STANDING COMMITTEE ON RESOURCES
Mr. Raymond White
MR. CHAIRMAN: Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to call to order the Standing Committee on Resources. At this time, I welcome the representatives from the Fisheries Resource Conservation Council. We do have a fairly informal format in which we would ask the members of the council to begin with a brief presentation. Then, I suspect out of that presentation, there would come some dialogue and questions. To begin with, we would ask if our guests would introduce themselves and I will ask the respective MLAs who are here to introduce themselves and the area that they represent. We have a couple of other committee members who are not here yet who may join us later.
MR. FRED WOODMAN: Mr. Chairman, I am Fred Woodman, Chairman of the Fisheries Resource Conservation Council. I came in last year in April and I have one year under my belt.
MS. CATRINA TAPLEY: My name is Catrina Tapley. I am the Executive Director of the Fisheries Resource Conservation Council. I have been the executive director for the past year, the same time as Mr. Woodman. I am pleased to be here.
MR. CLARRIE MACKINNON: Clarrie MacKinnon. I am Nova Scotia's delegate to the Fisheries Resource Conservation Council and have been for over three years.
[The members introduced themselves.]
MR. CHAIRMAN: On behalf of the committee, I want to welcome you here and we will turn the floor over to your presentation.
MR. WOODMAN: Mr. Chairman, thank you for the invitation to be here. Also, I would just like to acknowledge the help that Mrs. Henry gave Catrina in setting this up. On my left and right, they have introduced themselves so we will move along.
My remarks, most of them, will focus basically on last year's report to the minister which came out in October. There were a few moments where we had some anxiety here because we were not sure our little video was going to work. We had a few technical problems but they are overcome. So, it will be in the form of a video presentation. I will speak to it. If we have time after the presentation on the Building the Bridge, which is our report last year to the minister, we would also like to touch on it and possibly if members would so desire to ask questions on the Gear Technology Report which we put out one month ago in St. John's, Newfoundland.
My predecessor, Mr. Clark, was here one or two years ago. I guess you know what the FRCC is by now, but just to give you a brief history for those who might be new on the committee. It was formed in 1993 by Minister Crosbie after the collapse of the northern cod off Newfoundland commonly known as 2J-3KL cod. It was created to form partnerships among the academic, industry harvesters and processors, and governments. It is mandated to make recommendations to the minister on conservation issues of Atlantic groundfish. The majority of work is focused on groundfish. We did a report, at the request of the minister, on lobster and recommendations included advice on quota levels and total allowable catches for Atlantic groundfish.
I do not have to remind you that when the fishery moratorium came into effect in 1992, the political climate was a bit highly charged. The fishermen were not too happy, governments were not very happy; I guess there was nobody too happy in Atlantic Canada with respect to groundfish, and there was a lack of trust between fishermen, science and government in general.
The process, at that particular time, of determining the total allowable catches was done basically behind closed doors, which a lot of people did not like. The advice to the minister of the day was somewhat secretive and those who participated in the process. I guess that is why we are here and we think we are doing a reasonable job in an open process. It is a much better relationship between science and fishermen. We have worked hard to ensure that the data and the information from fishermen are included in stock assessments at the moment by using the Sentinel Fishery Program which is working very well Atlantic-wide. The FRCC also allows for more direct input from fishermen and others who are involved in this industry on conservation matters and quota recommendations.
Now, to the presentation. It is not quite as clear as we would like to have it.
MR. JOHN LEEFE: Things seldom are.
MR. WOODMAN: It seldom works the way I want it, Murphy's Law. You all have this just in case you cannot read it, you can follow me.
In our report that we presented to the minister last year in October there were many issues which were brought up and came from consultations which had taken place Atlantic-wide. Some of the issues were conservation oriented, the re-opening of closed fisheries and certainly stock by stock recommendations.
Number one as a conservation issue under the present climate is overcapacity, as we found out very quickly, when the quotas were recommended to the minister this year, like 6,000 for the Gulf, 6,000 for western Newfoundland, 10,000 for southern Newfoundland. The capacity to harvest that fish, that fish will be captured as quick as I am saying it. It is almost like the British Columbia herring fishery; you would be fine one minute and an hour later you could close it. So the overcapacity problem is there and we had to make recommendations and special measures had to be taken to ensure that the available capacity is managed and that the excess effort does not compromise conservation objectives. That is quite a statement; it is easily said but not easily done.
I guess again we run into effort controls, which is another mechanism whereby we can have some controls on the fishery. We recommended here that the FRCC and DFO undertake a comprehensive and in-depth analysis of the use of a direct effort control; measure and test these measures further in pilot scale situations. There are many ways of effort control, I guess we have some in Nova Scotia at the moment like closed areas. Georges Bank, for example, is closed from January until June. I guess you would classify that as being a conservation effort control measure because you have six months of the year when fish have at least time to rest. The other one that is being used across the border from us in Georges Bank is the U.S. days at sea which is not what you would call a really popular one, but it is one that might, somewhere in time, have to be used as an effort control.
We have released a discussion paper now on the conservation aspects of quota and effort controls, quota versus effort and whether we should have not one or the other but I guess a combination of both, which would certainly be advantageous from a conservation perspective.
On opening the fisheries we have to have monitoring, control and surveillance. In our consultations this past year there is one thing that came across loud and clear, and that is where cheaters were allowed on the water that they be dealt with severely and that the sanctions would be rigidly enforced Atlantic-wide. There is a fair amount of cheating still going on, I guess. That is the impression that we got from our consultations. I have to try to cut my remarks as much as I can because I can carry on like this for a long time. It is an issue that is close to me at the moment with respect to conservation and what is happening in Atlantic Canada.
By-catch in shrimp fisheries is another one where you have a very small net being towed over the bottom. At the moment we have recommended the Nordmore grate, which is a grate that goes in the opening of the trawl which allows escape of unwanted small fish, little cod, flatfish, or whatever. It still seems to be a problem with redfish, just to give an example, without the use of the Nordmore grate in what we call the Flemish Cap, which is 3M, which is pretty well foreign dominated now and just about got the place creamed out there. Anyway, it was estimated that there was 239 million redfish killed in two years by failing to use the mechanism whereby you could allow fish to escape. So when we have biomass as low as they are today, we have to make sure that every measure is taken from a conservation perspective.
The other one, which is what you call the issue, is recreational or food fisheries, call it what you like, in Nova Scotia and P.E.I. and it is a very touchy subject with respect to the fishery. As a councillor, we heard it loud and clear that, not so much the fishery itself, it is the fact that it is not controlled. There is absolutely no control on recreational fishing, as it existed in 1996. In the Maritimes, there was a fair amount of control on it. We had a very short season in Newfoundland, but, in the rest of the Maritimes, there was an uncontrolled fishery. They would start fishing in June and carry on right to the end of the year. It is a great advantage for tourist boat operators who take people out. What we are asking here is, make sure that it is a controlled fishery and that limitations are put on; other than that, it could become a real black market issue. That was a very touchy one, I know, but it is one, again, that it is not in the best interests of conservation of any fishery today to go on with no controls.
Then we have what we call attitudinal change. If after five or six years of the moratorium in Atlantic Canada, we haven't had a change of attitude, then it is a sad commentary. But we are recommending that the fishermen, through their organizations, get more involved in management, get involved in joint industry scientific initiatives, continue towards the development of a conservation approach to our marine environment and guide others to see the need for such a move. There has to be a code that people have to follow. The oceans are not unlimited. We cannot harvest as we want, we must show it some respect. In the end, all involved should adopt a code of responsible fishing. There is work going on from FAO and from our own department within Canada, as well, to make sure there is a code established for responsible fishing.
Predator-prey relationships - a precautionary approach to fisheries on food species and exercising a prudent conservation measure in all fisheries that are at the base of the food chain, for example, herring, silver hake, sand lance, shrimp, should be rigorously followed. The role these species play in the food chain should remain an important consideration. Any management plan for commercial fisheries, the FRCC recommends that any fishery on these species be undertaken with extreme caution because we have to watch our redirected effort of when one fishery closes, we, bang, go right at the other and we can bring down the food chain and the restoration of stocks will suffer.
Krill - I guess a few years ago, we knew what krill was. We used to call it whale bait and that was the extent of it and we never thought there would be harvesting of krill. But there is and the Antarctic is quite a large fishery. There is some fishing going on in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. It is minimal, I know, but we had requests from Nova Scotia this year with respect to krill as being an additive for food for the aquaculture industry. There was quite a debate on this issue because by now we are down at the lower end of the food chain, when we start talking about krill, we are at the minute end of the food chain and we have to be very careful when we move into these areas, not knowing the ramifications of what would happen if we decide to harvest those species. What we recommended here was that no additional dependence by industry on this food chain species be introduced before adequate information is available. I think the critical issue is the information of knowing what effect this will have if we so harvest those species.
It is not so much an issue in Nova Scotia but capelin are moving down because of the water temperature but capelin did show up off Nova Scotia these last few years, down so far, I think, even off Halifax here. In Newfoundland it is quite a fishery. I think we harvest very conservatively, but we harvest somewhere in the area of 40,000 to 45,000 tons a year. Again, in our consultations fishermen reminded us to be very careful of interfering with the food chain. We recommended that conservation approach to the management of this resource continue. The fishery should be carefully monitored to ensure that dumping and discarding are kept at a minimum and certainly the critical one is the capture of other species and juvenile cod especially when harvesting near shore.
