HALIFAX, TUESDAY, APRIL 18, 2006

STANDING COMMITTEE ON RESOURCES

1:00 P.M.

CHAIRMAN

Mr. John MacDonell

MR. CHAIRMAN: I'd like to call the meeting to order. We have with us this morning the Grey Seal Research and Development Society.

Before we begin I will ask the members to please introduce themselves.

[The committee members introduced themselves.]

MR. CHAIRMAN: Now we will hear your opening statement, Mr. Morrow.

MR. DENNY MORROW: Good morning, thank you for the opportunity to talk to you this morning. I've passed out some notes that I'm going to be speaking from and I think they've been circulated. What I would like to do, before I go through these notes, would be to have the industry representatives, who are here with me today, introduce themselves and say what they do in the industry.

MR. JOHN LEVY: My name is John Levy and I am a fisherman; I also represent the Lunenburg and Queens Management Groundfish Board, which is several hundred inshore fishermen; I am also the president of the Fishermen and Scientists Research Society; and as well I am the president of the Grey Seal Research & Development Society.

MR. CLAUDE D'ENTREMONT: I am Claude d'Entremont, I'm one of the owners and the general manager of Inshore Fisheries Limited in Middle West Pubnico, a fish harvesting and processing company - we process mostly groundfish; I am also a member of the TMGC, the Transboundry Management Guidance Committee between Canada and the United States, managing the stocks that go back and forth over the international border.

MR. ROBERT COURTNEY: Robert Courtney, fisherman from northern Cape Breton, the Cape North area; I am also the vice-president of the North of Smokey /Inverness South Fishermen's Association; I'm one of the guys on the 4VN Management Board; I also work with the Grey Seal Research & Development Society; and I have been a harvester of the harp and grey seals.

MR. GARNET HEISLER: My name is Garnet Heisler; I am a fisherman from the Mahone Bay area, representing Indian Point to Chester - a very short handle.

MR. JOHN BUDGE: John Budge, fisherman, Ingonish; I belong to the North of Smokey/Inverness South Fishermen's Association and the Grey Seal Research & Development Society.

MR. MORROW: Okay. The title of the first part of my presentation is Grey seals: What is happening from a commercial fisheries perspective?

In 1980 we estimated that there were about 30,000 grey seals, mostly concentrated around Sable Island, and few grey seals were seen in western Nova Scotia or Cape Breton waters. In 2006 the estimate is anywhere from 350,000 to 400,000, with new breeding and pupping areas in concentrations from Cape Breton to coastal areas around the Gulf of Maine. Unlike harp seals, that remain in the Gulf and off coastal Newfoundland and Labrador for a few months before moving north to the Arctic and Greenland, grey seals are in our commercial fishing waters and around our coast for 12 months of the year. These animals average between 600 and 1,200 pounds as adults and they are eating large amounts of fish and seafood from our shallow fishing banks and coastal waters. They live in a cold-water environment that requires more caloric intake on a yearly basis than that of the entire Nova Scotia population of nearly 1 million people - their grocery bill is entirely seafood.

While the grey seal population has increased more than tenfold since 1980, our cod and other groundfish populations continue to decline or disappear off eastern Nova Scotia and Cape Breton. A commercial fishing moratorium has been in place for cod in these waters since 1993, yet the stocks continue to decline due to unexplained high natural mortality and the seeming disappearance of whole year classes before they become large enough to spawn. This decline in cod and some other commercial groundfish stocks is spreading westward to areas where fishing and fish processing has, until now, been able to survive. The few cod that are harvested for science and analyses from eastern Nova Scotia and Cape Breton are infested with seal worm parasites and seem stunted in growth. This phenomenon is spreading westward, and our industry fears that we will soon be facing a complete shutdown.

Grey seals may not be the only factor, but the ecosystem impact of the more than tenfold increase of these large predators is, in our view, poorly understood and greatly underestimated.

World demand for wild cod ocean fish is increasing. Our competition in Norway, with an annual cod quota that exceeds 200,000 metric tonnes, and Iceland, with a cod quota that exceeds 150,000 metric tonnes, are reaping the benefits through fresh, frozen and salted exports. Fishing communities are thriving in those countries, while we increase our export of young people from our fishing communities. Both Iceland and Norway manage their seal herds at less than 20,000 animals and make no apologies for doing so. Norway even licenses foreign hunters to harvest seals as a part of tourism. Just as a side note - Atlantic Canada's annual cod quotas are now less than 25,000 metric tonnes.

The Nova Scotia fish processing industry has survived in southwestern Nova Scotia where a modest fishery for haddock, cod and pollock has survived until now. This industry is under tremendous competitive pressure due to less attractive exchange rates with the American dollar, declining fish stocks, Chinese competition in frozen and added-value products, fuel price increases, and a shrinking supply of labour.

The continued increase in the grey seal population and the growing numbers along coastlines and on islands in western Nova Scotia endangers the modest amounts of fish available for harvest. Increasingly, this fish is infested with seal worm parasites that make it uneconomical to process and export.

Some impact issues:

Grey seals eat cod and other commercial species. In Iceland, where there is abundant cod, scientists estimate that cod makes up between 20 to 25 per cent of the seal diet. Included in the binder, some of the notes I sent were correspondence I had with an Icelandic scientist who makes that point. Fishermen have observed that grey seals prefer to eat soft bellies, liver and gonads of large cod, so the tonnage killed far exceeds the tonnage eaten - I'll pass around some pictures showing some landings that fishermen have brought ashore where the fish, before they could haul it over the rail, was gutted or eaten by seals. Grey seals also prey heavily on the small numbers of juvenile, immature cod and other groundfish species in this region before the fish are old enough to spawn.

Fishermen feel that it is unlikely that cod or other groundfish species are able to spawn successfully on the shallow banks while large numbers of seals are present. Fishermen have observed seals breaking up schooling fish and chasing them. Spawning requires fish to aggregate on certain shallow banks in the ocean, and scientists have wondered since the mid-1990s why whole year classes of cod seem to have disappeared - fishermen believe that these year classes were never born.

Grey seals chase fish off the best feeding grounds during the Summer months and into less productive, colder, darker, deeper water. Scientists and industry are observing thinner fish, in poorer condition, and this phenomenon is spreading from eastern waters to the west as the grey seal herd spreads.

Grey seals are the necessary, warm-blooded animal host for a parasite, pseudoterranova, that is responsible for an alarming infestation of cod, cusk, haddock and flatfish, to the point where one DFO parasite scientist, in the late 1990s, concluded that mortality of the most heavily infested fish was likely occurring. DFO scientists continue to wonder what is causing the high levels of natural mortality of cod and other species in areas where a moratorium on commercial fishing has been in effect since 1993. Infestations of seal worms sap nutrition from fish, and the worms excrete ketone that have been observed to make fish sluggish. I've also included some of the scientific papers where this information is available.

The impact of the parasite infestation is making it uneconomical to process our own fish. One processor last Summer reported that cod fillets were literally walking across the work tables; another saltfish processor reported that he can no longer do skin-on, dried/salted fish from local landings due to parasites and the cost of removing them. This processor estimates that local cusk requires 34 cents a pound in labour costs to remove the parasites - he has switched to processing ling cod purchased from Iceland.

[1:15 p.m.]

Grey seals are destroying gill nets and longline fish before they can be brought on board. Fishermen in some areas have given up their inshore herring and mackerel bait fisheries due to the destruction of gear. Halibut and ground-line, longline fishermen are seeing good fish stripped and ruined before they can be landed. The prognosis for Nova Scotia is fewer fishermen, fewer processing plants and jobs, and more people from coastal communities leaving for Alberta. Some plants and fishing captains are reporting difficulty in finding crewmen and workers. Fishing is a business, and in Nova Scotia the impact of grey seals is adding to other factors in stressing these businesses.

