are bringing them ashore successfully.
MR. STIRLING: That might be frozen production that is going on, in Canso, I think.
MR. CHAIRMAN: The problem with silver hake, as Mr. Stirling would know, is that once it is caught it deteriorates very quickly. They have been able to bring it ashore even fresh but the turnaround time has to be very short. I think anything over three days, then you are looking at serious problems.
MR. STIRLING: There are several problems with silver hake. One is catching them with smaller vessels. The best quantities of resource for fishing tend to be offshore and you are into the time of year and so on, you are into sea conditions and so on that are not particularly good for smaller boats. The quality question, in terms of getting the fish into the plant in a good condition and they are also a very bony fish so they are a difficult fish to process as well. There is a market for them but the problem is to find a market for them that will give you the return that will justify all the costs involved in terms of developing a good product. The Japanese, a few years ago, looked at them for surimi, the underlying product in the imitation products, imitation crab and that sort of thing. I think the Japanese name for it is kamaboko. They had a research vessel over here and had a look at it for a couple of years and they seemed to back off after that.
MR. MCINNES: Actually, I wanted to ask a question about silver hake, too, so Joe got ahead of me on that, no problem. What about the sea urchins, you spoke a little bit about the roe, Roger? Is that mostly a Japanese market?
MR. STIRLING: Yes, primarily the Japanese market.
MR. MCINNES: How big is that industry?
MR. STIRLING: I don't have the numbers right off the top of my head, but it is a significant dollar value fishery now. Again, I just can't quote you exact numbers but it puts a significant number of dollars into the economy. There is a fishery on this side. There is a fishery on the New Brunswick side and the fishery is strictly for the roe, as you probably know. There are urchins in various parts of the world. Ours here are smaller than the ones on the West Coast. If you want to try them, there is a little Japanese restaurant on Argyle Street that was featuring them all winter, doing just super - and it is a really nice taste. They have to be really fresh.
MR. CASEY: Do you have to eat them raw in the Japanese restaurant?
MR. STIRLING: Yes, they may serve them other ways but they are normally a sushi or sashimi item. That is a success story. Now there has been some die-off of some of the urchin stocks and this is just nature and I think it is some kind of a parasite or something. We have seen it before but it hasn't wiped out all of the stocks. I can't even tell you exactly which areas it is in.
MS. EILEEN O'CONNELL: I have a quick question. This is not an area that I know a great deal about. I wanted to ask you what a surf clam fishery is. Is it just what it sounds like?
MR. STIRLING: Well, it is a fairly big clam. You are familiar, you have seen Digby clams, for example. So this is a significantly bigger clam than that. Whereas the Digby fishery is sort of in the mud flats, this fishery is a deep-water fishery out on the edge of the Scotian Shelf as you start to go into deep water. (Interruption) Yes, they are fished with gear that is not dissimilar - well, I shouldn't say that - it is a dredging type of fishery. The part of it that is marketed, the primary product is the foot of the clam, if you know what I am talking about. It is blanched and it has a nice pink colour; the Japanese are very fond in terms of their food product in terms of reddish colours. It is, again, primarily a sushi or sashimi item. Not all sushi or sashimi is raw and this is an example of one of the products that is blanched or cooked prior to being served.
[9:30 a.m.]
MS. O'CONNELL: So we don't eat it here, do we?
MR. STIRLING: Well, it depends on whether you like Japanese food or not. I eat it.
MS. O'CONNELL: But it doesn't turn up as chopped up in bits as fried clams or anything?
MR. STIRLING: No, no, it is too valuable a product for that. Again, if you wanted to try it, there are a couple of Japanese restaurants in town, well, there is probably only one Japanese restaurant where you are likely to find it and they have it on the menu regularly. It is the little restaurant on Argyle Street. But it is the foot of the clam is probably about that big, would be the normal size. Or another way you can eat it is just sort of soaked in a sweet vinegar, that's another way it is served and that is called sunomono.
The Japanese market is pretty important to us for a number of species so we have to learn a little bit about what they eat.
MR. TAYLOR: Mr. Stirling, the fishery, I guess, particularly on the Eastern Shore has certainly gone through some very tough times and in fact is still going through some very troubling times. Baker Point Fisheries in Jeddore has diversified and, of course, get most of their raw product from Russia. Now, not so long ago the fish plant in Marie Joseph, I believe, indicated that they were closing down or, in fact, have closed down. I am just wondering if your association, SPANS, has any direct involvement regarding these fish plants like the fish plant in Marie Joseph? They employed a number of people, not a great number but they employed a fair number of people there. Is it just not feasible for a plant like that to diversify, economically it is not a viable operation, in your opinion?
MR. STIRLING: No, the fish plants you mentioned are not members of my association. There are two or three other associations that represent fish processors. I think certainly Baker Point Fisheries is a member of an organization called the Eastern Shore Fish Packers or Fish Processors Association and I am not sure on the other one. No, I think some of the plants probably that have done best in terms of diversification are the smaller plants. They have sort of picked out a niche and have developed it. You mentioned imported groundfish, which I guess I didn't mention that, but that is all part of diversification and you are right in mentioning that. With the downturn in the traditional groundfish resources, Nova Scotia was the leader in terms of bringing in imported, frozen, primarily Russian groundfish, primarily cod and some haddock as well and that fish has been handled both by frozen plants that have slacked that fish out and reprocessed it and sold it as twice frozen fish. It is also then extensively used by the salt fish plants, a lot of which tend to be smaller plants. I certainly know of no barrier in terms of size.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Has the price for the imported container fish, because more of the plants have shifted because of the sources, gone up over the last number of years?
MR. STIRLING: Oh it has very much so. We started buying it just when the Russians were starting to move from their centralized system to more of a free market system. As that system evolved, they started to demand sort of higher prices, they found more customers. There are many more customers here in Nova Scotia now than there were several years ago. There is no question. On the other hand, the U.S. market has not performed really well in terms of our traditional groundfish species either which is sort of an interesting phenomenon. You would think maybe just on the surface that if we have less fish to sell, it might be cheaper, but it rarely works that way. There is a fair amount of fish in the Scandinavian countries that is going in there. In addition to that there has been a lot of substitution in that market. So, when a market has a requirement for fish and they cannot get cod, they get something else. Even though we have had dramatically less resource, the market for traditional species has actually declined. It is getting harder and harder to make a dollar on imported fish. You have to be a pretty efficient operator in order to do that.
MR. CHAIRMAN: If I could make one more comment, the observation I have made with some of the smaller plants, particularly one of the ones Mr. Taylor is referring to, is that because of the moratorium and the downturn in the fishery, particularly in Eastern Nova Scotia, the resource is not there. Then when they switch to imported fish, the profit margin is so small they are unable to even meet their basic operating costs. Is that being experienced by other companies?