Since the minister's announcement on the re-opening of the fishery there has been, I guess everybody has read the editorials, what is happening with some of the criticism, but the Sentinel Fishery which we recommended after the moratorium in 1993 - what we recommended was there had to be some fishermen on the water to monitor what was happening so we could get a handle on it without just science alone. There has to be more that just one index to work from.
One of our first recommendations was the Sentinel Fishery. For those of you who are not quite familiar with it, the Sentinel Fishery is carried on by inshore fishermen, again within 12 miles of land, Atlantic-wide from Labrador right down to off Halifax here in 4VsW. It gives us as a council some indication of what is happening on the water. It gives us some indication of catch levels today versus catch levels pre-moratorium and since moratorium. We put a lot of credence in this Sentinel Fishery. A lot of our recommendations will come from that source. We recommended that this Sentinel Fishery continue. It is certainly a great benefit to council. We also recommended expanding the Sentinel Fishery, not only inshore but we need some offshore as well and science-industry initiatives so that we can get a handle on what is happening rather than just from the research vessel survey which happens one month of the year.
Also we had great support from industry, from the offshore as well, with respect to proposals for 'tows for science' where they were quite willing to put their ships to wide sea, not necessarily 150-footers. It can be any, 65-footer or 45-footer. It does not matter, but it has to be with science involvement.
In addition we recommended that giant projects with fishermen where they take more of the sampling and the data when the commercial fishery starts. This will not be landed, then forget about it. We will carry on somewhat similar to the Sentinel Fishery Program with respect to commercial landings, take measurements, size of the fish, condition of the fish, the otoliths which gives us the age and the structure and so on and so forth. So we have a better clear indicator of what is happening day by day. I know it is not easy. It is great words. It is not easy but it has to be or we are back to square one again.
That is what we recommended. The role of fishermen in the scientific process should be enhanced well beyond that of data collector. The council is encouraged by the role many fishermen and their organizations have played in the RAP sessions and we believe this should be further encouraged in all regions. Now fishermen are attending those briefings that science would call a peer review on stock assessments. Fishermen are now attending. They are more involved than ever before.
Emerging fisheries and minor stocks. As I mentioned in my comments just a few minutes ago talking about redirected effort. This is what happens when fishermen live to fish. They are not going to be landlubbers and they are going to somehow stay on the water to support their enterprise. What we have had here is emerging fisheries. I can name a few of them in Nova Scotia: the monk fishery, the skate fishery, the wolf and an even more redirected effort at hake. Those species we really haven't got a good handle on because they are well down in the chain but, at the same time, they are becoming darn good commercial species and the fishermen are doing very well harvesting them. We need to pay more attention to those than we have paid in the past.
Once this happens, which will mean limitations on fishing because the less you know, you have to take a precautionary approach. When you take the precautionary approach, automatically the total allowable catches will come down, especially where we have species which we know so little about. Again we have recommended here that science-industry initiatives start immediately, to make sure that we get a better handle on what is happening and what is out there in those species.
The next one is the seals. It seems as though everybody used to talk, we used to be able to talk about it at one time; we can't even do that now. Even when we talk, we seem to do very little about it anyway. For the last three years my predecessor was pretty adamant on this one; he felt, and I am in the same boat, I am not saying that seals are the cause of our demise but I am convinced that they are certainly an impediment to stock recovery.
You can't have, in the case of the northeast coast of Newfoundland and the gulf, something in the neighbourhood of 5 million harp seals. Immediately off here, on Sable Island, we have 140,000 grey seals. With stocks being as low as they are, no recruitment coming into the system, I don't think we need science to tell us that there is a problem. We do have it and, unfortunately, it is an area where public opinion world-wide will not let you use the word cull; it has to be a controlled harvest where you have to have markets, utilization of what you kill. That is pretty well established world-wide today that you must do that.
Our recommendations, we recommended increasing the harvest. That has been done with respect to the northeast coast of Newfoundland and the harp population. We feel there is not enough and we want initiatives to encourage the product development. There is some work ongoing in this with respect to the grey seal and new markets for whatever, for medicinal purposes or others.
Certainly there has been a lot of work done with contraception in the grey seal and we think it is time that this was used, at least to try to control the population that is already there and not see it explode. That population off Sable is increasing at the rate of 14 per cent a year. I think the report that we are going to get, and I will elaborate a little more later on 4VsW, is going to show us that.
How to reopen and maintain a sustainable fishery. I guess we look at the pillars of conservation. The first pillar is knowledge. We try to identify as indicators those items of information which are most relevant to assessing stock status. Although these indicators play a foremost role in characterizing the status of the stock, they are all tainted with significant uncertainty and must be supplemented with additional information where available. This is my comment again, we have to have as many indices as possible to determine the stock status.
Neither the reopening or the continued management of the fishery are reducible to simple formulae or to one-sided considerations. We have to have the consideration of the fisherpeople, of science, of managers and of the processing industry as well, as to how we proceed. Conservation decisions require real input from all sources of information, and this we are trying to foster. Once we reopen, we have to try to maintain and sustain the resource.
[9:30 a.m.]
The second pillar of conservation is the approach adopted to manage and carry out the fishery, which will determine how knowledge and its uncertainty are used. The approach adopted by the FRCC is the precautionary approach. This is recommended by the United Nations Conference on Straddling Fish Stocks, 1995, in dealing with cases where information is uncertain, unreliable or inadequate. The precautionary approach favours management measures which will minimize the risk of undesired outcomes.
The precautionary approach used has consisted of: (1) basing the recommendation to reopen on the strength of the biological indicators; (2) taking into account the uncertainty about certain stock status; (3) opening only at a level which ensures continued rebuilding - and I guess (4) probably should be (1) - (4) once we do it we have to insist on a solid assurance of management control.
The fishery has to be managed properly, which leads us to the harvesting. One of the criteria that we have recommended to any fishery of the future is that conservation harvesting plans should include the following components: matching the effort to the available resource; seasonal catch repartition where appropriate. By that we mean that instead of having a directed effort immediately when the fishery opens, it will be spread over a period of time rather than concentrating on a stock of fish at any given time of the year. Extensive and timely monitoring through a combination of measures - logbooks, observers at sea and dock-side monitoring - the use of gear with appropriate selectivity, to avoid catching juveniles and spread the catch over a range of year classes. By that we mean the age structure, so that we are not directing at one year class and wiping it out. This will affect the recruitment coming in the following years down the road.
By-catch provisions. There is a fair amount of by-catch which should be accounted for. Small fish protocols. We don't want to see too many juvenile fish taken or even small fish that have not reached maturity to spawn. Suitable seasonal and area closures to protect juveniles, pre-spawning and spawning aggregations; mechanisms for mid-season and end of season evaluation of the fishery; and provision for gathering information about fish stocks.
No doubt some fishermen will say, after all that you expect us to go fishing? Those are rigid criteria which no doubt are having some problems out there, but there has to be an attitudinal change with respect to making sure they understand that when they go back fishing, after this moratorium, they are not going back the way they left it. There is going to be a different fishery in the future. Certainly with reopening, those plans have to be very explicit and they have to understand the ramifications of not having it and the benefits of having it.
I will take you through the stock-by-stock recommendations and I will make just a quick comment on 3Ps, which is southern Newfoundland, which is really not of interest to you people at the moment. I will just tell you a little about this stock. This is probably one of the most unusual stocks of fish in Atlantic Canada because it runs down right over the Grand Banks, right down to the straddling stocks. St. Pierre and Miquelon, that is the area where it runs down. Science seems to think there are possibly five stock components, migratory stocks. There is really no stock of fish itself, except in the bay stocks, in 3Ps. It all migrates in from other areas, from the gulf, from the southern Grand Banks and the east coast of Newfoundland. It all merges in and gets in on St. Pierre Bank and the Green Bank and so on. So it is a unique stock of fish. At any given time there can be a tremendous volume of fish in that particular area. Certainly as you know it supported the Grand Banks fishery for years.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Could I suggest that instead of going through each of the stocks, as everyone has had access to this material, that because of time constraints, that you highlight some of the ones you feel may be of major concern?
MR. WOODMAN: Yes, sir, that's what I will do. The ones of interest to this committee certainly are the 4TVn, which is the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and we have all the stocks in 4X and starting tomorrow actually we are having discussions down in Yarmouth on the Georges Bank, 5Z. Not only that, Mr. Chairman, at any given time if you so wish you can interrupt and we can take questions as well whenever you are ready. We are here to give you the best information we can on what you want to know.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Are there any particular stocks that the committee members would like to have highlighted?
MR. CLIFFORD HUSKILSON: How about 4X?
MR. CHAIRMAN: Okay, that would be on Page 17.
MR. WOODMAN: Well, it is the one we like to talk about. It is the one stock of fish in Atlantic Canada and the other one certainly is Georges Bank stock which is showing some recovery. We like to think we were part of that recovery but also that the cooperation of the fisherpeople in the area also made this recovery possible.