A little bit about the Grey Seal Research and Development Society. The society was formed in the Fall of 2003 by some concerned industry representatives. The society requested a grey seal quota or allocation from DFO and received a two-year allocation of 10,000 animals for 2004-05 - that allocation was extended through to the end of 2006. The society has been able to harvest 460 juvenile grey seals in 2005, our first attempt, and about 800 thus far in 2006 - that's in the Scotia Fundy site, and some were also harvested in the Gulf.

It is estimated that 50,000 grey seal pups were born on Sable Island alone this past Winter. Sable Island and other key breeding/pupping locations are off-limits to the society for harvesting due to provincial regulations.

There is no recognition by either the Nova Scotia Government or DFO of the impact of the grey seal herd expansion on commercial fish stocks, the fishing and seafood businesses, and the marine ecosystem that has supported fishing communities in this region for hundreds of years. This is in marked contrast to governments in Iceland and Norway that

have maintained viable fishing industries and have managed their seal populations to avoid an increase. Rather, the DFO and the Nova Scotia Government approach has been head down, quiet support for the development of a small, commercial grey seal harvest with numerous restricted areas.

Our objectives:

Develop a commercially viable harvest with an initial focus on juvenile pelts and blubber for omega-3 oil, and a subsequent focus on meat exports from adult animals; there is also a possible longer-term potential for biopharmaceutical uses and products.

Develop products and markets through research and testing with attention to quality control.

Develop harvesting and processing methods suited and particular to grey seals.

Provide training to sealers and manage the harvest to maximize value and to ensure a safe, humane hunt - and we're attempting to avoid the competitive race to harvest that has developed in Newfoundland and Labrador, and in the Gulf.

Encourage and initiate research on the grey seal impact on the ecosystem, on commercial fish stocks, seafood exports and on the business of fishing.

Advocate and educate the general public, the urban-based media and politicians on the impact issues and the urgency of the need for a 50 per cent reduction of the grey seal population through a commercial harvest over a five-year period - and I'll point out that a 50 per cent grey seal herd size reduction still leaves a population that is high by historical standards.

Progress to date:

Increase in juvenile pelts harvested and sold - we've gone from 460 for an average price of $37 in 2005, to about 1,500 all together from the Gulf and Scotia Fundy already in 2006 with an average price of about $50.

Samples of meat from large adult carcasses have been sent to an Asian importer - and it was well received - we have been asked to send two, 40,000-pound containers of frozen meat to develop this market.

One Nova Scotia company is doing biopharmaceutical research with grey seals to see if new uses can be developed.

The Fishermen Scientists Research Society and a DFO parasite scientist will be sampling groundfish this year to record the level of parasite infestation and the spread of the infestation westward since research stopped in the late 1990s.

Challenges:

Research on parasite impact and the impact of grey seals on spawning aggregations and fish behaviour has been difficult to initiate due to funding and difficulty in finding interested research scientists.

The narrow focus of some DFO scientists on the current percentage of cod in the harp and grey seal diet, while the cod population is at an historic low, has given the media and the uninformed public the impression that the growth of the grey seal herd presents no significant negative impact on cod or other commercial groundfish stocks. This message must be challenged. Provincially protected areas greatly inhibit the ability of our sealers to harvest in areas where aggregations and grey seals are sufficient to allow a profitable harvest. The Nova Scotia Government arrests sealers and ignores the impact of the herd expansion on our coastal fishing communities.

The society needs engineering and capital cost assistance in designing an efficient deck and storage layout with specialized equipment for handling, eviscerating and cold storage of large meat carcasses destined for processing and frozen container export. There is a growing divide between the way our urban population and our urban-based media see nature, and the contrasting experience of our rural population that often works in agriculture, fisheries and the forest products industry. The anti-seal hunt protest groups have exploited this divide to cleverly promote an annual fundraising circus covered by the media. The biggest problem facing the Nova Scotia seafood export industry is not the U.S. Humane Society boycott Canadian seafood campaign, but the lack of fish to harvest in our own waters. Our competitors in Iceland and Norway do not permit these protest groups to cripple their economically-vital seafood and fishing industries.

So those are my comments on behalf of our group. Mr. Chairman, I would open up for questions, or if you would like some comments from some of the other representatives first, they could do so.

MR. CHAIRMAN: I think we have some questions, and as the questions come on, perhaps some of the other members you have introduced would want to take a crack at them.

Mr. Theriault.

MR. HAROLD THERIAULT: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Denny. You've pointed out pretty well everything that I was going to ask, but I've been echoing this message all along.

First of all, I want to say that I love animals. I love animals. I have two animals home, Molly, my dog, and my cat, Chico. I love them very much. They sleep in bed with me at night sometimes. They sleep in the bedroom every night. If I ever wake up some morning and there are 150 Mollys in my bedroom and 150 Chicos, and the fridge is upset and bare and empty, and I can't get to the breakfast table, I have to do something. I think anybody in this room would be in the same position if that ever happened, God forbid. God forbid that these wonderful seals- I played with seals all my life. I was born on the water. I would go down in the passage when I was five and 10 years old and take bread, and we would have a little colony of seals down in that passage, and it stayed that way about, 15 to 20 to 25 seals. Some years you would see a little less, some years you would see a few more. I fished for 35 years around that area, and until the last 15 years, that little 15 to 25 seal herd in that passage has gone to 300 to 400 of them. They're fighting with each other. These are just the little seals, the little harbour seals. We're not talking about these great big seals out to the west there. These seals in the Bay of Fundy are coming up under seagulls and catching them and eating them while they are sitting in the water. They're coming out of the water, they're fighting with each other, they're biting each other. They're hungry. Their food supply - you think our food supply is getting bad in the fisheries, the seal food supply is getting bad. I love animals, and I would love to see that little seal herd down there of 15 to 25 seals that I used to go down and feed as a child, I would love to see that again. It was normal. Today, what is going on in the seal herds of Atlantic Canada is not normal. It has gone from a couple of million to 7 million seals in this seal herd alone.

Denny, you said the seal herd was eating, about 25 per cent of their diet was cod.

MR. MORROW: In Iceland.

MR. THERIAULT: In Iceland. These seals, the size of them, these animals average 800 pounds each. They have to be eating 20 pounds of fish per day. What kind of fish do you think they're eating - are these salmon that are crossing the Atlantic, that are coming on the shores and trying to get up to the river, are the salmon coming through those herds of seals in the Spring of the year? Fill us in on what their diet would be.

MR. MORROW: Well, we know that the grey seal is an opportunistic feeder. So whatever there's plenty of and is the easiest meal is what they're going to eat. When I'm at lobster meetings, I hear lobster fishermen talking about their traps being robbed of bait - and we have a couple of lobster fishermen from the South Shore here today, Garnet and John, who certainly can talk about that - on the Eastern Shore, when they're doing their bait fishery, a gill net for herring, the fishermen report that as soon as the seals arrive they tear into the nets and any fish they've got, and the fish that are schooling there for spawning, flee to deeper waters. I've had cod fishermen in Newfoundland and Labrador tell me that when the harp seals arrive, the cod go to 40 fathoms or deeper to try to avoid them.

So we know right now, depending on the area, if they're in western Nova Scotia, there are still groundfish, but if they're around Sable Island, Sable Island Bank, Western Bank and Banqueral, some of those areas, they're eating a lot of sand lance, other things, some non-commercial species - that's what's left for them to eat. Really, we don't see how cod can recover because there's a trap there, once the numbers start to get up - and I've had this explained to me and scientists in Iceland used it - they'll be feeding on cod as the numbers climb. So, you know, it's like a trap, you can't get a recovery. I would ask some of my friends from the industry here - any comments you guys want to make?