MR. STIRLING: Yes, that is the area I was trying to address. I think not necessarily to the point where people have stopped doing it, but there is no question that the margins are getting thinner and thinner. In that regard, it may be more difficult for smaller companies to make a go of that now as the margin has decreased because they are dealing with less volume.
It may be getting to the point now where you have to do a reasonable amount of volume to make the numbers work out at all.
MR. MACASKILL: Mr. Stirling, are we led to believe that the lobster industry is the top species in the province in terms of dollar value?
MR. STIRLING: Currently that is definitely the case.
MR. MACASKILL: Is there any scientific data that would indicate that because the cod stocks are down, and the lobster is food chain for the cod, that from the time they spawn to the time they reach maturity, that is the reason the lobster industry is thriving?
MR. STIRLING: That cod eat lobster? I have not specifically heard that suggestion. Again, there are many things we do not know about interactions in the food chain. What I have heard, which I guess is something similar to that, is the view of some people that the environmental conditions that favour shellfish do not favour groundfish. I have heard it more particularly with regard to shrimp, but I have also heard it in a general context. I have certainly heard people make the observation with respect to lobster that when your shellfish resources are up, your groundfish are going to be down and vice versa. All around the world, for example, northern shrimp is regarded as a cold water indicator. A few years ago, I guess maybe 10 years ago, we did not have any shrimp fishery, for example, down off the eastern end of the province. Now we have a fishery that is continuing to grow. It is continuing to expand in terms of the size of the resource there.
We saw - this is not shellfish - quite a lot of capelin, for example, off Cape Breton three or four years ago. Generally speaking, there is certainly a school of thought within the industry, and this is shared by some scientists that you speak to, that when you get certain conditions, certain water temperatures, certain salinity in the water, that works in favour of shellfish resources. At the same time that we saw that explosion, the lobster catches have been at totally unprecedented levels ever since we have been recording them, at really high levels, I think in the order of double that they peaked out at in Nova Scotia.
At the same time that that was going on, you have seen very good year classes in scallops, both offshore and inshore. That is tracking down now as well, and the shrimp that I mentioned earlier and crab as well. So the reality may be that when our groundfish come back, we are going to have problems in our shellfish fisheries.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Holland.
MR. BRUCE HOLLAND: Mr. Stirling, you note in your presentation here that you represent 85 per cent of the fish and seafood producers in Nova Scotia?
MR. STIRLING: The producers or the volume?
MR. HOLLAND: The volume.
MR. STIRLING: Yes, the volume, not the producers.
MR. HOLLAND: That is my question, how many producers does that represent? If that represents 19 members, how many . . .
MR. STIRLING: Well, 19 member companies, 19 companies. How many plants?
MR. HOLLAND: What percentage of the companies does that represent? Approximately.
MR. STIRLING: Yes, Alan Steel in the background might know better than I. What is it, about 240 plants or something now?
MR. ALAN STEEL: At the present time it is 315.
MR. STIRLING: It keeps increasing all the time. I think actually it has been shrinking a little bit. Now, some of those plants would be, you would have multi-plant operators. I don't know, if you had 315 plants and, let's say - and I will just guess at it - maybe you have 200 operators, then we would represent 19 of those but a lot of those would be very small operations.
Maybe I can answer your question another way, we represent all of the - well, there are really only two or three large companies and they are not large by world seafood standards - larger companies in Nova Scotia, most of the middle-sized companies and a couple of the smaller companies; that's all.
MR. HOLLAND: How many of your members are salt fish operators?
MR. STIRLING: Anybody who is in groundfish will do salt fish when the markets favour salt fish over frozen. So in that sense - I don't know how many of our members - probably one-half of our members. I think the question you asked . . .
MR. HOLLAND: What I am getting at is how much demand is there for salt fish these days?
MR. STIRLING: Well, the salt fish market is, again, not as good as it used to be either. The groundfish markets throughout the world, like the salt fish market, like the frozen market, is very competitive and the margins there are thinner than they used to be.
Again, just to answer your other question in terms of salt fish companies, most of these salt fish companies tend to be smaller companies and they are not members of our group. They are primarily members of a group called the Southwest Nova Scotia Fish Packers Association.
MR. CHAIRMAN: I think we can move on to the next.
MR. STIRLING: Okay, the next one on your list is the position of SPANS on the issue of ITQ and enterprise allocations, which are both forms of quasi rights-based fisheries. We have long since supported this kind of approach to allocation, rather than the sort of wide open, competitive fishery. There are number of reasons for that. I guess the major ones are that without this kind of a system you basically have a race for fish and all that entails, in terms of seasonality of your fishery, in terms of gluts in the fish plants, in terms of poor quality fish because you basically have, another term that is used for that kind of fishery extensively in other parts of the world is a Klondike fishery, which I think gives you a sense of the type of fishery that it is.
With this type of a system each enterprise has a share of the fish in the water. I hasten to add that it is still not private property. People tend to talk about it in terms of private property. The Crown still owns the resource in the water. There is no private property in fish until you get it ashore.
There is no system here that is perfect but we think this system has worked better than any other system that anybody has previously devised for our fishery.
The other thing I would add is that there are all kinds of variations on this. You can have corporate enterprise allocations; you can have them in terms of boat quotas, you can have them in terms of community quotas and then the community can figure out whether they want to break it down into finer divisions and so on. We think this type of system has demonstrated a lot of positives and not too many negatives.
Another one that we think is a fairly big one that is not always recognized is when you, it is sort of like having a big field in your community that nobody is responsible for, it doesn't tend to get looked after all that well in most cases. Sometimes it does. But if everybody owns a little piece of the field, then they tend to look after it a lot better than if it is just a common.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Any questions? Mr. Taylor.
MR. TAYLOR: Mr. Stirling, the implementation of the ITQs, do you see that as further fostering the consolidating of the different fish plants?
MR. STIRLING: I don't think it has resulted in much consolidation on the plant side, no. I can't recall too many plants that have, I mean when we still have 315 plants, 310 or 315, whatever number we are at.
MR. TAYLOR: Is that number shrinking a little bit or increasing or staying?
MR. STIRLING: Oh, if you look at it, say, over the last 10 or 15 years, when did we first start having enterprise allocations, back in the 1980's? So let's say if you look at it over 10 years, again Alan can correct me on this, I believe the number of plants now is higher than it was 10 years ago, probably significantly higher. Am I right or wrong on that?
MR. STEEL: At the beginning of the groundfish moratorium there were 360 plants in the province, so it is down to 315. Sometimes they are very large and others are smaller than this room.
MR. STIRLING: But if you go back to 1986 or 1987, for example, if you look over 10 years I think at 315 you are probably - if I remember correctly, you are higher now than you would have been at that time, even though we have dropped back a bit.
MR. HOLLAND: How many of them are operating?
MR. STEEL: The majority of those are operating. There is going to be a bit of a shakeup this year because of changes in licensing policy.