For 4X cod there is a strong 1992 year class, recruitment is good and geographical distribution is expanding. It is moving up here into 4Vs and they are getting some in 4W. It is moving and it is expanding so it is great to be able to say that. When you look at it the biomass level is comparable to 1982-83; nowhere else in the Atlantic can that be said, not even 5Z for example.
Growth is attributable to lower fishing mortality and the 1992 year class. There always will be a concern in 4X - where you have offshore, mid-shore, inshore and then you have so many others, especially the inshore where you have a number of fishermen that use hand lines or whatever - about the dumping issue; discarding and dumping not only inshore certainly but offshore as well. But it is a problem where you have a mixed fishery like 4X where you have cod, pollock and haddock. You have to have the right blend to give them the right quota so that they can harvest proportionately and not have waste and dumping, and that is not easy to do. Again, it is much easier said than accomplished on the ocean.
Last year, this was the one fishery where we recommended that the TAC increase from 1l,000 to 13,000 tons. Mandatory dock-side monitoring is now in place down there. They have the conservation harvesting plans, that is the same as everywhere else in Atlantic Canada. So 4X seems to be at the moment one success story where it is coming along, the 4X cod. I think most of the fishers down there are reasonably happy, they would like to have
more, naturally. What we are telling them is to be patient or you could end up like the rest of your counterparts in Atlantic Canada who have no fish and have a moratorium, and then you will really feel it. I think they have gotten the message and the cooperation seems to be there.
The first meeting we had down there wasn't what you would call a great reception. We were just about run out of town and there was another bunch coming in from Ottawa to tell them what to do and how to run their fishery. After a year or so they changed their attitude very quickly when they saw what was happening just a few miles across the line here in 4VsW and I think there is cooperation down there now. There are some niches of opposition, but basically I think the FRCC and our approach to recommendations is being accepted.
Haddock, again, is looking good. Spawning biomass is starting to increase but it is below the average. You know haddock is not as robust a fish as cod; it is a little more delicate and seems to have some problem with survival rates and recruitment. The 1993 and 1994 year classes are strong and the abundance of haddock in a summer survey, the second highest since 1970. For those of you who are from the southwest, I think your ground fishery, if we keep taking the prudent approach, is on the road to recovery.
The FRCC recommended, again, they had hoped we were going to recommend more here than just a 200 ton increase, but we took the conservative approach and it was accepted. The question is whether we have the right mix, again, 6,700 tons, mandatory dock-side monitoring and appropriate measures to be taken to ensure the protection of incoming year classes.
There is always a tendency in the fishery, over the years and the road to hell, as the saying goes, is paved with good intentions, and what happens is you fish down. You fish a year class that is probably four or five years old, then that passes through the system and you have a year class coming in which is smaller. So if they use the same mesh size, that fish goes on through. They are within the limits, by the way, they are not breaking the law, because down in southwestern Nova Scotia, they have been using 140 square for auto-trawl. I think the minimum size for nets is around 5 and I think their hook size is as large as well. So they have been targeting the size of fish, which is great for the biomass.
When you fish out a year class, there is a tendency to move the mesh size down. Then you start fishing what we call recruitment fishing. When that happens, before you know it, you will take the fishery down very quickly. A lot of us feel that is what happened in the other parts of the Atlantic, that we were doing recruitment fishing and didn't realize it. It was within the law, but it will take the stock down very fast. So we have year classes coming in down there and we hope they will not be targeted until they reach maturity.
The one species that is the big question mark is pollock. Pollock is a big fishery down in 4X. Last year, FO.1 for those of you who are familiar, gives you, I think, around 20 per cent or somewhere; in the case of pollock it is 23 per cent of the biomass that you could take, which was 21,000-plus tons. But we were not positive enough on it to recommend that level. But the spawning stock is beginning to show signs of recovery and is near average. The 1989 year class is strong and subsequent year classes are weak. So we had to dig in and we had to be careful. When that statement is made, and this came from fishermen as well as the research vessel survey, there seemed to be less small fish in the system.
Reports of abundance throughout the Bay of Fundy, but there is an absence of small fish, which is critical for a biomass rebuilding. There was a degree of uncertainty with the assessment and the fishermen were very cautious in seeking an increase. The recommended TAC, a 50 per cent increase, from 10,000 tons to 15,000 tons. Again, there seems to be a consensus down there. They are willing to make that sacrifice for the sake of the resource. We ask for measures to be taken to establish closed areas to protect spawning stock. DFO should look at other indicators of abundance.
That is southwestern Nova Scotia, Mr. Chairman, and the other stock I want to speak on, because if anybody is from the Halifax area or this part of Nova Scotia, I guess even yourself.
MR. CHAIRMAN: I was going to make the observation that as we move further along the Eastern Shore, it certainly is a totally different scenario than what we are seeing in southwestern Nova Scotia and there are a lot of variables that are influencing that. When you are looking at stocks rebounding, in some areas we are still looking at continuing the moratorium and closure, which certainly has an impact on the fishery, particularly the inshore fishery, of the area that I represent, Mr. Colwell and others. So I think you may want to touch lightly on that. I think, probably, we should go into questions before we get too far away from any particular area. So if you want to just highlight those or any in particular, I am getting the feeling that some members would like to move into some questions.
MR. HUSKILSON: Could you touch on Georges Bank lightly afterwards?
MR. WOODMAN: Yes, I could touch lightly on Georges. Actually, we are having an industry consultation tomorrow in Yarmouth. The actual stock status report, we get it today, is that it?
MS. TAPLEY: No, it was released on Friday.
MR. WOODMAN: The three species on Georges that we are going to be discussing are haddock, cod and yellowtail flounder. The quotas have not been great down there but there needs to be more, which is one of our recommendations back two or three years ago, that there be more cooperation on the two sides. Okay? With the Americans and with the
Canadians. Basically the majority of the fish is on our side of the line and we think that in the future there is a possible chance of developing a good flounder fishery.
As you know, the yellowtail flounder is a valuable species. At the moment it is the only flounder fishery of any significance. Even that is insignificant, but it is significant down there because it is the only flounder fishery really going in Atlantic Canada. We have 2,500 tons, I think, in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence and the rest of it in by-catch in Atlantic Canada. There is great potential for yellowtail flounder fishery. That seems to be showing tremendous growth. It certainly is a species that is pretty resilient and can take quite a beating and bounce back. It is showing, I think, a 32 per cent increase in the biomass this year. So with that kind of an increase you look down the road and if we do not start fishing down in the recruitment and take it before it is mature, there is great potential.
Cod is again showing signs of recovery. I mean, it is in the greatest environmentally friendly part of the world anyway. You have water temperatures in your favour. You have very little predation which could cause an increase in natural mortality from seals down there and so on. So the cod is good. Haddock is bouncing back faster than cod down there. It is around a 10 per cent increase this year.
Exactly what would come out of the meeting tomorrow, we have a series of questions. I will just go through them quickly which we will ask the stakeholders tomorrow in Yarmouth. Based on your knowledge of Georges Bank, are we at a comfortable level of biomass?
MR. LEEFE: Perhaps you could just leave those with us, Mr. Woodman. We have an hour and a quarter and we all have questions we want to ask.
MR. WOODMAN: Okay, sir. I would just like to say to you, if you are in the area where those meetings are taking place, it is worthwhile going because you get a better feel for how the industry out there is feeling about what is happening. This is why we have, in a lot of cases, misinformation, a lot of it coming when you are not there to hear it.
In your area, Mr. Chairman, 4VsW cod, unfortunately I cannot give you any encouragement. There is some fish along the shore of Cape Breton. There is not an indicator coming out of 4VsW offshore that gives us anything positive. It is a sad commentary. That fishery supported the offshore fishery of Nova Scotia; 50,000-odd tons only five years ago. Today we cannot find 50,000 fish out there. It is an adult population at historically low levels. The disappearance of the spring spawning component, the very poor recruitment, fish condition and growth are poor, water remains cold, there are 17,700 tons of fish destroyed by seals. The stock of fish is down to its lowest level in history.
MR. CHAIRMAN: I think what you are saying to us is that based on the analysis that you have done, that both the short-term and long-term projections, particularly for the Eastern Shore, are not encouraging. I think you have listed the factors why and I think we are aware of that. I guess we keep hoping that it will eventually turn itself around, but it is going to be longer than most people expect.
MR. WOODMAN: What is baffling is the fact that the recruitment is not coming in to the fishery. When we pick it up, we pick it up at, say, zero to one, when it moves along in the system it is not there. Somewhere in between zero to one, until it reaches maturity, we will say of market or harvesting size, it is not happening. We asked science and we have asked fishermen themselves and we are at a loss to understand why there is not more getting into the system.
The Gulf of Saint Lawrence by the way, the Southern Gulf is not much better. The water temperatures are changing somewhat, not dramatically but they are warming. We don't think it is all environmental problems, it is more than that.
MR. BRUCE HOLLAND: What more than that?
MR. WOODMAN: Well, we think the natural mortality that is happening out there is not fisherpeople-related like by-catch from other fisheries which we call discarding or whatever, it is not happening. I don't think fishermen are doing that today, they realize that they can't discard. If that happens they just move out of the area, if there is any fish around. If you look at it and this is not a hit or miss thing, this is an estimated consumption based upon a model that is used by DFO science that there are 17,700 tons of cod.