MR. LEVY: Well, I can comment on what I'm seeing. I was in The ChronicleHerald a couple weeks ago, if any of you read that, which is the first time I've ever been bothered this bad - I was fishing 100 kilometres west of Yarmouth and I set my groundfish gill nets out in 100 fathom of water and when I hauled back most of the fish, the stomachs and sides were torn right out of them. When I was hauling back, I saw two big grey seals on the side of my boat, one was about a 600 pounder and one was about a 400 pounder - and that's just a medium size for a grey seal because they do grow up to 1,000 pounds plus.

Anyway, I don't know how many were there, but out of the five strings that I set, most of the fish were torn out of them. I set another string back in the morning at 9:30 and I hauled back at 3:00 p.m. and out of the 500 fish still left in the nets - because these are big animals, when they grab hold of the fish, of course they tear the net and the pieces right with the fish, but the 500 or 600 pounder was still into the string - there was only one fish that was any good. The rest, the sides and stomachs were torn out - and they target the gonads or the liver, whatever is the highest in protein, and they leave the rest of the fish.

[1:30 p.m.]

I'm just wondering if that's what they do in the wild as well, because if that's the case then they do kill a lot of fish and waste a lot of food. So these big animals, up until five years ago these grey seals, I have never seen them in approaches to the Bay of Fundy where I've been fishing for 15-plus years. They showed up about five years ago and every year you can see them getting more plentiful. Well, now it's to the point that I actually had to give up my trip because I couldn't afford to stay there, and we're seeing that in the lobster fishery as well. Here we are - and, again, I'm only stating what I am observing - as lobster fishermen we are throwing the small lobsters, the short lobsters, over for conservation reasons, and all lobster fishermen have seen this, the seals coming behind and as we're throwing the small lobsters over, they're diving down and bringing them back up and eating them. It's bad; they're showing up in areas where they have never been before. They're more of an invasive species; they're not indigenous to the areas they are moving into now. This is, I classify it as an invasive species, more than anything. Those are my comments at this time.

MR. HEISLER: First of all I would like to thank all the guys sitting around the table who came to listen to this. What I would like for each and every one of you to do is to come

down and go aboard one of our boats and go with us to see it firsthand. The gentleman talked about years ago when he was a young boy and he took bread down to the causeway and fed the seals. I was born and brought up on Rous Island, where my father paid the taxes through shooting seals and selling the pelts and the jaws. Now that's back in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Then, when you went out after we did our work fishing, lobstering or gill netting, we used to go out in the evenings and shoot these young seals, and you sold them. You could almost count how many were out there. Don't try to count them now.

We never knew what a grey seal was years ago, back in the 1950s and 1960s. You never saw grey seals around. There wasn't a seal that you couldn't pick up, 200 pounds. You could pick that seal up, because we shot many an old one. Today, some of the ones I've seen, I wouldn't try to pick them up or to even go near them. They have heads on them almost like water buckets. As far as eating fish, when you say 20 pounds, they're eating more than that. An adult seal, when she's having a pup and looking after that pup, she's eating 35 to 40 pounds of fish a day, and sand lance or any other fish, it's eating anything. It's a smorgasbord out there for them. Anything they can catch in the fish line, they're eating, whether they're hauling the bellies out of them or shaking the lobster apart by the body and giving it a shake and their two claws fly and the tails fly, they're eating them. They want the best, like John said. They want the protein that's in that fish.

I took a group of birdwatchers out to Green Island last Summer to look at the puffins and the petrels, and there's four different little seabirds that are nesting out there on the island, we never saw one, but, on the ledge, in the shallow water on Green Island, there were about 40 big seals laying there. You wonder why these little birds are the size of a pigeon or smaller. They're sitting in the water, just one gulp for a seal. They say you're supposed to protect the shore bird, we're not allowed to go ashore on this island, and the seals are helping themselves to them. That's another thing I want brought up here today.

I have a pelagic bait licence. I wouldn't even bother to set a net because, overnight, that net you set, or two nets, would be ruined. You have to set it and guard it with a gun, but, lo and behold, don't shoot one, because I would hate to tell you what the penalty would be. Those are my comments.

MR. COURTNEY: Just so everybody is clear, this guy is up in Chester, up in the western end, I'm down in the northern end of Cape Breton, and what we're seeing down there is the same as they're seeing up there. Years ago you would see one seal, two seals, for the day, when we were out lobster fishing, and now it's 100, 200, it's 1,000, and they're following behind the boats. We aren't firing the bait overboard. One of the scientists tried to tell me the other day that the seals don't eat lobsters. Maybe they don't prefer lobster, and maybe I don't prefer eating pork chops either, I like steak, but if there is only pork chops there, I will eat them.

We're out lobster fishing, we aren't firing the bait back in the water, but, still, for all, we're steaming along and the seals are following along behind us. They must just like swimming in the wake of the boat. If they aren't eating lobster, I don't know why they would waste all that energy swimming along behind the boat day after day, day in, day out. They follow one boat and then they turn around and follow another boat. Every time you look back the seals are there. It's getting to the point where guys are saying, it's conservation. We're firing lots of small lobsters overboard, but why are we firing them back. We're only firing them back for the seals to eat. That gets to be a conservation issue.

The seals are showing up everywhere. They're from one end of the province to the other end. It's just getting to be thicker. Years ago if you saw one or two - it's just getting to be a big problem. I don't know what the answer is, but if there isn't something done, the whole fishing industry from one end of Nova Scotia to the other has a problem, big time.

MR. THERIAULT: Denny, I thought 20 pounds was probably a very conservative figure, but at 20 pounds of fish per seal, per day, that 400,000 of them will calculate out to about 2.9 billion pounds per year. If you double that, like you say, that is quite a high figure at 40 pounds - of course an 800-pound animal, maybe you're right. I don't think the scientists really know that but, if you double that, you're talking well over 5 billion pounds of fish on this coast, a year, so far and the seal herd growing. What is our overall quota, for Nova Scotia, inshore, midshore, offshore?

MR. MORROW: Claude d'Entremont deals with quotas every day; I would have to stop and figure it out. I'm sorry, I don't have the number right now, but it is probably less than . . .

MR. THERIAULT: Would it be around 40 million pounds?

MR. D'ENTREMONT: Well it depends, if you add the herring and stuff in it, yes.

MR. THERIAULT: About 40 million pounds?

MR. DENTREMONT: It would be probably more than that if you add herring and everything in it.

MR. THERIAULT: That is for the whole fishery of Nova Scotia, and these seals on the East Coast are eating between 2.5 and 5 billion pounds per year, and growing? Thank you.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. O'Donnell.

MR. CECIL O'DONNELL: Just a question I would like to ask. Hearing this report of the effects that seals have on the fishing industry, and I guess it is no secret either that

government is trying to get a certain amount of fishermen in the fishing boats out of the fishing industry - is government using this as a way of getting fishermen out of the fishing industry? Is that possible?

MR. MORROW: Funding was cut off to the research scientist who was looking at parasites in fish, around the year 2000. This is a guy in Moncton, and I sent his papers here, and he is hoping to help us with some of the research, but in my darker moments I had this belief that in Ottawa they fully know what the parasite issue alone is doing to some of our groundfish and they've written it off, because the industry will die slowly. It will die a plant at a time; it will die a fisherman at a time. As John referred here, we have the latest round of quota cuts in 4X, and we're seeing this devastation that is extending from eastern Nova Scotia right down to the westward now - it is going toward the mouth of the Bay of Fundy. Fishermen are looking at their business and they're saying they can go elsewhere and earn a living, and maybe they have to. So, that is the way it happens.