MR. HOLLAND: I would think there are going to be quite a few shaken out because there are a lot of them that are not operating that are holding licenses and just keeping those licenses active because they feel that at some point there might be some value in them. I know two plants in my riding that have licenses but they are not operating.
MR. STIRLING: With the downturn in the groundfish resource I would be surprised if anything else was the case. You know when you have a whole lot less to put through the plants and if you are getting squeezed on imported fish, there is - I don't think that over the long term we can support the number of plants we have. I am just trying to remember the consultants report that was done. We have had so many studies and things and I lose track of them, but Coopers & Lybrand, I think, did a study on fish plants. They estimated that there was probably 50 per cent more capacity than we need. I am not talking about number of plants, I am talking about overall capacity of plants, but we probably have 50 per cent more capacity than we need.
You have to remember that prior to enterprise allocations, and enterprise allocations definitely would have an impact on plant capacity in this way, you basically had to have capacity in place to handle the glut. So, we frequently got into situations where plants literally could not handle the amount of fish that was coming in because it was all coming in at the
same time. It is a crazy way to do anything. (Interruption) Yes, that is right, but even if we had all that fish back again now, . . .
MR. HOLLAND: Do you think that all that fish would have been coming in if the quotas were not transferrable?
MR. STIRLING: It would not be all coming in in a glut like that.
MR. HOLLAND: No, if you took the T out of ITQ, you would not have the fish coming in like that because certain segments of the fishery can catch more than other segments of the fishery. If the ones that cannot catch that much transfer their quotas to the ones who can, then you have that glut.
MR. STIRLING: No. If you have a quota, and the quota is 10,000 tons of cod, and that quota is not broken down either in terms of IQs or ITQs or EAs or some core community quotas or something, if it is not broken down like that, what happens is the fishery opens and it is a race for each boat to go out and see if it can maximize its catch relative to other boats. So, what happens then, because you do not have any protection of your share so, naturally, it is just like if there is a big box of candy over there and we say, okay, it is time to get the candy. We all sort of swarm over there as fast as we can and get as much candy as we can and we bring it all back here. So, that is basically what a competitive fishery is. Once you break it down in terms of either IQs or ITQs, then I do not have to race out there to get that fish. My piece of the fish is protected.
MR. HOLLAND: I think if you break it down into IQs . . .
MR. STIRLING: Or ITQ.
MR. HOLLAND: No, well, if there are 20 candies in the box and there are 10 of us and we each are allowed 2, I cannot give mine to somebody else and I decide not to take my 2, then there may be some left in the box at the end of the day. If I am allowed to give mine, if I am allowed to transfer my 2 to somebody else, then someone else is going to take it. So, you are going to use it all up.
MR. STIRLING: Well, under any scenario that I have ever seen in the fishery, it all gets used up. People do not leave fish in the water that they can make money on unless you are a charitable society or something. You are going to go out and catch your fish.
MR. HOLLAND: You are only going to catch as much as you can catch.
MR. STIRLING: Oh, for sure, yes. If you cannot catch it, you will not catch it.
MR. HOLLAND: Now, if I cannot catch it all but I can transfer it to somebody else then, yes, it is going to get all used up.
MR. TAYLOR: Is it fair to say that you favour further corporatization?
MR. STIRLING: A transfer of quotas?
MR. TAYLOR: Yes.
MR. STIRLING: Yes.
MR. TAYLOR: Is it good or bad for the fishery? I think you are indicating that it is . . .
MR. STIRLING: No, I am clearly saying that I think it is a positive thing for the fishery because I think, as on the processing side, it is the same on the harvesting side, that we have way more capacity than we need. That is not just something I am saying. I can bring you over stacks of material that high that says that we have too many fish plants and too many vessels and we are dissipating the profits, the returns, not just to the participants in the fishery but to the economy of this province by not conducting an efficient operation.
Everybody, whether it is this committee or all parts of government have learned over the past little while that you have to operate an efficient ship. Transferring makes sense. Now, should there be some restrictions on the amount of quota that can be bought by one enterprise? I would say yes. In a strictly economic model you would probably say no but I think you have to have a social factor involved here as well. So I do favour some restrictions on the amount of quota that can be accumulated.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Okay. Shall we move on then to the next topic?
MR. STIRLING: Does SPANS support the 4Vn winter fishery and why? This is a reference, I am quite sure, to the cod fishery in 4Vn; 4Vn, for people who may not be familiar with these acronyms, is the Sydney Bight fishery. This 4Vn, or Sydney Bight, is part of the 4TVn cod stock; 4T is the Southern Gulf. The fish migrate in the wintertime from the southern part of the gulf out to Sydney Bight. In terms of Nova Scotia vessel operations, that is where we get our sort of crack at that fish.
Years ago, we used to be able to fish in the Southern Gulf. We still can in smaller vessels that are sort of based up on the gulf shore but the larger vessel operations were curtailed in the Southern Gulf years ago. So we conduct the fishery - we don't conduct it now because the fishery is closed - but prior to the shutdown of that quota, the moratorium on that stock, we conducted a fishery in Sydney Bight in the wintertime. There is absolutely no reason why that fishery shouldn't continue to be conducted and certainly there are people
arguing against the conduct of that fishery but the reason for that is obvious because they want to catch it all themselves. If that fishery doesn't happen, then the big loser will be Nova Scotia.
MR. HOLLAND: Is there any good science on that, on the stocks?
MR. STIRLING: Yes. On that 4TVn stock?
MR. HOLLAND: Yes.
MR. STIRLING: Yes, there is probably better science on that stock now than there has ever been because of the moratorium. I should clarify, we aren't arguing for a fishery there this year. Our view with respect to this whole stock, 4TVn, is that the science, at the moment, does not justify reopening that fishery and that the . . .
MR. HOLLAND: But when the stocks recover . . .
MR. STIRLING: When the stock is reopened, yes. What we support in that stock this year is sort of an expanded sentinel fishery and not dramatically expanded. You would still be talking probably less than 1,000 tons of cod to come out of there. I do not know if you are familiar with the sentinel fishery or not, but it is basically a science fishery. The scientists can only do so much with research boats. Sentinel fishery develops a lot more on evidence of what the health of the stock is.
[10:00 a.m.]
MR. HOLLAND: The herring seiners do some of that, too.
MR. STIRLING: Yes, the herring seiners, and hopefully there are some of the gill-net boats will be doing some of that as well now. There was some work done by some of the inshore boats. I think we need to get not just larger boats, whether it is herring and seiners. We need to get everybody plugged in to a more co-operative relationship between science and the industry. One of the things that we have suffered from over the years is an adversarial relationship with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and an adversarial relationship with scientists. You know, we know what we are talking about and you do not know anything. That was on both sides.
MR. HOLLAND: A wise decision to get the gill-netters more involved, in my opinion.
MR. STIRLING: I think so too.