MR. MACKINNON: Mr. Chairman, I think the key here as well is that 17,700 tons of cod is all very small cod. The seal has a preference in diet for extremely small cod. You are actually looking in numbers at a tremendous amount, millions and millions of fish in an area where fishermen are able to take about 400 tons in by-catch, it is just unbelievable. They are taking large fish in the by-catch.
MR. HOLLAND: I am not following you here at all, I'm sorry. You started talking about there being no fish in that Eastern Shore region and then you talked about there being large quantities of cod or not large I guess . . .
MR. LEEFE: It was 17,700 tons of juveniles.
MR. HOLLAND: Of juveniles, okay. So what is not there are the larger fish.
MR. LEEFE: They don't get a chance to grow up, something is happening to them.
MR. WOODMAN: It doesn't say there is no fish, okay. In relation to what we call historic levels they are relatively low. There are spawners there but unfortunately when they do spawn and we pick them up in a survey at zero to one, they are not getting into the system. There are different schools of thought. There are some who say that the environment is a factor, maybe the cold water.
MR. HOLLAND: What do you mean by they are not getting into the system?
MR. WOODMAN: They are not growing. In other words when they are this size, and by the way they grow very quickly at that stage and slow down as they get older, but they move along and we are not picking them up again when we do the surveys. We are not picking up the fish that would be called the three year olds, which would be almost at the age of harvesting. They are not in the system. They are disappearing somewhere between here and here. Maybe it is the environment but if scientists are right then there are 17,700 tons being killed by other predators. That would answer part of the question because if that 17,700 tons or even half of it was left in the system, that would be there to propagate the following year.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Before I recognize Mr. Casey, those last questions for the record were posed by Mr. Holland. Mr. Casey.
MR. JOSEPH CASEY: Mr. Chairman, if the seals are destroying all these fish and they must be, I cannot understand why, now that they have a method of keeping those seals under control, why they don't have the guts to get out and do something about it? There are millions of pounds of fish being destroyed every day and it is so simple. They have a birth control method now that they have developed and the people who are doing the screaming about it, you know what I mean, the women and men too but they are giving birth control advice to their children but they won't give it to the seals. I cannot understand why they draw a line between the two. If they don't get going on that, we are never going to have fish again. They are destroying fish, right in the Annapolis Basin we see it every day, the aquaculturists trying to get ahead there. They will take 100 or 200 fish every week out of one of the nets. They will get in, in spite of whatever you do, so I just don't understand it.
MR. WOODMAN: We only make the recommendations.
MR. CASEY: I realize that.
MR. WOODMAN: We highlight it and if it is environmental factors or a combination of both, at least we have - we can't control the environment, that is one we can't control. We can't heat the water. There are areas where humans do have some control and we are failing it.
MR. CASEY: And this is one of them and they are not doing it. I realize you are not responsible for this but the recommendations, make them strong when you are talking to people in the Department of Fisheries.
MR. HOLLAND: What was the FRCC's recommendation in that area?
MR. WOODMAN: Our recommendation was that the use of the contraceptive be implemented immediately. You see there are no markets at the moment for grey seal. You are a politician, you know very well the sensitivities of the word cull. If you decide you are going to kill an animal without having utilized the resource, it is not easy. If, at the same time, there are methods to control it humanely, by birth control methods - they do have what they call the bio bullet, which is quite easily administered - that can control and they say it will work for up to five years, at least we can try to control the explosion in the population. It is increasing by 14 per cent a year.
I don't want to dwell on the seals as a point because there are probably other factors that are contributing but it is one factor that we do know, it is written. Science has probably for the first time admitted that there is that number of tons of fish consumed. That, in itself, is significant in an area where there are no fish; again no fish relative to historic levels.
MR. CASEY: They eat just the belly out of the fish, too. They kill a lot more fish than they consume. To get the belly, to get the liver, the oil that they require in their diet, so they are killing a lot more fish than anybody has any idea. I do not know why we have not done something about it before.
MR. MACKINNON: The only positive thing, Mr. Chairman, is that the fecundity level, the reproduction level is dropping naturally, which is probably indicative of the fact that the population has been the fastest growing in the world (Interruption) That's right, and the growth rate is going down but that doesn't do anything to resolve the problem.
MR. WOODMAN: It is ironic, too, that the growth rate of the animals and the growth rate, the condition of the fish, are running parallel. The growth rate and the condition of the fish is poor in that particular area. No doubt the water is cold out there. Unusually cold.
MR. MACKINNON: Another point to be added here, too, is that the impact on 4T and 4Vn is very significant as well because really we are looking at a total figure affecting Nova Scotia of about 40,000 metric tons of fish being taken - of cod being taken by seals.
MR. CHAIRMAN: What we will do for a period of time is open the floor to questions and I will recognize Mr. Huskilson first.
MR. HUSKILSON: Well, I think you have pretty well answered my question but what I want to do for the record is have you state roughly how many pounds of fish one adult seal would eat in a day.
MR. WOODMAN: I don't have the figures here but that can be gotten. They do have that.
MR. MACKINNON: One parallel, one time, which we can probably bring into pounds, is that an adult grey seal consumes per day what two large, huge, international weightlifters would eat, so it is many pounds per day.
[10:00 a.m.]
MR. CASEY: That doesn't take into account the part of the fish that is wasted.
MR. MACKINNON: I think they need something like 15,000 calories a day, some figure like that which is pretty high.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Just a friendly reminder to the committee members that I would ask that you indicate if you wish to speak, so you can be recognized for the record. It is hard for the transcriber to know who is speaking if you are not recognized.
I will go to Mr. Leefe first.
MR. LEEFE: Mr. Chairman, I would like to move away from the seals because it seems less likely that we are going to be able to do something about them. It is more likely that we are going to be able to focus some success on some of the other areas in which you have made recommendations. I want to applaud the FRCC for the leadership role it is taking with respect to focusing on ecosystem management. I encourage you to keep driving the message home.
One discouraging aspect of this is that it is clear to me, from a very recent meeting I attended, that the message has not yet trickled down to some of the senior DFO managers in the Scotia Fundy region. I was at a meeting in Liverpool with ground fishermen not so many weeks ago where Greg Peacock was representing the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. He vociferously defended DFO's management strategy by saying, don't ask us to manage fish this way; we can only manage them this way in columns, by stocks.
That, to me, was one of the most discouraging messages I have heard from DFO and keep beating up on them until they understand that you have to manage it that way or there is going to be nothing left to manage vertically. So this is a very important message that you are carrying. Keep reinforcing it. I don't know how effectively it has gotten through to the
Ottawa bureaucracy but it certainly hasn't gotten through to the senior managers and the local bureaucracy.
I am very pleased, too, to see that you defined the fish as a common-property resource. I encourage you to continue pressing that message on DFO. I believe there is a widely held sense in the industry and those of us outside of it who have an interest in it that while the theory is that it is a common-property resource, that DFO, in fact, is moving closer and closer to making it a de facto, private-property resource. Certainly the first implementation of that was through EAs and EAs were the right thing to do at the time. I think it may well be time to revisit the whole matter of EAs.
ITQs very thoroughly are a back door means of privatizing stocks and quotas. One also I think can make the same argument with respect to the new private partnerships that DFO is embarking on. These are all back door ways to move further and further away from the fish being a common-property resource and moving closer and closer to causing it to be, de facto, private property. That lends itself to greater corporatization in the fishery. While that may be convenient for the DFO fish managers, it is going to be an absolute disaster for the people who live in fishing communities throughout Nova Scotia.
You mentioned going to Yarmouth a few minutes ago. Yarmouth is a case in point; Clearwater bought Sweeney Fisheries. Sweeney Fisheries was an important employer in the Yarmouth community. It stripped Sweeney Fisheries of all of its quotas and moved them elsewhere. As a consequence, the people who used to work in that fleet out of Yarmouth and who used to work in the plant in Yarmouth are now unemployed and have no place else to go, thank you very much.
We saw Clearwater do the same thing with C.W. MacLeod Fisheries, one of the best managed plants in Atlantic Canada, a plant that provided significant employment in Nova Scotia and in my community in particular. Clearwater bought it, stripped it of its most valuable asset, its fish, and moved it elsewhere. Those people are all now unemployed.
As we move closer and closer through DFO's work, contrary to what appears to be the recommendations of FRCC, we are going to see this happen more and more frequently.
What is going to happen when Danny Kenny's plant is bought up on Brier Island and all of that fish is moved out of there to somewhere else by another company? There is nothing else for those people to do, nobody is safe. Corporatization will kill this as a common- property resource available to the optimum number of Canadians and it will kill our communities. Don't you let anybody in the corporate community who is pushing for these things try to tell you anything different because it ain't so and I am really pleased to see you focused on that. After I run through my little list here I would be interested in having you comment on any of the things that I mentioned.
Effort control, again you are absolutely on the right track. The Nova Scotia Department of Fisheries for 15 years has been beating up on DFO to implement stringent effort control as the best means of controlling the fishery, slowing it down, spreading it out, optimizing access to the fishermen and through them to the plants and the communities in which they live. Finally, somebody has heard, you have heard but I again am very much of the impression that DFO ain't heard the message yet, that it is only with the greatest reluctance that DFO is prepared to consider effort control. That is for two reasons I think, one is that they still have this absolute mindset on the religion of managing fish by quota and religion isn't based on fact it is based on faith and DFO is inclined to be composed of self-made men who worship their creators. Then we have also, with respect to effort control, DFO's continuing argument that it is too hard to police. It isn't too hard to police, they just don't want to be responsible for the effort that is required to police it properly.