They can't give a crew enough work. I talked to a plant owner in Sambro yesterday who told me that he has gone from 30 workers down to 17. He can't keep them working year-round. Nobody likes part-time work. He doesn't like giving them seasonal work, but he can't get the fish. We also export, we have had a traditional market for salted, dried fish and right now we can compete with China by doing skin on, split, dried fish, but you can't get the worms out of it with the skin on, and then you add the labour costs to that, and you see China is buying Norwegian, Russian, Icelandic fish, Alaskan fish, salting, drying, pumping it into our markets - in your district, in Shelburne County, I think you know full well the devastation that this is having on our salt fish plants and our groundfish plants.

So, as I said in my comments, I'm not painting an overly dark picture. The prognosis for jobs in the fishing industry and the processing industry, especially in southwestern Nova Scotia, is very bleak and we will see, over the next five years I think, a rush of population out.

MR. O'DONNELL: Just one other quick question. I live in Shelburne, right on the Clyde River, and I can remember a few years back that you would see seals up to the mouth of the river, but now they're coming up into the river and I can tell you our river, as far as salmon and trout and stuff now, it's dead, it's gone.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Before I go to Mr. Sampson who is next, I just want to let the members know that we've had a member arrive while you were making your presentation and I would like for her to introduce herself.

MS. MICHELE RAYMOND: I'm Michele Raymond, the MLA for Halifax Atlantic, which includes Sambro that you were speaking of and I'm well aware of the state of the fishery there. Thank you very much.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Sampson.

MR. GERALD SAMPSON: There are a couple of points I would like to raise. I live in Big Bras d'Or, I look out my livingroom window and there are 22 lobster-licensed boats outside of my front door, so I have close contact with the lobster fishermen. It has already been covered where the small lobsters don't make it back to the bottom. I guess the next thing is we'll have to invent a trap to store the small lobsters in, put them down and release them or something like that.

People have told me that if you touch a small seal and you put the human scent on it, it'll be abandoned by its mother - I guess that's why they were saying the celebrities who petted the seals out there were the first ones to cause the demise of a young seal on the coast.

I've travelled out around the Bird Islands, off the coast of where I live, for 35 or 40 years. As already mentioned, it was nice to point out to my kids, look at the seal and we would stop and watch it and look at it and it was a novelty. I take my grandkids out there now, I have to slow down the boat to keep from plowing through the seals. They don't eat scratch feed or anything else, like chicken, so it's fish of some kind or other that they're eating. The Bird Islands are a protected area, you're not allowed to go ashore on those, but the seals are all over the island and they're extremely large.

Anyway, we do harvest - I'm looking here at a report - large mammals program done by the government, DNR Wildlife Division in Kentville, Tony Nette and Adrian McGinn. We harvest an average of about 20 per cent of our deer population on a yearly basis. We harvest moose in Cape Breton and in Newfoundland and caribou. There's nothing said about that.

We raise cattle for feed, we raise chickens - Lord knows there are enough of those that are processed on a daily basis - but what seems to be taking place is the fact that animals seem to have more rights than humans. I have dogs and cats and so do my grandchildren and I've had them for years and I love them dearly, but I was always able to make a distinction between an animal and a human. To me, human beings come first.

Here we are with a stressed industry and yet we have protected areas - protected from what? We're protecting it from humans, with rules and regulations and they could be monitored. There's no way to enforce rules and regulations with wild animals, which is what the seals are. I'm thinking of Scatarie and Hay Island and other areas around my area that are just literally crawling with seals. A managed harvest of some kind, I don't see what would be wrong with that.

Anyway, what we have to find out is if we're doing scientific research and spending a lot of money - I don't hunt anymore, by the way, it's not worth my while even to go to the

woods, there's nothing to hunt as far as I'm concerned with regard to deer. Maybe I've passed the stage where it's interesting. There's just nothing there to hunt anymore.

I'd like to know, if I went out and shot a deer illegally or without a licence, I would be fined severely and I would make the headlines, yet for years the fishermen have been requesting the support of the government and it seems to be falling on deaf ears. Somebody has to stand up and take the bull by the horns and listen to the fishermen. Maybe, as the invitation was suggested, maybe some of our people in decision-making positions should go onboard the boats and see for themselves. My motto, there's nothing like bringing government to the people. I find when ministers come to my area and see first-hand what it is I'm trying to promote, I get very positive responses from that and I think that's a good thing to do.

[1:45 p.m.]

Seals, 15 years back and forth to Baddeck, it was a novelty to see a grey seal or a harbour seal, as they were called, on the ice in Baddeck Bay. Now you can't see the ice for the seals. So it's getting to a real profusion that something has to be done. I would like to ask the gentlemen here what you suggest would be a solution? I would like to hear a solution coming from you so that we can move forward and I can meet with the minister and ask for some support. Give me some specific direction on where I can go when this meeting is over. What would you like to see me do first?

MR. MORROW: I listed in the challenges - because that's why we formed the society, to try to come up with a solution, and we realize that it's not going to happen overnight. Just for an example, you have to harvest seals, commercially, in places where the numbers make it economical to do it. Going out and hunting one here and one there, you're spending fuel, you have crew, boat time, and then you have to get the pelt or you have to get the carcass to a market, so you need concentrations. So I would say that is the first thing, is we need to take a look at where there are concentrations of grey seals that are economical to harvest, and you mentioned some of them up in your area that are protected areas that we can't go to. We're just trying to map those out in western Nova Scotia, because these are new sealing colonies down there and, of course, the big herd on Sable Island, it's concentrated there for a couple of months of the year, we can't get at it because it's a protected area.

I was told three years ago when we started this, I had a journalist call me up and say you'll never succeed, nobody wants the pelt, nobody wants the meat, nobody wants to eat seal. Well, that's not correct, we have an order to send a couple of container loads of meat to China. They want the big carcasses. They don't want the small ones. They want it treated like a pig, cut into cuts. It's seen as an exotic wild animal. We know in China they have a different attitude toward wild animals or toward a meat protein than what we do. You can go to some areas and they're eating snake or whatever. It may seem strange to us, but it's not strange in China.

So I'm told that the samples that we sent over - and we were very careful with quality, unlike what has happened in Newfoundland - were well received, but we need to establish that market. The problem is, how do you harvest animals that are very aggressive, difficult to deal with, that weigh 800 pounds or 1,000 pounds? You can imagine shooting them, getting them on your boat, eviscerating them, and then you have the Canadian Food Inspection Agency that requires when that meat comes into a plant that it be pristine - no gravel, no sand, no grass contaminating it. We have our HACCP program that we have to meet on board the vessel. So, anyway, we're trying to work this out because the Chinese are saying give us the containers, we can establish a market for it.

So doing the design, the layout of a vessel, figuring out the best or the most efficient method of harvesting large animals, finding them, what time of year in concentrations, storing that meat on board the vessel so it's good when it gets to the plant, getting a plant geared up to do the cuts of meat, this is really a butchering operation, it's not filleting fish, and we're working on that. We've made progress, but we need some help. Also, for trials, we need to get at least one vessel rigged up. We need some engineering advice. We need some capital cost help in doing a prototype, and get those first shipments off, do them well and establish the market.

The pelts, this year, I think they're getting $80 to $90 for harp seal pelts in Newfoundland. We're getting about $50 for our grey seal pelts, but we're told by two buyers that they like the pelts, it's just that we don't have enough of them to really establish a good market yet. If we get the numbers up and they're good quality pelts like we turned in this year, we can get that price up from $50, perhaps higher. The market for the pelts is buoyant right now. Russia is cashing in on oil, and other northern countries, and they're buying fur. The Chinese are doing the same. We also have a company that has a scientist hired who is doing some biopharmaceutical research with seals as well. I don't know how that will turn out, but there may be some possibility there.