MR. MACASKILL: Mr. Stirling, people will tell you or will say that in the 4Vn fishery that the stock seems to be coming back. Is there not some question about the quality and size of that stock as to what it used to be 20 years ago?
MR. STIRLING: In the 4Vn, we are talking cod now? There is no question that the overall stock, not just 4Vn, but 4TVn, is definitely, all the evidence suggests, still at a very low level. If I remember correctly, the scientists have basically concluded it has bottomed out. I am not even sure that there might even be a bit of an up-tick there in the status of that resource but not a lot.
There was some sort of comments from some people in the industry, more in the inshore and smaller boat part of the fishery, saying that they thought there was plenty of room there to conduct a fishery and there was more fish than they had seen there, et cetera. That can happen. That is the problem particularly with groundfish resources. You can find a pocket of fish where if that is the area where you normally fish and you were focused on, there are all kinds of fish there. That may be one of the last pockets. You have to look at the overall biomass and that is why the scientists do research cruises. On a research cruise they go out to sort of specific spots they have been going to for years and that is good to a point, but fish do . . .
MR. HOLLAND: What kind of tonnage would the inshore fellows take out of the Sydney Bight, in comparison to the broader fishery that was there before?
MR. STIRLING: You mean this year or when the fishery is . . .
MR. HOLLAND: Historically, lets say. I think Mr. MacAskill is referring more to inshore type, maybe even handliners. I am not sure what kind of fishery they conduct there, the inshore fishery.
MR. MACASKILL: It would be the inshore in northern Cape Breton.
MR. STIRLING: That is on the Gulf Coast. I think that is primarily a dragger fishery, Danish seiner fishery. I cannot remember the exact numbers. I think it is an 80/20 split, 80 inshore, 20 larger vessels, maybe even a little bit less than that for the larger vessels. It is primarily an inshore fishery.
MR. MACASKILL: In your opinion would the quality of the fish be poor, could that be possibly because of the parasite created by the seal? There is some talk that may have some effect on the quality of the fish.
MR. STIRLING: When you are saying quality, I do not think the seal worm or nematode downgrades the inherent quality of the fish, but the problem is that in order to put that fish to market you have to get those nematodes out.
MR. MACASKILL: Doesn't it hinder the development of the fish to some extent?
MR. STIRLING: I have not heard that, but again, it may. I have never heard that. The main problem with the nematode is the huge cost of getting it out of the fish before you send it to market. If you have too many nematodes then you end up chopping up the fillet and you are into a different product, you are into a product downgrade. There is a big cost associated with that. It is done by running the fish over what is called a candling table. Light shines up through the fillet so you can see. It is a pretty thorough system, as you can imagine, in terms of getting the worm out. It is harmless if you eat it, but, aesthetically, it is not a winner.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Before you begin the next topic, Mr. Casey has a question. I think he has a previous commitment, so he wants to deal with that now.
MR. CASEY: I have another appointment I do have to keep. Maybe this is not a fair question, but I would just like to ask Mr. Stirling what his feeling is on the inshore/offshore scallop fleet?
MR. STIRLING: I thought you might get around to that. I don't see it here on my list.
MR. CASEY: This is why I question the fact that I should even ask the question in the first place.
MR. STIRLING: I suspected that you would. What aspect are you particularly interested in?
MR. CASEY: I was just wondering how the offshore is feeling? Do you think they will let the inshore have a little bit of one of the banks off there where they can just keep body and soul together, these fellows that have been working?
MR. STIRLING: I don't really think it would solve anything, Joe. The problem in the Digby fleet, in particular, is not going to be solved by a little bit of fish. Last year we agreed to have that fleet come down and fish 100 tons of fish down in what's known as scallop fishing area 29. I think, in the end, they fished about 70 tons. It is not going to solve the problem. You have a capacity build-up. The history there is that after we entered into the agreement between the two fleets back in 1986, the resource that was available for that sector in the Bay of Fundy was double anything that had been previously reported as catch in that fishery. What did the catch go up, like 3,000 tons or something in that area? It was bonanza years for a couple of years. During that period, too, part of the agreement with the inshore was a phased-out allocation on Georges as well. The whole idea of the agreement was, and this was part and parcel of the agreement, with the really good year classes that were available in the Bay of Fundy, with the phase-out fish on Georges, that fleet was then supposed to maybe do something like put ITQs in, right?
MR. HOLLAND: When you pass them from boat to boat, everything gets caught.
MR. STIRLING: It all gets caught anyway.
MR. HOLLAND: Not necessarily. They should have managed what they had.
MR. STIRLING: Yes, and they didn't basically. So it was basically a free-for-all fishery and an unprecedented level of catches, no fleet rationalization, not even any total allowable catch.
MR. HOLLAND: Tell that to him. You are preaching to the converted when you look over this way.
MR. STIRLING: I will look down there. Not even any total allowable catch on the fishery. Naturally, not surprisingly, totally predictably, the resource was fished down. The resource has only gone back, people say, well, there is a disaster in the Bay of Fundy. Well, it is probably gone back now to a sort of a bit below the historical level of catches in there, which is probably around 1,000 tons, maybe 1,200 tons. I think the quota they talked about for this year was 1,200 tons, because there was no quota last year.
I think in the end it probably will be closer to maybe 1,000 tons. Now there is a crisis. There are more boats in that fishery than have ever been in the fishery. Unless you get a heavy-duty, serious, rationalization program in place in that fishery, you basically have two choices: one is attrition, where the weak fall by the wayside or you put some kind of management system in. In this fishery, if it is not an ITQ fishery, if it is just an IQ fishery, basically, that is an attrition management system, basically, what you are saying is, we are going to take the amount of fish, we are going to divide it up among the boats and the ones that don't end up with enough fish to make a go of it, or got more debt than somebody else because their boat is not paid off, basically, what you are saying is they are going to starve. If you put an ITQ fishery in place, then they at least have the opportunity to exit from the fishery with some money in their pocket. It is your choice.
MR. CHAIRMAN: I think it is obvious that there is a difference of opinion.
MR. HOLLAND: But I was going to suggest something else. A community quota and have them, the fishers in that area, manage the community quota and make them divvy it up. Make them decide whether everybody is going to make a living or only a few people are going to make a living.
MR. STIRLING: I don't have any problem with that.
MR. HOLLAND: That is the way to solve a lot of these issues in the fishery.
MR. CASEY: A few people are making a big living, but the others are not.
MR. STIRLING: The Georges Bank TAC last year was 3,000 tons. Two or three years ago, it was 6,200 tons. The Browns Bank TAC last year was 750 tons. It peaked out a year or two before that at 2,000 tons. So, to say that the offshore is having a bonanza, or to imply that, Joe, is just not right.
MR. CASEY: What is the difference in price of scallops between the offshore and the Bay of Fundy? Is there any difference in quality between the two different scallops?
MR. STIRLING: I don't think there is any difference. You might have some better quality with offshore scallops, I don't know.