So keep beating up on them on that because effort control, in the view of many of us, is the one way, combined with ensuring that fish continues to be a common-property resource, to ensure that we are going to be able to optimize access to the fishery with respect to our communities and it all impacts on port market pricing and all of these kinds of things and you have covered a lot of that.
One area that I am a little quizzical about and I haven't seen these recommendations, maybe because I simply haven't looked in the right place but with respect to the opening of the sentinel fisheries and the fisheries in 4RST and 3N and thinking toward the opening of larger fisheries, eventually we hope in 4VW, have you made specific recommendations with respect to controlling or with respect to saying which gear types should and should not be allowed into those fisheries? My own sense is that we should only allow the most selective gear types in the beginning. Find out what the impact is with those selective gear types combined with highly selective effort control and then as we learn from that experience, if the opportunity is there, perhaps allow less selective gear types in.
I noticed, for example, in the material here that the cod trap fishery in Newfoundland is described, as Nova Scotians have always believed it to be, to be a highly, non-selective method of harvesting. Are the fish traps back in the water in Newfoundland? I hope not. I think there is a real argument not to allow the gillnets into these fisheries. If a person has been a gillnetter and they want to fish then let them trade in their gillnet licence and go out with a hook and line either hand-lining or long-lining.
Again, just to stick for a moment with the Newfoundland situation, in Newfoundland, as I understand it, the fixed gear sector used to function on an allowance rather than a quota. There are many of us who have argued that the hand-liners in Nova Scotia should be on an allowance rather than a quota to encourage people to stay in that most selective and least destructive fishery.
With the re-opening of these areas around Newfoundland, is fixed gear functioning on an allowance or are they functioning now on the basis of tax?
Those are a few questions and thoughts I had in my mind. I would be interested in Mr. Woodman's responses.
MR. CHAIRMAN: You may not have picked them all up.
MR. WOODMAN: You covered quite an area, areas actually that are outside the mandate of the council. We all have our views.
With respect to the allocation issue, we have tried and we have to - the council is going to work with the fishing community - get cooperation. We have to try to give sort of a non-biased view with respect to gear types. In our deliberations in our consultations, there is no question about it that there have been strong recommendations made from the harvesting sector with respect to gear types. You get it in western Newfoundland, the South Coast of Newfoundland, certainly in Cape Breton with respect to water trawls. You get it in Nova Scotia, as you related, with respect to cod traps.
In our recommendations with respect to gear, we did a gear paper. Copies of it are right there to take with you when you go. What we tried to do at that particular time was to get what we could from each gear type, the downside of all the gears because they all have their flaws and in order for us to do that we made a statement right from day one that we would not ban any gear type. At the same time, in areas where we have sensitive habitat, any gear type that is injurious to the habitat could be and should be banned. As we move along, I guess, into areas where we have MPAs, protected areas and closed areas, no doubt the managers of this industry will probably come down on some gear types. It remains to be seen.
To answer your question on cod traps, yes, cod traps are probably going to - once the fishery starts, there is no fishery started yet. Cod traps are going in the water in Newfoundland but again our recommendations, if they are followed, are recommendations that 95 per cent of the undersize fish should escape.
MR. LEEFE: So you are going to a smaller mesh size?
MR. WOODMAN: Yes. Our recommendations are very explicit on it.
MR. LEEFE: Have they been accepted by DFO?
MR. WOODMAN: This year, no. The allocation issue, at the moment we do not recommend any allocation. We just recommended that the total allowable catch for southern Newfoundland and the statements came from DFO managers at that particular time, from the minister, that for all gear types their historical share would be recognized.
MR. LEEFE: It would not have anything to do with June 2nd, would it? You cannot respond to that, obviously.
MR. WOODMAN: With the ecosystem approach, I agree that we cannot manage one species in isolation. It has to be from day one. It is two areas for the council. It is capacity and the ecosystem approach. You cannot manage, for example, skate in isolation from cod or wolf-fish or any species. It has to be that the system has to be looked at. What we have seen in a lot of cases is that you close this one and they jump over here. You zero down on that and you beat that down and you follow down the chain and eventually you just upset the whole system itself. Catrina would like to make a comment.
MS. TAPLEY: Just with respect to Mr. Leefe's comment on the ecosystem approach. Council has been working for about one year now on a document that we call the Groundfish Conservation Strategy, to be a comprehensive volume of what we see as areas that should be further explored, as areas that we have to watch closely, what are the key components to implementing a conservation strategy for groundfish that works. It is meant to be a bit of a lasting document. We are getting ready to release that in about the next six weeks. Council has taken a bit of a hard-line approach on the ecosystem in this document and we will continue to make those points.
MR. LEEFE: Mr. Chairman, it would be very helpful, I am sure, if the members of the committee were given copies of that at the first opportunity.
MS. TAPLEY: Absolutely.
MR. LEEFE: A living document.
MR. MACKINNON: Mr. Chairman, one of the things that I find difficult with the FRCC and their relationship to an ecosystem approach is that when the mandate is restricted to groundfish, there is no real opportunity to take a total ecological ecosystem approach to management. Another problem, too, is John touched on some of the allocation problems, the huge grey area that exists between conservation and management. We have to walk on eggshells from an FRCC perspective in allocation and management, but where does conservation begin and end with those two questions. I find that the most difficult thing about the FRCC, really.
MR. CHAIRMAN: It is obvious, from the direction you have taken, you are aware of the inter-relationships, although it may not be part of a direct policy, I think you are trying to flag that for the people that you make recommendations to, to be aware of when you talk about food chains and the impact on the environment and everything else. You are dealing with all those inter-relationships and I think it is important that that continue to be part of your criteria.
MR. WOODMAN: Mr. Chairman, we though, with attitudinal change, and we are not directing our attitudinal change just at fishers alone. Attitudinal change has to start at the top and go down through the system, as well. There has to be a change of focus all the way through the system. Other than that, it will break down.
MR. CHAIRMAN: I was alluding to other members and it is just not within your group or within DFO or within those involved in the fishery. All of those parties and the public at large has to realize that one factor has a domino effect in one area and you can't redirect the fishery, I think this was mentioned, from one species to another, without realizing what the impacts are on the total package.
I have four other members who indicated they wanted to ask questions.
MR. KEITH COLWELL: Three or four things I would like to cover and I will be as quick as I can because I want everybody to have a chance to speak here today. There are a lot of things that I have seen over the years being connected with the fishing industry all over the world, that gillnets are a real big problem. They are a problem and I am finally glad to see that you are recommending some biodegradable materials used in gillnets and that could be just as simple as going back to the old materials they used to use before the monofilament came in line. They don't fish as well, and maybe that would be positive as well, but they do ghost fish and they ghost fish forever, these gillnets. I have talked to fishermen that have brought in 40 gillnets in one day that they have hooked on the bottom when they are long-lining. So I think that is very positive.
I have got a real big problem with the fish plants and there is a lot of discussion about that and I am sure around this table there will be a lot of feelings towards this. I don't think fish plants should be fishing. I think that is very negative. The ITQs, as Mr. Leefe has said, is only going to put those big fish plants in total control of the fishery. It is just a matter of time. I think it is a very poor way to do it and maybe individual quotas, but not transferable, would be all right, but definitely not transferable ones. The bigger the fish plants get, the richer they get, the easier it is for them to buy up all the quota.
The other thing is the seals. Seals are out of control. I would think that is probably a better word for it. I live on Porter's Lake and yesterday morning I watched seal eat fish in the lake because they have access to the salt water. They come in there and they are not only feeding on the species they typically would feed on but they are also feeding on trout and other things that they wouldn't normally have access to. As a result of that you don't catch a single fish in our lake any more right where I live, that is a big problem.
Also, another thing that people don't talk about with the grey seals is the codworm problem. I know that is one that you don't want to publicize too much but the grey seal is a host for that. I have done a lot of work in the past on that and with the exploding population you are having in the grey seal you are going to have a tremendous problem in the future and
it is going to get worse and worse with the codworm which brings the value of your fish down.
On your seals, you say it is 17-plus million tonnes a year of the small fish, have you extrapolated five years in advance to see in five years time what the value of that fish would be? I think that would be a very useful exercise when you are describing to people actually how devastating this is because you get a fish that is that big compared to one that is that big, the commercial value and also the tonnage that is involved would be quite staggering I would imagine. I think that is something you should really look at. It seems like people will only react to large numbers and don't realize how much trouble the seals are.
Along with the seals, I have eaten seal meat, I don't know how many around this table have eaten it but I am telling you it is the most delicious meat I have ever eaten. I think there could be a commercial outlet for that. I had the privilege of eating it with the Inuit in the far North, quite a unique situation.
MR. LEEFE: Cooked or raw?
MR. COLWELL: They wouldn't let me eat it raw, it had to be cooked. They said it would make you too ill if you were not used to eating it raw. They ate it all raw. It is a beautiful meat and the seal I did eat was the harp seal, I have never eaten the meat from a grey seal but I am sure there are some commercial possibilities there that really should be pushed forward with proper marketing. A few years ago people wouldn't eat shark and they are eating shark meat on a regular basis now so I think that is possible.