So we need some help from the Nova Scotia Government in where we can harvest, and help us get this meat market developed so we have a vessel prototype and get some financial assistance in doing it.

MR. CLAUDE D'ENTREMONT: One of the things we need is the support of the province. Here we have a natural resource that is growing in leaps and bounds. We have all kinds of other natural resources in Nova Scotia that we're capitalizing on. We're not talking about jeopardizing anything. We're talking about food, biodegradable leather that can be made out of it instead of using fossil fuels and making garments out of non-biodegradable material that goes in a landfill and stays there forever. I mean this is ecologically friendly.

The reason there is such a drive to stop sealing is because you have that tiny little white coat with coal black eyes; put a picture of an 800 pound or 1,200 pound grey seal, you're not talking the same thing, but the defenders of the seal are still trying to stop the kill

of the white-coat pups that haven't been hunted since 1987. Nobody speaks on our behalf, everybody is petrified of trying to deal with this situation. I don't have a problem. As far as I'm concerned, a lot of fishermen I know are conservationists. They want things to pursue and go on, but I do have a problem with a protectionist who wants to stop it at all costs for no apparent reason. Nobody is trying to jeopardize the seal.

The only jeopardy here is the fishermen. We're the ones who are in jeopardy. Today, I jokingly said that we should go to COSEWIC and tell them to put fishermen on the endangered species list and then somebody would protect us, because they're protecting everything else. The whole thing is becoming a joke. I was talking to an individual one time - and our particular boat is bottom trawl, and we're accused of incidental kill of unwanted species - I told the individual who was with me, come on outdoors and let's go look at the bow of your truck and let's count the bugs that you killed, and they were okay to kill because you wanted to be here, but if I go and pursue my duty or job and kill a brittlestar or something on the bottom of the ocean, then I'm a bad boy. Who told you that you were to decide?

We have Iceland that has a seal hunt. They harvest seals on an annual basis. Greenland does the same thing. Iceland, today, still demands the highest price for their fish on the market than any other country that I know of in groundfish, because their government has supported them. We don't get the same support from our province or our federal government.

MR. MORROW: Mr. Chairman, I'm not making a partisan comment here, but certainly it made us in the industry feel good when the Premier of Newfoundland and Labrador, Danny Williams, went on television and took on the McCartneys. It also made us feel good when our Prime Minister quickly dismissed some of the celebrities who wanted a meeting, and the response of Loyola Hearn, the new Minister of Fisheries, so far, on this issue. Mac Campbell, a former CBC journalist, electronic journalist, who now writes for some of the fishing papers, made a comment in the last issue, I think, of The Navigator, that outside of Newfoundland, politicians in the Atlantic Region have been quiet. They're not defending this industry.

I live in a part of the province, Claude as well, in Yarmouth County, and I don't know what we'll do without the fishing industry, and it's the same thing in Shelburne County. We have some other things, but my reading of tourism this year, with gasoline prices the way they are, I think we're in deep trouble in tourism.

But the fishing industry has held our end of the province up and we're seeing it under severe threat - I know that doesn't mean much here in Halifax, but it means a lot to us.

MR. CLAUDE D'ENTREMONT: The question was asked - food for seals, and for years it was assumed that certain species were not eaten by seals because, when the stomach

contents of seals were looked at, they found no evidence. Usually they found otoliths, which are the ear bones of the fish - cod, pollock, or whatever, they weren't found there.

When they went to Sable Island and they actually took core samples of the blubber of the seals and analyzed it in the lab, they found what was eaten by the seals was significantly different than what was assumed. They did find some traces of pollock, cod, haddock, flatfish and all these species that weren't supposed to be eaten by seals because the ear bones weren't in the stomachs of the seals.

You know what John saw when they were going after his fish - they didn't want to eat the head, they wanted the stomach contents, which has more protein and so on.

How fast are they? My uncle, Eric, he was out fishing for bluefish one time and his rod just started to unwind, and the next thing he knew he had caught a bluefish on his line and here was a seal with the bluefish in its mouth, hauling his line away. So he had the fish on the line and the seal on the fish.

MR. GERALD SAMPSON: I'd just like to finish off by saying that I suppose if you tour a slaughterhouse for beef or chicken it would be disgusting for most, but it's the reality part of the industry. I'm sure government could put monitors to watch the harvest, the same way they do when you land your fish. There's a monitor on the dock, it has to be weighed, and fishermen can't give you a fish anymore unless it's added into his quota.

What impressed me when I got the call last Fall from the Grey Seal Society was, when I listened to the information that was given, the fact you had secured a market not only for the pelts and blubber, but for the meat. That, to me, was total utilization of the carcass - nothing was going to be wasted, nothing was going to be left on the ice floes. To me, you were turning a negative into a positive and creating a business out of something that was basically, before your time, unheard of.

One final comment. I've been around a fair bit and it takes quite a bit to turn me off, but we had a sou'easter down in Black Rock, just down from Big Bras d'Or, about 10 years ago and - a beachcomber I guess you would call me - I was down there, with the rubber boots on, during and after the storm, in a cove that very seldom ever sees any storm damage, and because it was a sou'easter I actually walked through white worms that were about 6 inches thick, about 20 feet wide, and about 1,500 feet along, all mixed in with the kelp - it was gross - these things were all over the place. When I questioned what it was, somebody told me it had to be worms from seals. I don't know if that's true or not, but it was the most disgusting sight you would ever want to see. I've never seen that before in all my years around the water and since, but it was something I saw then.

I may have questions in the second round, but I will finish with that comment now. Thank you.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Fage.

MR. ERNEST FAGE: Thank you very much everyone for appearing today. Your testimony really does paint the picture that's out there before the industry, and especially the fishermen - the processors and marketers have a role to play, but the fishermen are the ones who are dealing with the overpopulation of seals. As another speaker pointed out, when you've seen, since 1987, approximately under 2 million animals go to a herd of 7 million, there certainly are seals out there, they're not a figment of somebody's imagination - you're dealing with a real problem.

[2:00 p.m.]

I've had the opportunity for a number of years, in a former role, to deal with provincial and federal officials on the policy side of it. I would like to talk in that direction for a couple of minutes and ask you some comments. I guess my observation in what has taken place in the fishery in Nova Scotia/Atlantic Canada, the base of the industry is for Nova Scotia, if we use that example, we still have a billion dollar industry here, but it's much more dependent on crustaceans and the shellfish side of the equation to what it was 15 or 20 years ago, and continues to move through that spectrum. When you see that happening, I don't think you have to be a scientist. The large fish eat the small fish, and the seals eat the large fish, and if you go down to the krill and the shrimp and then the protozoa, each one, in a natural balance, is there. We have a huge part of that food chain now missing. We have the top predator moving in and filling that niche to the detriment, certainly in my view, of the fish and the recovery.

When you look at solutions, from my point of view, I, like Denny, was very heartened this Spring on this particular issue when I saw politicians for the first time in my lifetime stand up and say let's have a little balance to the approach here, rather than made for TV cameras and a soapbox show. It was very heartening, because I know my years in the role as a provincial minister, it was more lip service that you received from the federal bureaucracy and the ministers not coming from the East Coast, or, if they did, they were concerned about other issues or other events. When you see the Prime Minister, Loyola Hearn, and Premier Danny Williams step to the fore, it does, I think, bode well for government policy. That is really part of the heart of the issue we're talking to today, is what are governments going to stand for in this whole equation.

The other half I would like to explore and hear your comments on is on the research side. The research side, in my view, not only encompasses seals in their nature, parasites in their nature, but it also encompasses the marketing side. You've made great strides in beginning to tap into a market, but the bigger question is long-term profitability offers those government policy, and bureaucrats and politicians an opportunity to say they balance each other - if you follow this track in harvesting, there is an economic return, it supports

communities, and we're not paying a subsidy to eliminate seals, because that's the danger in all this, that it has to be economically viable.