MR. CASEY: What price are they paying for scallops in the offshore?
MR. STIRLING: I think the relevant price, Joe, is what price are we getting in the market place for our scallops. I think we get roughly the same price in the market place.
MR. CASEY: Quality doesn't mean anything, I mean as far as dollars and cents.
MR. STIRLING: Sure, quality is important. I think what you are alluding to is, you are talking about landed prices, I think is what you are alluding to and you are talking about the higher landed price in the inshore fishery compared to the offshore fishery. But you know, as well as I do, that we are comparing apples and oranges there, that the offshore boats operate on a lay system and what is called the landed price on the offshore boats is really just a number that gets plugged into the lay system in order to generate earnings for the crews.
I think the relevant price is what is the price that we get in the United States for our scallops. I think, if you look at the records, there are going to be variations up and down over time, but the two fleets get the same price for their scallops. Of course they do.
MR. TAYLOR: Did you bring any samples with you?
MR. STIRLING: No, it wasn't on the agenda.
MR. CASEY: You see, the problem that I run into is the way the picture is painted of the inshore fleet being a bunch of renegades overfishing. This has happened some. But when somebody speeds on the highway, you dont close the highway. You get rid of that fellow, get him off the highway and fine him and so on. This has never been done by DFO, for one thing. But there is one heck of a difference up in the Bay of Fundy after this agreement was signed. Then they threw in another 150 or 200 licences, mid-bay licences, to fish. You see, the fishermen don't catch that much per boat. I know that. I know you are going to throw figures at me. You say they only catch 20 per cent of the amount of the
scallops that are taken out of the bay. But they have had that thrown at them since the agreements were signed. So, there is competition there.
The Bay of Fundy fleet had dual licences over the times you were talking about when all these things were signed. When the scallop catch would go down they would stop scallop fishing and go groundfishing, so you see what I mean? They had some way of controlling the whole thing. You must remember that when you say there were no controls put on the Bay of Fundy fleet, you have 100 Digby scallop fishermen plus 150 or more mid-bay licenses all run by individual freelance fishermen. The other big companies along the South Shore, they are run by five or six boardrooms, there is one heck of lot of difference, you can keep control.
MR. STIRLING: That is a bit of a myth too, Joe. There is a fair amount of control in the inshore Digby fleet. There are some major players in there that own multiple vessels and I am not sure that the number of corporate players in the inshore Digby fishery might not be significantly less than the number of corporate players in the offshore fishery. So there are a lot of myths that are . . .
MR. CASEY: There are a lot of freelance fishermen and they can do just about what they want. I do blame the Department of Fisheries when they say the cannot control these boats and so on because they can. I don't think you can do it by the owners because there are too many freelance fishermen.
MR. STIRLING: I have thought about that, sort of who is responsible for where that fishery is and I thought about it quite a lot. It is easy to blame DFO and I guess if there is something you can blame DFO for it is because over the last few years they have tried to take an approach whereby they have moved away from imposing management plans on sectors and tried to have a cooperative approach with the sector. The record is clear in terms of this sector because since 1989 DFO has been sounding the phrase that Neil Bellefontaine in the media the other day was sounding the alarm and they have been, the record is there. I have been at the meetings and there are stacks and stacks of minutes here if you want them.
MR. HOLLAND: All kinds of science, too.
MR. STIRLING: Basically, all kinds of science, better science than we have on the offshore and up until now that sector has basically said, we don't want tax, we don't want quotas, we don't even want meat counts.
One of the major tools that we have in the offshore fishery is that we try to limit the size of scallop that we are taking out of the water so the little ones can grow. This is basic stuff, right? There is no meat count restriction, this is a wide open fishery.
MR. CASEY: There was a meat count restriction all last summer in the Bay of Fundy.
MR. STIRLING: Last summer, yes. We fish 33 meats per pound, that is how we describe it in scallops, instead of saying a minimum size of scallop we say 33 meats to the pound. Some of the stuff that was coming in in Digby last year was a heck of a lot smaller than that.
MR. HOLLAND: Joe, how many times did they fish last year?
MR. CASEY: I dont know. (Interruptions)
MR. CHAIRMAN: I have a number of members, because of previous commitments have indicated they must leave at 10:30 and we have two more topics that are on the agenda so I would like to move along so that we can touch on those before some of the members have to leave. We could spend all day talking about this one topic but I think we will move on (Interruption) I know you have to leave.
MR. CASEY: I just want to say that it was an unfair question in the beginning but I did have to say something.
MR. STIRLING: I didn't regard it as an unfair question, Joe. I would have been disappointed had you not raised it.
MR. CASEY: That's right, you wouldn't think it was me.
MR. STIRLING: That's right and I welcome the opportunity to come . . .
MR. CASEY: I do have to say something when I get back and I am talking to my fishermen. I have to justify some of these things.
MR. STIRLING: You can tell them my views haven't changed.
MR. CHAIRMAN: I don't think any member has to justify the reason why they raise issues that are affecting their area, it would be expected. We will move on to the next topic for discussion, the moratorium.
MR. STIRLING: This was referred to as the inshore-offshore moratorium, I wasn't quite sure what was being referred to here. Is this the moratorium on groundfish stocks?
MR. CHAIRMAN: I would suspect so, yes.
MR. STIRLING: Yes, I think the question here is, does SPANS support the moratorium on groundfish stocks? Yes, we do. We think that the stocks that are under the moratorium should be very closely monitored, as I have indicated before, both in terms of research cruises and in terms of sentinel fisheries and in terms of a very thorough-going
science program. Then we think those stocks should be brought back into production. Those stocks will come back, I don't think there is any question about that. There are already some good signs of the stocks coming back. Don't forget the stocks in the southwestern part of the province were never closed down. That's probably because they grow faster by the way and because of the warmer waters. So we want to be very much part of that discussion as to when to open these stocks. So far we have been and so we are comfortable with the process.
MR. MACASKILL: Mr. Stirling, do you think the commercial salmon fishery has gone the way of the dinosaur? Do you think you will ever see a commercial salmon fishery again?
MR. STIRLING: I think the chances of seeing any kind of a significant scale of commercial fishery are probably not in the cards. As the salmon resource improves and we hope it will, I mean that is a much more problematic species than some others because, as you know it goes way away from our shores during part of its life cycle, but I think you will probably see more of a focus there on the recreational side of the fishery, tied into tourism. I think salmon will continue to be a good economic generator particularly given how policy with respect to that fishery has evolved over the past number of years. I think an expectation of seeing a significantly cranked-up commercial fishery is probably not realistic.
MR. MACASKILL: You could never net them today because of the seals anyway. The last year that there was a fishery in St. Anns Bay, the last number of years, the seals were pretty well cleaning the nets out every night anyway. So it is probably something that would not be viable. But what happens to stock? Do you think the recreational fishery has kept the salmon stocks to a - they don't seem to be increasing any, do they?