There are two other things that I would like to cover too and then I would like your comments on these. One thing that I have never heard at all these discussions and maybe I just haven't heard it and I hope that it is out there, I feel the most important fishery we have in Nova Scotia is the small boat fishery. It employs a maximum number of people, it ensures the best quality product, it is conservation-minded and the list goes on and on.
The bottom line with the small boat or any fishery is an expected yearly income. If I come to you or anybody around this table and said, look next year we don't know what your income is going to be because the Legislature, in our cases, may only sit two days and you only get paid for each day you sit. There would be nobody in the Legislature. Everyone else, the same as yourselves, if you said, every meeting you attend that is called by someone else you are going to get paid. If you were not going to get paid you wouldn't bother, I mean you just wouldn't do it because financially you just can't afford it.
I think the fishermen have to look at things differently. I have been working on the clam fishery in my area and we have been looking at it in this way, they have to have an expectation of yearly income. Now if you can tie that in with the small boat fishery and also in with conservation because conservation is part of that expected yearly income, if you can
realistically say to someone, you have the expectation of making between $20,000 and $40,000 next year with this kind of level of effort, then you are going to have people who are going to say, okay we have to preserve the stocks, we have to make sure things are going to move forward, so they can expect to have that. Then they can pay their mortgages, they can feed their family and send their children to university. They may need to make more than that to do all of those things but at least they have the expectation, they know what their lifestyle can be.
At the present time there is no real expectation. There are moratoriums put on over here, this happens over here and it is sort of isolation of looking at the individual and their needs in the community. I think that is one thing that really has to be pushed and any people I have talked to and I can tell you we had a real hard time with the clam fishermen in our area because their idea is get the last clam and they should be the one that gets it. That has now changed, we are slowly changing that attitude and we are looking at the possibility of having an expected yearly income and they have taken some steps to do that. I would like some comments on that.
The last thing and this is the most important thing, I am no fan of draggers and I can tell you that and I publicly have said that and I will say that publicly anywhere, I think they should be all banned, they should be eliminated, they should be sunk, whatever, they should be gone because they haven't done anything to really help the fishery. (Interruptions)
The problem with that is the draggers should be monitored. If we are going to have them, they should be monitored. Electronically, they could be monitored. They could tell where they are fishing, when they are fishing. For instance, in my area, the fishermen have told me that the big draggers have come in at night years ago and gone over fishing grounds and, to this day, the stocks are gone from those areas. They are absolutely gone.
I spent a lot of time talking with dragger captains and they tell me that the bottom is flat where it used to be full of rocks where they have been dragging over them. Then the DFO guys come along and they say, well, look, we don't get anything off the bottom. They are on TV, there is a fishery vessel with all the stuff laid out on the deck and there are starfish. Did you ever try to get a starfish from mid-water? It just doesn't happen. There are starfish, rocks and snails, all the stuff they dragged up. So they are dragging the bottom, destroying it. I think that an electronic monitoring system should be put on these draggers and when they go out, it is identified exactly where they are and they can monitor when they are towing and you could identify right where they have been. So, if you have closed areas, there is no way they could fish in those closed areas that you wouldn't know about it. It would be really easy to do.
That is the base of my comments and I won't take any more time. So if I could have some comments on those things.
MR. WOODMAN: I have said this so many times now, that it becomes an allocation issue whether we look at a small boat fishery or whether we look at the draggers. There is no doubt about it, sir, I can say this on record, that at just about every meeting we held that the opinion of draggers is not too high. There is no question about that. That is a statement that can't be challenged.
Scientifically, when we are asked a question, can it be proven that dragger technology is injurious to the habitat, in most cases, they will tell you that most of the studies will tell you that it is not. Okay. We have recommended, with respect to any technology, but draggers in particular, that where it is injurious, I will read from it, we have looked, by the way, and this is quite well documented, we have letters on record of this as well of areas down in southwestern Nova Scotia where haddock used to spawn years ago and it was called the forest. There was supposedly a forest down there where coral used to grow up like spires. I think they had the term down there the forest. I think the piece of ground they were talking about was called the forest. Another place was called the humps and all these areas have been levelled by this technology. "It is recommended, therefore, that the impact of various gear types must not be detrimental to the eco-system, that possible measures to reduce the impacts be kept under review and be implemented as they are judged to be effective with priority, where data suggest possible detrimental effects on the productivity, eco-system functioning on dangerous species.".
Also, in our recommendations coming out from our Conservation Strategy Document, that where this is proven, that that gear type be banned. It is well written that those things will happen. The question is determining and we have asked to determine the sensitive areas that need to be seen.
With respect to the small boat fishery, I really can't comment on it with respect to lengthening the season and so on. The only comment I can make is with the amount of fish that is going to be available, as I see it in the foreseeable future, unless you have a multi-specie operation, your capitalization of the technology required is questionable with the amount of fish that is available to use, unless you are going to have a corporate structure where you are going to need one freezer trawler to catch what fish is in the Atlantic or whatever. To amortize your debt with the amount of groundfish that is going to be available, it is limited.
[10:30 a.m.]
MR. MACKINNON: In relationship to your seal comment, one of the committee members who is not here today, Kenneth MacAskill, some of the fishers in his area are doing a lot of work for human consumption of seal, using seal for fox and mink food and even oil extraction for capsules and so on. This North of Smokey Fishermen's Association is doing quite a job really. The Nova Scotia Department of Fisheries is assisting in some of these developments.
Further, in relationship to the food use, the Chairman himself has been a great promoter. He cooks the best flipper which I have had in Newfoundland that you can possibly have. I have had garlic flavoured seal sausage over there, so some of our colleagues in Newfoundland are doing quite a job.
MS. TAPLEY: Just to make a quick comment. Mr. Colwell had spoken about looking at some type of annual income and this is badly paraphrased I know, but if you ease off on the fishing pressure this year, what do you see as dividends in the years forward. We have not quite gotten so sophisticated as using an income model, but one of the things we have been successful in pushing is risk analysis.
When we did our consultation on Georges Bank last year and we have not gotten it for all stocks yet, the graphs went up on the screen and what DFO scientists had managed to do was present a risk analysis. They said if you fish at this level, then this is your percentage chance that the stock is not going to grow. If you reduce it down to here, then this is what the dividends should be, if you pay off. It had, I think, a tremendous impact on the people who were sitting there in helping to understand what the benefits are of conservation, what today's benefits are in real terms for two and three years down the road. One of the recommendations that we made is we would like to see that expanded so that people who are sitting in a meeting in your riding as the fishery starts to rebuild can say, okay, if we ease off this year, then three years down the road we expect to see a dividend of this much. I think that helps people understand what the benefits of conservation are to them in the long term.
MR. COLWELL: I agree with that, but the thing is that the typical fisherman has gone out and caught his fish and gone home and paid his bills with the money he has made. The only thing he is interested in is how much money he is going to make. You have to tie that into an expected yearly income from the fishery. If you can do that, you will have your fishermen on side immediately and they will work toward that goal. I have seen that already in our clam fishery which was related and is a much more difficult sell than what you have got.
The fishermen, I think, have had an attitudinal change. I have seen a big change in the past four or five years. If you can tie that into a yearly expected income. It could be between $10,000 and $100,000, but a yearly income so you could put some kind of quantitative measure on that that the fisherman can understand. A lot of them do not understand all the charts and all these things. Now, they are slowly getting to do that but it has been so traditional. It has to be something that they can really relate to and say, yes, if we do this, it looks like this is what you can expect for an income. There are a lot of variables with the price and demand and all kinds of things, but I think that is the denominator that you have to get down to. If you can get it down to that, you will have people buy into it a lot quicker and a lot more easily.
MR. LEEFE: Did Mr. Woodman have an opportunity to respond to Keith's question? I am sorry, I had to leave the room for a moment. Respecting vertical integration of fish companies. I think that is an interesting . . .
MR. WOODMAN: No, there are areas outside the bounds of FRCC, Mr. Leefe, and that is one that we have tried to avoid. We have tried to avoid the allocation issue and we hit it head on everywhere we go. I mean, it is nothing new to us. If at some point in time, the minister of the day sees that this is a conservation matter, he can say, council, I want your recommendations on what you think and you recommend to me how we deal with this situation because it is a conservation issue. Up to this point in time, that has not been requested. We can't cover areas that council would not look at as being a conservation problem. There is a fine line between where we are and where we could be.
MR. CHAIRMAN: I think this committee represents in a sense what you, as a larger community, deal with. We have a cross-representation of the province here and with different gear types and efforts and some of the opinions, although we may not be unanimous, reflect what areas of expertise individuals bring to the table. I don't think we are going to be getting into a long, protracted debate over one sector versus the other, but it certainly shows, I guess, the challenges you, as a larger committee, face, when we, as a small committee, may not necessarily have agreement on a lot of the issues we bring individually to the table.
MS. EILEEN O'CONNELL: I just have one question. Is it within your mandate or have you done any work on or looked into or been asked to look into the effect of the offshore gas construct, you know with the rig and the pipeline, on the fish in that area, or is it an area of concern for you at all?