Has work been done on Canadian and Nova Scotia scientists accepting Norwegian or European work? I think their work is world-class and does deserve to be considered without having to double research. It saves a lot of time on all these issues and should be moved forward. Also, the market research, everything from liquid protein has a value the same as you would have gold or any mineral. Everything has value, and given the proper sanitary conditions, it has a value, it has a market in the world, and you have pointed out the Asian market, where protein is very strongly in demand.

Have you looked at the ability to gather seals year-round just rather than in the Spring period, being able to gear up a vessel or two you could move from colonies or large density populations throughout the year? In some jurisdictions in North America, and worldwide, the mobile slaughterhouse is now taking a very active role. Instead of bringing all things to a central facility, it's done in that manner and you can handle a reasonable volume, process it properly, meet HCCP and have a product to sell - the infrastructure in all this can't be so expensive that you never have a viable product, or nobody is going to get on that research chain with you.

My last question in that regard is, when we deal in other segments with the economy and the fishing industry, we've been able to attract a fair amount of research money through NSERC, Intercan, Natural Resources, and, maybe not to the extent that it should be, in DFO, but I think there's an opportunity out there to get those kinds of significant research dollars involved in food production, because here in the province we have just established a food centre and worked very strongly at the NSAC in Truro, several places in southwestern Nova Scotia, the basis is there to make sure that food research can grow and continue, but we need to connect all the dots. Those would be my questions; I really don't have the answers, but questions.

MR. MORROW: Well, first to talk a little bit about the problems, one of the problems, which gets at what you're directing toward here, the harp seal harvest in Newfoundland, I think, this year is over 300,000 animals. So everybody looks at us and says, well, you've harvested 1,500, what's the problem with you guys?

MR. FAGE: And they did that in eight days.

MR. MORROW: Yes. The harp seals are on the ice, so you can go out there and they're there, you can take them, you can harvest them. Grey seals are on islands, they're on coastlines, and they're in the water. By the way, we're shooting them, we're not using a hakapik. So you go from a boat and they're on the shoreline, you shoot one and the rest go for the water. You have to be able to get them. We have to figure out how to harvest them.

Now when we're harvesting for pups for the pelts, the juvenile pelts, that's reasonably straightforward if we can get access to the areas where they're concentrated, but the bigger animals for meat, which we have a market, which the Newfoundlanders are not touching, really, they're harvesting pelts, juveniles. That's what we're trying to figure out. I talked about that earlier. We can go out and we can get one animal or two animals, but to make a day of it, to make money at it, we need to get 14 - 10, 14 animals.

MR. FAGE: Mr. Morrow, if I could just ask a question on that point. There are some points in the world where there's research done, and certainly in the humane trapping of animals. Some jurisdictions will allow - if you're doing muskrats - a drownset , which is a net, a cannister. It would seem like if you could get the proper permitting, and certainly if it's a drown-type set, you don't have to bother with guns or noise. If you can get the right enclosure that is submerged, it would seem, with permitting in that manner, you could move in, harvest properly. I guess that would be my comment. Can you get that type of permit?

MR. MORROW: Well, the regulations were really established for the harp seal, for the pelt harvest, not for what we're trying to do with grey seals. So we're having to deal with regulations that are really not made for our animal. Again, here's something that the provincial government could work with us to try to drive some changes, because we do need to do some experimentation. We've already thought of the net idea and we're thinking about what time of year we can get the concentrations of adults on islands, maybe before they start their reproductive cycle, where they gather. Again, it would be the males that we'd be looking at.

You asked about researching impact issues. It was the Icelandic scientists, when I was over in Reykjavik four years ago, who pointed out not just the processing cost, the fact that they laugh at the quality of the fish that we have, the fillets here, because we tear them apart when we take the worms out, compared to their nice, slick fillets. You go into their plants and see the processing lines, and you don't have the trimmers there pulling worms all the time. So their costs are way below our processing cost.

Anyway, a scientist told me, when I started talking about the worms, he said you must realize the impact that this is having on the healthier fish. The first time anybody, any scientist told me about the ketones, the excretions and the anaesthetizing impact that this has on the fish - we have approached scientists at Dalhousie, and said we would like a longer term study, maybe the guy is wrong, but we feel that this anaesthizing impact, not just the robbing of nutrition - and if you could open up some of these fish, this would be worth your while to see it, to have a processor in Harold's district, call me last Summer and say, I wish you could come up here, my filleters are telling me that the cod we just bought from Cape Breton would walk right across the table, there are so many worms in them. So it's not just the nutritional robbing that takes place with the fish, but we think that it is having an effect on the behaviour of the fish, making it difficult for it to gather prey or forage itself and also

in the Winter when the conditions are harsh and cold, a weakened fish probably is more prone to succumbing.

So we do have a little bit of money. We're going to be recording what we see as the westward movement of this infestation of worms this year with the Fishermen and Scientists Research Society. Marketing research, we do have a bit of money from ACOA to pursue markets. So far we haven't used it, because we are doing all right on our own. Working out what it is going to cost us to get the product that the Chinese want, that is what we need to do. Then we go to them and we know what our cost is and your initial cost, any business person can tell you, usually is higher; as you do more of them, you figure out how you get your costs down. So we've got to go to the customer and say, here is where we need to start out, can you cover this? Our initial feeling is probably they can, because we won't have great amounts of product to begin with.

What we're driving at here is, if we reduce the size of the herd by 50 per cent we want to do it in a way that is defensible, not just go out and shoot a bunch of seals and say, there, we got rid of half the herd, sell them. Let people eat the meat, wear the fur, take the capsules, the Omega 3 oil, which is good for preventing heart attack and stroke, use them. That's what we're trying to do, but we need some help in getting past the jump-off stage. Your Department of Economic Development and other departments and the federal government and the provincial government, when a new industry - and this is new, grey seals - starts out, usually they're there to help. In this case because of the protest groups - it just amazes me that in South Africa, right now they are culling elephants in the national parks because they're destroying the vegetation, there are too many of them, and I don't see a huge outcry over that. They aren't going to wipe out the elephant herd, they're just going to take it down to where it has less impact on the ecosystem. That's all we're trying to do, and do it commercially.

MR. THERIAULT: Common sense, it's called.

MR. FAGE: Have you put an application forward to NSERC, the National Research Council. I have not, in my time, on those committees, seen a project such as that, come forward. Maybe it got called earlier than that, but to me it would look like one that would have a viable chance of attracting research money, because you would obviously be a sustainable harvest and that would be another venue for fisher people to work at into the future too. It is another product if you develop the industry and it is sustainable.

The other group who have the research institute up the harbour that do some of that type of work, are you associated with them, or Woods Hole because when you look at the Gulf of Maine society and the growth in the grey seals, that is one of the things that is on their agenda as well, that they are concerned about. Is there any tie-in or association with those research groups, the Americans or anybody?

[2:15 p.m.]

MR. MORROW: I'm talking to and sending information to American fishermen and also I've sent some down to the lobster institute, Dr. Bayer, down in Bangor. The American fishermen along the Maine coast, Massachusetts coast, know this is a problem. They are seeing the worms are showing up now in their colonies of grey seals extending down their way. They're deathly afraid of the protest groups at this point. I stand by my comment that I made earlier. Our biggest problem that we see in our seafood markets from our association's perspective, whether it is lobster, groundfish, herring or whatever, raw material, we're going to die if we don't have landings. Our customers want more of what we have to sell, we just can't get it to them, and we can't do it, especially in groundfish, if it's going to be full of worms.

MR. FAGE: Certainly from my perspective as an elected official, Denny, if you want to correspond, I'll do everything I can to help along those lines of research and tying into resources for you.