MR. STIRLING: I have to confess, I am involved with the commercial side of the fishery and of course there is no commercial fishery for salmon. I am not as up-to-date on salmon as I would be, say, on the commercial species. I don't know much more about salmon than what I just sort of read about it and so on. So I really don't have a good feeling for that question.
MR. TAYLOR: Mr. Stirling, the moratorium and the ban that is in place, when and if it is lifted, do you see - I guess again I will refer to the Eastern Shore - the same people being involved in the fishery?
MR. STIRLING: Yes.
MR. TAYLOR: I may be going into the next one a little. I am not trying to do that intentionally, Mr. Chairman.
MR. CHAIRMAN: One would lead to the other.
MR. STIRLING: Maybe we could deal with both of them together.
MR. TAYLOR: How do you see that?
MR. STIRLING: We have assurances from successive Fisheries Ministers that when the stocks come back that historical shares in the fishery will be respected.
MR. TAYLOR: Do you think that is the proper approach?
MR. STIRLING: Yes, I do.
MR. TAYLOR: You do?
MR. STIRLING: I mean what basis would there be for saying to someone that even though you have a history in the fishery, you should no longer have that history? I can't imagine anybody who would accept that.
MR. TAYLOR: Well, I just put the question.
MR. STIRLING: Well, that's the answer.
MR. HUBBARD: Thinking that way, wouldn't that take us back to where we were, depletion again?
MR. STIRLING: Well, first of all, you have to sort of form a conclusion as to what caused the downturn in the resource. I won't give you my opinion as I am not sure my opinion differs significantly from the consensus but I will give you the consensus. The consensus is that it was a combination of natural factors, we talked about that earlier, in terms of shellfish and groundfish and overfishing. I mean there is no question that we overfished.
Now, you have to be a little careful with respect to that too because maybe if we fished it at sort of half the level we fished it at, maybe it would have taken another year or two to get to where we are now. Probably what we should have done was stop fishing earlier than we did. That's probably the best way of stating it.
So if you believe and that's the consensus as I understand it within the fishing community as to what caused the downturn, then what that suggests is that when the fishery gears up, not that you should exclude some of the participants in the fishery, but that you should be more cautious in the total amount of removals that you are permitting to be taken from the fishery. I think there is a consensus on that as well; there is a consensus that we should do that.
Now, maybe what you are alluding to is different types of gear, you hear a lot about trawl gear versus long-line gear or handliners and so on. The bottom line is that a dead fish is a dead fish regardless of how you catch it. Having said that, I talked about small scallops earlier, well, you know the small groundfish, the parallel is there. What we want to do is protect the small fish so they can get bigger. So anything that we can do with gear that will protect the number of small fish, allow them to get bigger and improve the total weight of fish that is coming out of the water, the total biomass, the total return we are getting for it, that we should be doing.
The scientists are absolutely definitely saying, however, that a fishery targeted at only large fish is a very unwise choice as well. Don't forget the large fish are your main spawners, they are the ones that put the greatest number of eggs in the water, which hopefully - and we don't really know this - give you your best chance of having good recruitment in a good year class. But there is a lot of evidence around, there are a lot of theories about year classes. There are so many eggs in the water even if you have only a small few fish, they lay million and millions or it may be billions or trillions but it is a huge number of eggs and only a very very small - in years where you get a really good year class, a good crop of new fish coming out of those eggs, only a very small-percentage of those eggs are surviving anyway.
I think the major theory around is sort of the weather theory, that when you have sort of relatively calm weather, the thermocline in the water is reasonably well defined and that is where the food concentrates for the very small fish and you will get a good survival if the weather conditions are not calm and the thermocline is all broken up, then the likelihood of eggs surviving in terms of food supply is less. That's one of the theories.
[10:30 a.m.]
There is another one with respect to - oh, what is it called - the sort of broad-scaled weather, whether you have a high oscillating one way or the other. I can't remember what it is called now but that is another sort of major theory with respect to world weather patterns and how that affects the environment.
MR. TAYLOR: The concept of honouring those historical values I think is admirable and probably, as politicians, supportable. I am wondering if government, the people in power so to speak, who will be making the decision on the moratorium, should look at fair options, in the name of enhancing the longevity of the fishery. Most people agree that overfishing, there were other factors that certainly also related to the depletion of the stock. I think that overfishing, by most people's admission, was the major reason why the fishery had to be closed.
MR. CHAIRMAN: May I interrupt for a second. I know a number of members have to leave and I just want to get a clarification on one thing. Our next meeting is scheduled for May 6th. The only question I have to ask you is regarding the time. We are now sitting from
9:00 a.m. until 11:00 a.m. I know that for some members it poses a problem between the end of the meeting and the starting of the House. Do you wish to start earlier or is the present time acceptable? That is all I need to know.
We could start at 8:30 a.m. to possibly 10:30 a.m. What is the wish of the committee? I will poll you in the House and you can let me know, or do you want to leave it as it is? (Interruptions) Would 8:30 a.m. be a difficulty for people?
MR. HOLLAND: It is not difficult for anyone who lives in the city but I would prefer to go from 9:00 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. myself.
MR. CHAIRMAN: We will try the next one from 9:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. and then see where we go from there. Is that agreeable? Thank you.
Mr. Stirling, if you want to reply to Mr. Taylor. Do you want to rephrase your question?
MR. STIRLING: I understood the question. If, for purposes of discussion, we accept that the major factor in the downturn was overfishing, and I think there were a number of factors and it would be very unusual if there was only one factor involved in something as serious as this in any event, but let's just assume that for a second. So we are talking about two things; overfishing and shares.
Now the shares have nothing in my mind to do with overfishing. What has to do with overfishing is the total amount. Surely it must be the total amount of fish that comes out of the water. I mean that is, by definition, what overfishing is.
MR. TAYLOR: Just on that point, you don't feel that the shares equal the quota?
MR. STIRLING: Oh sure, the shares equal the quota but if . . .
MR. TAYLOR: Obviously if you had fewer people with shares, you would not have as big a quota.
MR. STIRLING: Oh no.
MR. TAYLOR: You don't see that?
MR. STIRLING: No, the quotas are not set that way, the quotas are set based on the scientific advice. So if we have a problem with overfishing, it is because we set the total allowable catch, from which the shares were derived, too high.
MR. TAYLOR: But just on that point, as far as the shares go; I understand the quota is set by DFO.
MR. STIRLING: Yes, by the federal Minister of Fisheries and Oceans after consultation with the world.
MR. TAYLOR: Okay. I guess if the moratorium or the ban is lifted my concern is that if the quota remains the same and the shares remain the same, then the stock . . .
MR. STIRLING: Oh, the quota won't remain the same. Oh, that is absolutely certain. No, I am sorry, if you were sort of . . .
MR. TAYLOR: No, well, I misunderstood.