MR. WOODMAN: No. We have not been requested with respect to that. There are boards established, advisory bodies established. I know that in Newfoundland, Hibernia, they did have an advisory body to monitor, supposedly, any effects of any blowout or anything that might happen, oil related, on the fishing grounds. With respect to the council, no, we have not been requested to make recommendations.
MS. O'CONNELL: Would you anticipate that there would be some effects of this massive construction, for example, on fish stocks in those areas?
MR. WOODMAN: Well, we really haven't been briefed on it. But where you have this type of development on delicate habitat, there is always the potential. There will always be the potential for a blowout where you have oil development. I am assuming that government and their environmental impact studies would have the mechanisms in place to control that and the ramifications if that happened would have to be dealt with by government. It certainly is always a concern from a conservation perspective of any development that takes place. We assume that they are doing it by impact studies. We would have to.
MR. MACKINNON: Mr. Chairman, as an add-on to that, if I could, one of the areas, I think, that the council is going to have to give a lot more consideration to is the marine protected area concept. Certainly, the Gully has been advanced as one very strong possibility. I think we really have to focus on marine protected areas as a way of the future, perhaps as well.
MR. CHAIRMAN: I may stand corrected in this, but my understanding is that the joint panel does have representation from Fisheries, and Environment that are reviewing the Sable application at this time. Without going any further into that, I just wanted to mention it.
MS. O'CONNELL: Yes, I guess what you are saying then is that you think that the whole question of marine environments should be something that you should be taking into your purview and under your wing?
MR. MACKINNON: The council has already looked at marine protected areas, but I don't think we have gotten involved in it to the extent that we will under the new Oceans Act. The new Oceans Act is geared, in large part, to marine protected areas. I shouldn't jump in ahead of the chairman, I should be an add-on.
MR. WOODMAN: That is fine, Clarrie. You are a great help, always. With respect to marine protected areas, this coming year, this has been highlighted, there have to be areas in the environment that have to be protected where all species can have some rest, some place to go. At the moment, there are so few areas in Atlantic Canada. In fact, once we go west of eastern Halifax, I don't know of anything that is protected as such. So yes, you are right, Clarrie, this will be one of our objectives for 1998 and beyond, which means marine protected areas be identified.
MR. CASEY: Yes, I agree with many of the things that have been said here, no doubt about that and surveillance is one thing that is going to have to be much more efficient than it has been. When the DFO tells me that they cannot watch the boats where they go, I go way back to the war; when we were looking for submarines under water, we found a few of them. If you can't find a boat sitting on top of the water with all the kinds of equipment that they have today, there is something wrong.
The cost of putting these black boxes on board, and the fishermen are beginning to say that is okay. I put some aboard our boat and I think they can be talked into it. One man can, like you said, sit in an office and tell where every boat is, they can put a bug on a bear and tell what tree he is climbing up, why can't they do the same with boats, and this is true, they can do that. They keep track of the bear in the winter, to tell where they hibernate, where they go to sleep and they can even listen to them snoring, I guess, as far as that goes. The same thing can be done. If somebody is speeding on the highway, you find the man who is speeding, you don't close down the whole highway. This is what we keep doing all the time.
Somewhere the person who is breaking the rules and regulations has to be fined and taken care of legally.
I know the fishermen cannot afford to buy - most of them cannot afford to buy these black boxes or whatever they are called, the equipment. Just think what a great investment that would be if DFO bought the boxes and put them on board the boat and charged rent on them, made that mandatory. It would pay for itself. Can you imagine what it must cost to send multimillion dollar planes out there on surveillance and to build another patrol boat with a crew and so on? Think what that would cost, it would buy an awful lot of black boxes. That is the way we have to do it.
This time is coming, the fish are starting to come back now. It is no good to start thinking about this after those fish are caught and we go right through the same cycle we have already gone through.
Speaking of square mesh nets, too, on draggers. I have been associated with draggers, too. One reason that the draggers took over in the Bay of Fundy was because of the long lining, you couldn't expand the business there because it was hard to set miles and miles of trawl, long line or whatever you want to call it. So dragging was the immediate solution to that and it just expanded like topsey, it grew overnight. I know some of the stories about the draggers, but anyway.
The square mesh net, and I have been watching what is happening in the Annapolis Basin with the salmon, if a salmon is accidentally pushed up against the side of a net like that and a few scales are taken off his side, he will die, he is a terminal case right there. The same must happen even when you have a square mesh net. The fish that escape, I wonder how many of them really survive. So that is not the total cure, you have to think of that, too.
One of the members mentioned about some information trickling down. I don't know how you make it trickle up, that is kind of against the law of nature, but I think it has to go both ways.
You mentioned the gillnet fishing. There is a simple way to put this into effect; not change all the netting system, that is fine when you get around to it as fast as you can. All you have to do is put biodegradable net in the frame, if that is biodegradable the net will collapse at the end of about a year. If it goes to the bottom at least it stops fishing. The way it is now, it fishes forever. That must be destroying millions of pounds of fish.
When you want to go a little further with this, what about putting the black boxes, by international agreement, on board some of the vessels that are fishing offshore now, the foreign vessels? I don't know what we are doing about that right now but I know that they are pretty hard to control, too, the ones that are fishing outside of our area. That would probably have to be done through the U.N. Now I am telling you, it wouldn't be an easy job
but, if you could do that, so that you could tell where they were fishing, without all this costly surveillance, it would be better for everybody. I think that is all I want right at this moment to ask.
MR. CHAIRMAN: No direct questions, Mr. Casey? Are they observations? Did you want to comment, Mr. Woodman?
MR. WOODMAN: I will make a comment, just a very quick comment with respect to poor selection mortality. There is quite a bit of work ongoing on that. I think you are right, Mr. Casey. I think that the number of fish that die trying to escape has probably been grossly underestimated which could be a real problem in estimating what we call natural mortality, in other words, the mortality we do not know about.
There is a fair amount of work ongoing on that and hopefully there will be some results. The larger the fish the greater the chance of survival. That is understandable as well. The smaller the fish, the more delicate it is. In the case of haddock, haddock is much more delicate than cod so the mortality of haddock would be higher than cod. Those are areas that need a lot of work and there is work ongoing.
Your comment with regard to the black box. A lot of us have talked about that one and it will come, by the way. With today's technology, with the world of satellite tracking, good lord, we can track anything. Did you see that picture a few days ago of Manitoba in the paper? That gives you an idea. You can almost pick out your house from 85 or 90 miles in space.
MR. CASEY: Watched a man on the moon.
MR. WOODMAN: That is right. There is a pilot project in place for, I think it is, 1998 with respect to the foreign fishing outside the 200. They are going to put those black boxes on board for tracking. I am convinced that it is the one way and probably the only way we can keep account of where they are at any given time. Other than that, in the fog of the Grand Banks you have one heck of a job tracking them. There is a lot of work ongoing in those areas.
MR. CASEY: I think the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, their communications and changing of ideas, they are so far behind. It takes so long. That is what happened to the dinosaurs. Apparently it took eight seconds for the message to get from the brain to the feet and they could not run fast enough. You know what I mean? This is what seems to happen. They have got a dinosaur complex. I do not know. Anyway. That is not very scientific. It is a good analogy though.
MR. LEEFE: It appears to me and I am looking for confirmation and perhaps expansion from Mr. Woodman on this, as a consequence of reading material that we have been provided for this morning's meeting that the FRCC continues to be concerned about the phenomenon that we call dumping, discarding, whatever you want to call it, it all amounts to the same thing. That one of the reasons that this happens, not the only reason, but one of the reasons that this happens is because of DFO's determination to fish by stocks and allow only so many pounds of this species, that species and the other species to be caught at one given time. So you do not know what is down there until you haul in your gillnet or your long line or haul up your hand line or even your drag and maybe you have so much pollock in there that in fact you are over. Well, the law says you cannot keep it. The law also says you cannot throw it back. So what do you do?
The impression I get from reading this is that FRCC seems to be moving towards a maximum trip limit with mixed catch. I hope that I am reading that correctly and I would be interested in knowing sort of where you are and where you are heading with that.
MR. WOODMAN: Well, you know, I never heard the word shacking off until I was in southwestern Nova Scotia. Call it dumping, call it shacking off, call it what you like, discarding, high-grading, whatever.
Where you have multi-species, like cod, haddock and pollock, trying to find the right mix where you will not have dumping or discarding or even high-grading is not easy. There is no easy solution.
MR. LEEFE: That does not mean there is no solution.
MR. WOODMAN: No, that is correct. It does not mean there is no solution. There are a few pilot projects going ahead now with respect to the inshore, trying to figure out or rationalize how they can do this. Hopefully tomorrow at the meeting no doubt that will probably come on the carpet.
Hopefully, somewhere in time, in the not too distant future - because you can't have it, it is too valuable - there is not enough of it out there anymore to dump a fish. So we have to utilize every possible angle to make it work. We really haven't got the answers right here, to be truthful. But we are groping and trying to get there. The fishermen are the ones on the water who are going to have to tell us how to do it.
MR. LEEFE: Just a comment, Joe was speaking about black boxes. If you take a look at the record you will find that that is an innovation that Nova Scotia was pressing forward in the mid-1980's, along with many other innovations, that DFO finally seems to be beginning to look at.