MR. MORROW: We are looking at NSERC, and Jay Luger, who is behind me, is doing some of that work for us.

MR. FAGE: I'll certainly volunteer to give you a hand with that.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Parker.

MR. CHARLES PARKER: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, gentlemen, for coming here today. It's certainly an interesting topic. I guess coming from the North Shore of our province, seals are a popular topic with fishermen up my way and it's what I hear about quite a bit. Some of you might have seen the CBC story from Pictou Island this Winter where an awful lot of seals landed, and that was a story in itself. Then, of course, a couple of weeks later, the story was that a tidal surge killed a lot of the young seals. So Pictou Island made the news on two occasions, related to seals.

I just have a few short snappers here I want to run by you. Your society is the Grey Seal Research & Development Society. You have a quota of 10,000 seals that you can harvest on a yearly basis. Do you reach that quota? Secondly, is there other quota to other groups in the region for grey seals?

MR. MORROW: No, we have the initial 10,000 quota. We have not harvested 10,000 seals. It was extended another year. It was a two-year quota. It's kind of an experiment. We haven't harvested grey seals in any number before, in this province, to see if we could establish markets, figure out how to harvest them efficiently and humanely. As far as other groups applying for it, I guess it's up to the Minister of Fisheries.

What we told one of the previous ministers, who at the time was West Nova MP Robert Thibault, when we got the allocation, was that we wanted to avoid what has happened in Newfoundland, which is a lot of licensed sealers racing out when the gun goes off and harvesting as fast as they can, because it's competitive, very difficult to control, very difficult to maximize the dollar value. You want to harvest the animal if it's for a pelt when it's peak condition, not when the gun goes off, and not necessarily in all areas. Also, you want to make efficient use of your harvesters and your vessels, so maybe they harvest this week in one area, and then they move to another area, and so on.

I think the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, certainly Minister Thibault, at the time, recognized, because there was more than one application for this allocation. We had a Newfoundland group that was interested in coming down here and harvesting grey seals that would like to see Nova Scotians take advantage of this, would like to see a broad-based industry group that we represent manage this process and develop it.

We're hoping to have discussions with the new minister, Loyola Hearn, see this extended to be able to tell him first-hand how difficult it is, but the progress we are making, which many people did not believe was possible.

MR. PARKER: So of the 10,000 quota, what numbers have you harvested over the last two years?

MR. MORROW: It was 460 in 2005; so far this year I think it has been juveniles, about 800 all told. Now I'm not counting your Gulf area, ours is Scotia Fundy allocation. There have been grey seals, and some of our group did harvest, I think - what was it, Robert, about 800?

MR. COURTNEY: It was 800 in the Gulf.

MR. MORROW: That's not counted against our quota. If we do a meat harvest before the end of 2006 and target large adults, that also will be added to the numbers for 2006.

MR. PARKER: I like your plan if you're going to utilize the whole animal, you know, the pelts, the meat, the pharmaceutical, as well. You seem to be heading in the right direction, rather than just going out and shooting it, and it being wasted. I think if you're going to have a public campaign against the Brigitte Bardots, or Sir Paul, or whoever, you need to show that you're serious, you have something useful that can be used and it's just not a waste of an animal - you're actually utilizing a natural resource.

But, right now, we all know that some seals get shot by fishermen or by others, but what is the penalty for shooting a seal out of season or it not being allowed at all?

MR. MORROW: First of all, I think that if they're a nuisance to your gear, if they're destroying your gear, you can get a permit to shoot them - the same way a farmer who has deer or coyotes coming in and eating their crops. I saw a sign "eat lamb, 50,000 coyotes can't be wrong." I farmed myself for 10 years and, believe me, I shot more than one deer that was cleaning out my commercial strawberry acreage.

Garnet, did you have a comment? If you don't have the permit to protect your gear, what does happen, do you know?

MR. HEISLER: I think I said that before here. I don't know what would happen if you got caught shooting one without a permit or while you're fishing. A fisherman is allowed to get a permit and shoot a seal if you can prove that it is messing with your gear. Well, don't ask a fisherman that, and I'm not going to answer that. All I'm saying is you can get a permit while we're fishing, and our season goes to the last of May and we can get a permit to shoot that seal. When you have a seal or two following behind your boat, you know darn well what they're doing. Every trap you put overboard - it was already said here - every lobster you throw overboard, and we don't throw the bait back because if you throw the old bait out of the trap back, the lobster's not going to go into the trap after the new bait, so therefore the seal is taking everything that's coming over the side, and it's not bait.

MR. PARKER: I think I got the answer. I just assume again though there's a fine probably if you're illegally shooting the seals.

I want to switch gears here now, go to another angle on this. First, in the notes you gave us, I was reading last night about vaccines that are being experimentally used, for maybe trying to get rid of the seal worm. I guess it's injected into the seal somehow and that prevents it from being passed on.

Secondly, is there a vaccine for sterilizing seals? Is there any experimental work being done on that?

MR. MORROW: As far as a vaccine or injection for the worms, I know of nothing in that. You have to realize the cycle - the worm matures in the warm-blooded gut or intestinal tract of the seal. It's necessary to be in a warm-blooded animal for it to grow and become sexually mature, then the eggs are released through the feces, they go to the bottom, they're eaten by the benthic animals, or fish on the bottom, and then the worms - eventually the fish through the feed chain will get them and they'll start to grow in the organs, in the cavities, and in the flesh of the fish, and then the fish is eaten by the seal and the process keeps rolling along.

By taking the herd down, say by half, if we can shrink the area that they're in - the Icelanders have seen about a five-year lag time, when they reduce their herd, to a reduction

in the infestation of worms. It's not something that's going to happen very quickly or automatically, but we need to be going in the other direction and not seeing the herd increase.

As far as sterilization, yes, there was some experimentation, I understand, in the early 1990s on Sable Island. The researchers said it was effective - there are varying reports on that - but the question quickly came, who's going to pay for the vaccine and the process of injection? So it has bogged down.

Also, now where the herd has branched out from Sable Island and you have these pupping colonies all up and down the Gulf of Maine and to Cape Breton, I'm not sure how effective - maybe a combination of the two things would be good. Some sterilization, if we're never allowed to go on Sable Island, get that herd cut down a bit that's out there, and let's increase the commercial harvest.

MR. PARKER: Okay, so it is something that fishermen would consider or look at maybe in combination with harvesting?

MR. MORROW: Anything to reduce the herd.

MR. PARKER: One final question. You talked quite a bit about the problem, I guess, of the publicity generated by the anti-sealing campaign, and certainly they've done a great job, you know, they've really got all kinds of PR on it. Have you thought, your organization - and I know you don't have anywhere the resources to match what has been done by the anti-sealers or in conjunction with the industry, is there any possibility you can counter a negative, in your mind, with a positive campaign to show the benefits of the fishing industry and of sealing as you're outlining here?

MR. MORROW: Certainly, when we formed the society, I listed that as one of our objectives, to do advocacy work and educational work and speaking to the media. In the course of my day as Executive Director of the Nova Scotia Fish Packers Association, I move from lobster, to herring, to groundfish, to plant inspection, to labels, to all kinds of problems. These guys fish for a living. They're out on the water. Claude has a plant to run, and boats that are out fishing.

It is very difficult for us, with the limited resources that we have, to get somebody in the media. I have offered The ChronicleHerald to do an op-ed piece. I notice other people get the invitation, but I haven't. I have had some media opportunities in local papers, fishing papers and, again, the reporter - we initiated the interview after John Levy e-mailed me the results of his fishing trip. This is the kind of thing, whether it's Guysborough County fishermen or Ecum Secum, I get those calls and, believe me, it's frustrating, because I would like to, full-time, be able to go out to the media, to the Toronto Star, to the big city media and tell this story, but it's finding the resources to do them. We just don't have it right now. It sure would help if the provincial government, if some of you folks talked about the impact

that it's having in your communities and did it publicly, because you are elected people; you can get media.