MR. STIRLING: Yes, and I probably wasn't clear so let me be clear. I am absolutely assuming that when the fishery is reopened it won't go from closed to, bang, 30,000 tons or 40,000 tons, for instance, in eastern Nova Scotia.
MR. TAYLOR: I feel much better now.
MR. STIRLING: That will never happen. Maybe what you might see - the FRCC, the Fisheries Resource Conservation Council suggested maybe limited reopenings of three stocks this year. The kind of numbers they were talking about for the, and one of those wasn't the Eastern Shore stock, the 4VsW stock, but the 4TVn stock which we talked about earlier, which is part of the Sydney Bight stock, they recommended 6,000 tons, versus - I can't remember what the historic numbers were in there, 50,000 tons or 60,000 tons. In the northern gulf they recommended 6,000 tons. Again, compared to numbers up towards 100,000 tons. In 3Ps, which is St. Pierre Bank off the south coast of Newfoundland, they recommended 10,000 tons. So when these fisheries open up, the quantities will be a fraction of what they were, and by a fraction I mean maybe 10 per cent or 15 per cent, something like that.
All I am saying is that when you open at 6,000 tons, if a particular gear sector had 22 per cent of the quota before, they should have 22 per cent of the 6,000 tons.
MR. CLIFFORD HUSKILSON: Fish seem to run in cycles. I know, 20 years ago back in the 1970s, the fishermen said that the stocks were down a lot. If seems like they do run in cycles and that is another contributing factor to them being down. Also I agree that there was a lot of overfishing that put the stocks back a lot. I do feel that it is in nature and it is the cycles that they run also.
MR. STIRLING: I completely agree with you. I think the resources run in cycles. I think it is probably related to environmental conditions which change over time. An interesting related study that I saw a couple of years ago related to Georges Bank. Some American scientists had done a very intensive study of Georges Bank. We all know that both on the American side and on the Canadian side, we think of Georges Bank as being in serious trouble. They have talked about really drastic measures in the U.S. fishery. They have major closed areas and they have very small quotas for groundfish boats. They have all their fisheries restricted in there just because of the amount of by-catch of groundfish they take.
The interesting thing about this is that when the scientists looked at the total marine resource on Georges Bank, sure they found less cod and they found less haddock, but they found there was just as much resource there as had been there 10 or 20 years ago, whatever baseline period they were using. It was different species. For instance, the species that has really come back strong on Georges Bank is herring.
Herring is a fishery that was hammered unmercifully back 20 years ago by foreign fleets that were over here. Now that stock - it took a long time - but that stock has emerged dramatically on Georges Bank.
MR. HOLLAND: Is there a herring fishery there now?
MR. STIRLING: Not a significant scale fishery yet. We have done a bit of fishing there over the past but we do not have the right type of boats for it anymore. We never did really have the right sort of boats for it. It was a freezer trawler fishery. It is the same problem with silver hake. Maybe even worse.
We have been doing a limited bit of fishery with seiners. What may make some sense there is an over-the-side fishery so we can use the type of boats we have now - the seiners - and then off-load that to freezer trawlers. But in order to fish that out there and bring it back, most of the time by the time you get it ashore here you will have quality problems with it. We have had some level of success with bringing it ashore. The other thing, what I guess makes the most sense, is for us to have the right type of technology so that we are not relying on foreign boats at all.
The problem with doing an over-the-side fishery is again, as I mentioned earlier, the over-the-side thing worked because you had a centralized economy, the Russian economy. They were fishing for protein, very low wage rates for the people working on their boats. They had surplus capacity in terms of boats. They could put a boat over here and let it sit there for a month waiting for herring to show up. Those days are gone. There have been no over-the-side boats. We did not have any in the last year. I think we had one or two in the year before but once they were not getting the type of volumes that they needed for things to make sense on an economic basis, they were gone.
The Americans have been trying to do something with over-the-side sales on Georges and they have run into basically the same problems that we have in terms of first of all attracting boats and then they have also run into other problems in terms of transferring. It is one thing to transfer within sight of Yarmouth in those waters and it is another thing to transfer out on Georges Bank where the weather conditions are quite different. Boats get beat up and those sorts of things.
I think if we are going to prosecute that fishery and protect our interests in that fishery vis-à-vis the Americans because there is no question that the Americans will eventually gear up for that fishery, we are going to have to get involved with a different type of technology, probably a mid-water freezer trawler type of boat in order to prosecute it. It is a resource that we have to do something about.
MR. MACASKILL: This may be kind of a crazy question but I am wondering, when the research council or the scientists look at the stock resource of groundfish or whatever, they must decide how much goes to fishers and what percentage of that stock goes to the predators like the seal, do they work out a solution of that nature?
MR. STIRLING: Not in any kind of a definitive way, the predator-prey relationships or the food chain relationships and other sort of interrelationships between species may be competition for food supply, for example, it is not just totally a predator-prey thing. The council, the industry and the fishing community generally, have identified that as an area that we need to know more about. The big problem with it is that it is very expensive and is long-term research. If you had an endless amount of money, there are many things you could do. We are doing more of that but we are a long way from understanding species interrelationships. We can learn more about them but we will never have enough dollars to understand it in any kind of formula way.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Huskilson is next.
MR. HUSKILSON: I was going to ask another question about the herring on Georges Bank. My understanding is, and maybe it is not correct, that they school up on Georges but then they move off and they come up in the Bay of Fundy and they come in toward the shore. That is where the herring seiners and those go in on them. Is that correct?
MR. STIRLING: That is not the scientific view, no. The scientific view is that the Georges stock is a separate biomass from what is referred to as the 4WX stock, the conventional - and this might change over time, it has changed in the past. One of things that we are getting ready to do now, getting ready to do may be a little strong, we are promoting and trying to source some money to do an extensive tagging program on herring in all areas to see where they go.
The current view if that you have the 4WX stock which basically is the Bay of Fundy stock, it moves up to Chedabucto Bay in whole or in part in the wintertime and we have that fishery up in Chedabucto Bay; it comes back down along Halifax and then goes back into the Bay of Fundy in the summertime and it spawns in the Bay of Fundy. You probably have some local stocks dotted along the shore and then you have the Georges stock which we think is a separate stock, the Americans think it is tied into stocks further south so they have different management units than we do. They you have the weir fishery on the New Brunswick side which is again probably tied into Gulf of Maine fish, as distinct from Georges Bank.
The weir interests in New Brunswick think there may be some relationship between Georges and the weirs. I have not heard anybody suggest that a relationship between the Bay of Fundy seiner fishery or the fish that they fish in the Bay of Fundy and Georges because you have the Fundian Channel in there and the Fundian Channel is believed to be a biomass division between Georges and the Scotian Shelf.
MR. HOLLAND: Does SPANS direct any funding itself towards research?