Georges Bank is another area where there is concern respecting hydrocarbon exploration drilling. There currently is a federal-provincial panel which is empowered to hold public hearings respecting whether there should or should not be rigs on Georges Bank. Georges Bank is substantially different than the Scotian Shelf and substantially more fragile than the Scotian Shelf. I wonder if FRCC has taken a look at the work of that panel to date and whether or not you are giving consideration respecting your role to speak to conservation, whether you are giving consideration to making a submission to that panel?
MR. WOODMAN: To this point, we have not. In our consultations last year, I am not sure if it was Yarmouth or Shelburne, it was down in that area anyway, one of the presenters did make the comment that it is time that we did look at the drilling or the potential for drilling on Georges Bank and, also, almost the exact statement that you made that the fragility of that area is that, possibly, the FRCC should be looking at it. At this point in time, sir, we have not.
MR. LEEFE: I would encourage you to do that and I am sure the others around the table who are from communities that access Georges Bank would encourage you to do that as well.
Finally, and I know there are a couple of others that want to get in, you made reference to the statistical basis upon which DFO builds its fishing plans. In the mid-1980's, I deeply offended the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans by saying the whole statistical basis was a fiction, was a lie. There has been so much cheating, so must discarding, going on that the statistical basis is just totally inadequate to build a fishing plan that is anything like realistic.
I must say that I haven't seen anything in the intervening 10 years to make me change my mind. I haven't heard anything from the fishermen in those 10 years to make me change my mind. I haven't heard anything from the DFO managers that caused me to believe that they have any mindset other than the religion that they are right and everybody else, no matter how well intentioned, is wrong. I think this is an area that I would encourage FRCC to give more consideration to. This is finding out the real truth about the validity of that statistical basis.
MR. WOODMAN: That is a good comment, Mr. Leefe. Monitoring, control and surveillance. I am a firm believer that somewhere and somehow we got ourselves into one heck of a mess, which is unaccounted mortality of fish. There is one school of thought that they died from environmental conditions. There is another school of thought, and I think that is where the majority is falling, is that they died, but they were killed either by fishing or as Mr. Casey was saying with respect to unaccounted mortality, which happened during the escapement, or, as you said, high-grading, dumping and discarding. You have heard about the shopping list.
If we don't have control today, to my knowledge, I think we have 100 per cent coverage on offshore vessels. We have up to, in certain areas, as high as 20 per cent to 30 per cent on the less than 65 foot observers at sea, on the auto-trawl fleet. I am not too sure whether we have observers on the gillnet fishery. For example, the turbot fishery in the far north, which is an area of concern, you know, when you have nets that are being set in 1,500 metres, 1,600 metres, 600 or 700 nets. What is the mortality? What is the drop-out? So do we know the effect of the dead fish that are falling out of the net, drop-outs we call them or float-outs? There might be 100 in the net but by the time we get it on deck there is only 50. So the mortality rate is much higher because it is unaccounted. This is where I think we got ourselves into deep trouble in the past for what we call unaccounted mortality. It is about time that we did put in a monitoring, control and surveillance system. It is going to cost money but it has to be monitored and controlled and then the enforcement or the sanctions to come in place for those who cheat. Hopefully, we are on the right track but it is going to take time.
MR. CHAIRMAN: We only have time for two quick questions. The first one for Mr. Casey and then for Mr. Holland. We have to start wrapping up. Mr. Casey.
MR. CASEY: Mr. Chairman, with regard to the biodegradable twine that you put in the nets, that is something that could be put into effect in a week or two. When the nets go off this spring or whenever if they have cotton seine in them that will take care of a heck of a lot of waste of fish. The other thing is I think I gave you a little false information when I was talking about the dinosaur concept and the sinking of the DFO. I said something about the dinosaurs couldn't travel fast enough, couldn't run fast enough. That is not true, they were too late getting started and that also applies to DFO on some of these ideas. There is no answer on that, I don't expect one.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Holland.
MR. HOLLAND: Mr. Chairman, with respect to talking about a good system to use to control the numbers and the quotas and all of that. In the area that I represent from Pennant Point to Peggy's Point in the Prospect-Terrence Bay-East and West Dover areas, in the last two years we used the community quota system and given that quota to the fishermen and said, you manage it and they have done that. Now in an area where hand-liners rarely got to go fishing because by the time the water was calm enough for their small boats to get out, the larger boats had caught up all the quota and the fishery was shut down, for the last two years they fished right from June to September or October. That has been just non-existent for those hand-liners. The larger boats have made a good living and so have the mid-sized boats in that area. They have hailing, they have dockside monitoring, they have log books, they do all of that.
If you empower the fishermen, I think the mindset of a lot of fishermen has changed from what it used to be, maybe not everywhere but certainly in a lot of regions, if you empower them and say, you manage, not DFO manage but you manage, it is your fishery, it
is your livelihood. If you don't look after it then it is your fault. In the past they have been able to say, DFO hasn't managed it. They were doing the fishing so they would do whatever DFO would let them do, whatever they could get away with, take as much as you can get. But when you say to them, you at this end of the line who are a hand-liner has as much say as this guy over here who has got a 65-footer and you get them in a room talking about that, things start to change pretty quickly. Everybody is saying, you can't take my piece of the pie, you have to let me live too. When you start to do that among fishermen, that is how you change the attitudes, in my opinion.
MR. CHAIRMAN: I think it is fairly obvious what Mr. Holland is saying. One of the things I just want to comment on is you mentioned earlier attitudinal change. I would say there has been an attitudinal change toward the FRCC which has been positive over the last period of time. It still has a lot of work to be done at all sector levels to understand the challenge of the realities as we re-open the fishery.
Mr. Woodman, maybe you may want to summarize in a couple of minutes but certainly on behalf of the committee, I want to thank you for being here today. We could spend hours, as you indicated in the beginning, on any one topic but I think you have done very well to indicate some of the challenges faced in the FRCC and the direction in which you are going has generally received wide support from many of the committee members. There may be individual items that either individually as committee members or collectively we may not agree, but the long-term sustainability of the fishery is the goal that we are all working towards. We want to encourage you to continue to approach it in the manner that also involves key participation of, I guess the most important element, those who earn their livelihood on the sea, regardless of what sector. I want to congratulate you for taking that into consideration.
[11:00 a.m.]
I had two items I wanted to mention very quickly to the committee and then we will let you wrap up, because of time. Number one, we are suggesting the visit to NSAC, which we had to postpone, tentatively for Tuesday, June 3rd. Would you check your calendars and let me know if you or any of the members can attend or, if you wish, we can come up with alternate dates for NSAC.
The other item that came up previously was possibly the aquaculture tour of either P.E.I. or Newfoundland. Now I could ask Andrew Bagnall just to put together a package for consideration, with no confirmation, and maybe get it out to all of you for feedback, prior to whenever we go to NSAC. Would that be agreeable to get that in the works now, to see what agenda may be available to enable us to do some comparisons of what opportunities are available for Nova Scotia?
So those will be the next two things that we could look at, a potential date for NSAC. I will get more than June 3rd and get back to you and see where we can get the maximum participation. Do you want me to have Andrew pursue, as we discussed previously, a visit to either one of those two locations to look at aquaculture opportunities?
MR. LEEFE: What are the locations again?
MR. CHAIRMAN: Either P.E.I. or Newfoundland. We have done a complete tour of Nova Scotia. There is a lot of work being done on P.E.I. on mussels that may be applicable to here. I think in Newfoundland they are looking at cold water fisheries developments which may be transferable to the Eastern Shore or Atlantic coast of Nova Scotia. So I could leave, if you want me just to gather some potential sites, let us decide whether or not it is applicable and then take it from there.
MS. O'CONNELL: Do we have to use that as a caucus trip?
MR. CHAIRMAN: No, there is funding and we have not used any yet within this committee. We are usually underbudget each year.
Is it agreed?
It is agreed.
Mr. Woodman, if you would like to summarize in a few minutes and, again, before you begin, on behalf of the committee I want to thank you and Clarrie and Catrina for being here today.
MR. WOODMAN: Mr. Chairman, it is always a pleasure to appear before committees. We have appeared before the committee in Ottawa, and here and in others, to bring the message of what we are trying to accomplish. It wasn't an easy task, when this council was formed, to try to get people on a conservation track. We were always exploiters; take what you could, when you could and as fast as you could. We are trying to slow down the process, to utilize this resource to the best possible financial advantage to the fishermen, the fisher people. I always use "fishermen", I have to watch myself.
MR. LEEFE: Fishers are a family in Port Mouton. The fishermen are the people who make their living on the sea.
MR. WOODMAN: I will make no comment on gender. No sir, I just say thank you. I think there has been an attitudinal change. It is coming slowly but we are trying to promote conservation. I think we have made some inroads. It is great to have the support of you people. We have had the support of the Province of Nova Scotia and the minister. Without
support within the political process, it makes it pretty difficult. So, on behalf of Catrina and Clarrie, thank you very much. It might be my pleasure to come back again some other time.
MR. CHAIRMAN: A motion to adjourn would be in order.
MR. HOLLAND: So moved.
MR. CHAIRMAN: We are adjourned.
[The committee adjourned at 11:04 a.m.]