MR. STIRLING: In kind we do, yes. In two fisheries, I will just use two as examples, the offshore scallop fishery for the past few years now we have been providing the research platform for that. Research boats used to be done to do the research crews. We now provide a vessel and a crew and gear to conduct that research fishery. We are just gearing up now to do some exploratory fishing, all at our cost as well.
There is another spinoff from that, of course, in that it is a more cooperative relationship than the type of cooperative relationship I talked about earlier, between science and fisheries.
In the herring fishery, to use another example, we are doing a lot more again, providing vessels and crews to basically assess the size of the biomass. We saw some downturn in the herring resource in the Bay of Fundy as well and we reacted quite quickly to that and brought our quotas down quite dramatically. Probably more important than bringing down the quotas, that fishery is made up of a number of spawning stocks, on German Bank and Seal and Scotts Bay and so on, Trinity. What we are doing now instead of - previously we were just trying to manage the whole thing as one biomass. Now we are getting into very targeted management on the spawning units. So when the fish show up in those areas we send the seiners in with scientists on board. We survey those areas and try to get a handle on exactly how much fish is there. We have now put in a very conservative removal level for those stock, those spawning.
MR. HOLLAND: Has your research shown that they have dramatically reduced those stocks?
MR. STIRLING: Well, we don't have baseline data to go by because we weren't doing this before but what we have been saying, say, last year over the year before is some significant improvement in spawning stocks but they were definitely down. The reason we sort of went to this new system is because they were reduced. We saw a lot more fish, for example, in Scotts Bay last year than we saw the previous year, dramatically more.
We are now fishing to a 20 per cent removal level. I know you have some involvement in herring and you are interested in herring.
MR. HOLLAND: Is there a size limit on herring?
MR. STIRLING: In Chedabucto Bay there is, in the winter fishery. Size limits on herring are mainly to distinguish between local stocks but there is no size limit per se. That factor, in terms of herring, is controlled really by market factors. If you have small herring, you can't get a decent fillet off them.
MR. HOLLAND: Is there any serious discussion in SPANS to exploit the herring stocks on the banks? You made reference to that earlier.
MR. STIRLING: Are you talking about Georges, as distinct from 4WX?
MR. HOLLAND: Yes.
MR. STIRLING: Yes, I mean one of the things that I mentioned that . . .
MR. HOLLAND: It doesnt seem inconceivable to get a freezer and have the seiners try to . . .
MR. STIRLING: Well, right now the only boats that are licensed to fish Georges Bank are seiners. So one of the things that we have been actively discussing with DFO and with the association that represents the seiner fleets and through the Scotia-Fundy Hearing Advisory Committee, which I co-chair with DFO, is trying to get some permission to put some freezer trawlers in . . .
MR. HOLLAND: That does not solve anything for the seiners though, does it?
MR. STIRLING: No, but if the seiners are unable to fish the Georges Bank resource - I am not talking the Bay of Fundy now; we do not need freezer trawlers in the Bay of Fundy, so we are talking Georges Bank.
MR. HOLLAND: So if that biomass is depleted to a large degree, which it appears to be . . .
MR. STIRLING: The Bay of Fundy is down, Georges Bank is up.
MR. HOLLAND: Yes, and the seiners concentrate on the Bay of Fundy resource. If that is down, why wouldn't they try to switch to the Georges Bank resource?
MR. STIRLING: Well, again, it is just the problems that I indicated, in terms of catching a fish - you see, the seiners have no ability to freeze.
MR. HOLLAND: Well, if they have a freezer right there that they can transfer it to . . .
MR. STIRLING: Well, that is an over-the-side sale, but the problem is - like the days of getting Russian boats in . . .
MR. HOLLAND: No, not a Russian. Is there no feasibility in the seiners doing that themselves? You know, leasing a freezer ship?
MR. STIRLING: No, the cost would be out of this world.
MR. HOLLAND: That is what I was getting at.
MR. STIRLING: No, I understand, you are asking a very good question. The only way the over-the-sides . . .
MR. HOLLAND: I know that the seiners are interested in other stocks, other species., and that is not popular.
MR. STIRLING: Yes, mackerel.
MR. HOLLAND: I was just thinking that that may have been a way to sustain the seiners until the Bay of Fundy stock came back. From what you are saying, it is not practical.
MR. STIRLING: There is a quota system in the bay. It is an 80/20 split between the seiners and the gill-netters.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Because of the time, Mr. Stirling, if you would like to sum up any points that you feel we may not have touched upon.
MR. STIRLING: I think we have touched on many points and I don't think we have missed too many, Mr. Chairman.
MR. MACASKILL: We don't hear much about the halibut fishery anymore. Is it flat, or is it dead?
MR. STIRLING: The halibut resource is at a relatively low level. There is still a halibut fishery. One of the problems with the halibut fishery is the by-catch of cod and Nova Scotia boats go down to the Grand Banks and fish halibut. They always have, but that fishery has been closed for a while because of the moratorium on cod. So it is being directly affected by the moratorium.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Are there any further questions from the committee members?
MR. HUSKILSON: Just a comment, in southwestern Nova Scotia, in our area, I understand the stocks are coming back very quickly. Would you like to comment on that, just briefly?
MR. STIRLING: Yes, I think I alluded to that earlier that those stocks, first of all the 4X stocks or the Bay of Fundy stocks and the Georges stocks were never totally closed. They are showing haddock on Georges, cod and haddock in 4X. The cod on Georges is a bit problematic, but they are coming back. They are still significantly below historical levels, but they are showing some good improvement. I think probably one of the main reasons for that and the reasons why those fisheries were never closed is because you are talking warmer water there. The further south and west you go, the warmer the water. We saw that in the northern codfishery. The part of the fishery that started to fail first was the northern end, what is called 2J. It was like a desert there and you still had reasonably good fishing further south in 3K and 3L. Then it swept around.
I am quite encouraged by what we are seeing in southwest Nova Scotia and I sincerely hope that that is a herald of what we will soon see on the Scotian Shelf as the water warms up. The scientists are confirming that the water is warming up.
MR. HUBBARD: You will have a hard time convincing me of that, if you try to swim in the Bay of Fundy.
MR. STIRLING: When I say the water is warming up, I should qualify that and I was going to. The scientists look at temperatures at various depths. So it is not the surface water temperature that is important, it is the water at the level that the fish inhabit.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Stirling, on behalf of the committee, I would like to thank you for sharing the views of your association. It is a very complex issue and the effects of the downturn in the fishery, as we have found out today, affect different regions in different intensities and possibly the potential for recovery is also different depending on where you live within this province or Atlantic Canada.
I would remind the committee members that we will be meeting on May 6th, as scheduled. Again, Mr. Stirling, on behalf of the committee, thank you for appearing here today.
MR. STIRLING: I would like to thank you, Mr. Chairman, for inviting me. I have been here several times and it is always a pleasure to come here and I hope you invite me back again in the future. Thank you.
[The meeting adjourned at 10:56 a.m.]