MR. CLAUDE D'ENTREMONT: Isn't it ironic, for example, the movie Titanic, just to speak of the people in the movie trade, it seems to me that I recall it cost $100 million to make that film. A lot of it was destroying non-renewable resources, and these guys are on pedestals, and the fishermen who go there and try to kill a renewable resource that is ecologically and economically sensible and doesn't destroy the planet or anything are seen as the bad guys. They get paid millions to destroy our planet and, with us, we're trying to survive, and we don't get any support.

MR. PARKER: Thank you, gentlemen.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Langille.

MR. WILLIAM LANGILLE: Thank you for coming in. This is very interesting to me and I'm sure the rest of my colleagues. I've always said we're very fortunate in the Legislature to have a person from Digby, a former fishermen - fisher, I guess it's called now, isn't it?

MR. CLAUDE D'ENTREMONT: We're still fishermen.

[2:30 p.m.]

MR. LANGILLE: I'm always interested in what he has to say, but maybe the member for Digby is getting politically correct now, I don't know, because I've heard him relate to that word before. Anyway, I just wanted to say that I had the opportunity to watch the segment on Larry King Live with the McCartneys and Danny Williams. I don't know how many people in this room watched it, but if they did, it was very obvious that Larry King was slanted towards the McCartneys, with the amount of time that he gave them and the questions and so on, and cutting Danny Williams off. I applaud Danny Williams for trying to do the best he could under the circumstances. I don't want to go in depth, but I did watch it and I found if very interesting. I am glad to see a politician sticking up for the right reasons.

I realize these people have a lot of money. They have a lot of support throughout the world, large advertising campaigns and so on, and that leads me to where I'm going, but before I go there, I also was a bit surprised that when Brigitte Bardot came over here that the CBC carried it live. To me, that is the way the reporting system is, and when you people try to counter that, like you said, you're not getting any place and you don't have the resources. They seem to target - and if you've been watching the news lately, it is all about the sealers, and in Quebec, going on the ice floes and so on, they get a lot of publicity. However, we have an industry to protect. We're forced to have a former minister of provincial fisheries here, and he knows better than I do of where the overlap is, if there is an overlap, between the

federal and provincial government and especially on Sable Island. I was talking to a reporter who did a segment on Sable Island and he said to me, you know, I can't believe it, you can't walk on the beach there, they're just crawling there, he said the feces and everything that is left over, you can't walk there.

I know, going across P.E.I. on the ferry - years ago I used to go across all the time and of course there are other species too, not just seals that have increased, but I couldn't believe when I went across, and it was in June and that was during lobster season, the seals were popping their heads up everywhere. I couldn't believe the amount of seals that I saw. If it went from 30,000 grey seals to approximately 350,000, I think we've identified the problem. We have to, I'm saying you, as well as MLAs here, set a course of action with an obtainable goal, and I like your way of putting it - nothing is going to happen overnight, it's going to take time. You're just starting now. I really think that elected officials are becoming more aware of the problem, and they are not like the ostrich, burying their head in the sand now. I think we're going to see some positive things out of this. I'm going to lead up to a motion later on that I want to make here.

I believe we're not going to have a fishery as we know it now. I've been out to Seal Island, by the way, in Cape Breton, and saw those seals. I also saw tommycod caught there, you couldn't eat it because of the amount of worms in it. I'm certainly not an expert nor do I have the knowledge on the fisheries like you do and some of my colleagues here; however, I recognize that we do have a very big problem here and I think it is time that something is done about it. Those coloured pictures that you sent around, maybe those are the ones you should be putting in the papers, coloured pictures like that, showing the other side of it and where the industry is going.

I applaud Iceland and Norway for the steps they've taken. I've watched the viable turnaround that Iceland did on their cod, and it was terrific. They blame a lot of it on Portuguese trawlers and that, actually Shelburne putting the run to them. So there are different circumstances in that area.

Anyway, I will be bringing a motion in afterwards to somebody else here at the committee level - but you have to campaign, you're all going to have to band together and come up with a strategy and utilize it. Thank you.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Mr. Langille. Mr. Gaudet.

MR. WAYNE GAUDET: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Denny, and to your colleague, I want to thank you for your presentation here this afternoon. I want to try to get a better understanding on the seal population. Denny, in your opening comments you talked about the seal population going from 30,000 to somewhere around 400,000. Do most of the seals live in the waters around Nova Scotia, or do seals migrate from up north or go down south? I'll begin with that one.

MR. MORROW: As I said earlier, the harp seal that you hear so much about in Newfoundland comes down into the Gulf and on the ice off the coast of Newfoundland for reproduction and for pupping, and then it moves north again and into Arctic waters and Greenland. The fishing industry in Newfoundland, although it sees them there for part of the year, they move on.

The grey seal is a resident of these waters 12 months of the year. I understand, I think, by and large, the males go westward from Sable Island, heading down our way in the summertime, and some of the juveniles, and the females are going north toward Cape Breton, at least I've heard that scientists say that. So it's a 12-month-of-the-year thing. It's 24 hours a day. They tend to like to stay around the most productive areas, the fishing banks, the coastal areas, and as you've heard here today, to stay close to the fishing boats. All animals, and any farmer can tell you this, like an easy meal.

MR. GAUDET: Are there communities or areas around the province that are more impacted by these seals, southwestern Nova Scotia, the Bay of Fundy, the South Shore, Cape Breton, where?

MR. CLAUDE D'ENTREMONT: It's increasingly changing. It used to be a small migration, and now it's getting worse and worse. Some years ago a seal that was tagged on Sable Island, seven weeks later, terminated its trip in Abbotts Harbour. It will not travel anymore. It was a short period of time that a seal travelled from Sable Island to just off Pubnico.

MR. GAUDET: You indicated that Iceland and Norway manage their seal herds. I'm trying to find out, or understand, why don't we, here in Canada, try to manage our seal herds?

MR. MORROW: That's a huge question. I guess you guys have to look inward. The regulations are set by the federal government. The provincial government certainly has some influence. The Newfoundland Government certainly does. When I say those other countries manage their seal herds, Iceland had some good luck, not for the seals, but distemper, I understand, hit their huge herd in the late 1980s and early 1990s and almost wiped out their grey seal population. It's funny, their cod was down where ours was, and all of a sudden it's back up, in about five years. They're getting record catches.

The Icelanders told me - the ones I talked to when I was over there, they're very secretive about what they do, they do have a bounty. Fishermen and farmers go out and harvest in the Spring and bring in the jawbones. The seals, some of the mink farms use the carcasses. They do a bit of pelting locally, but they don't have the numbers. They don't let their grey seal herd get up above 2,000 or 3,000 animals.

One of the government officials in Iceland told me that if we managed our fishery and our seal population the way you guys do, we would be living in mud huts, because in Iceland

there isn't much else to do. There's the geothermal, there's some aluminum, bauxite, and there's a tremendous fishery.

MR. GAUDET: You indicated in your presentation that the society had requested a seal quota of 10,000 back in 2003. I'm trying to understand why in 2003 and not before, and at the same time, where did this number of 10,000 come from, when I'm hearing there's over 400,000 seals around our province?

MR. MORROW: Well, 10,000 came from DFO after talking with a couple of their scientists, I think principally Don Bowen, who gave a very conservative number, I think. Maybe I shouldn't attribute that to him, but 10,000 wasn't our figure, it's what we were given, and realizing that we were starting something new - as I said, this is different than going out on the ice and shooting or killing harp seal juveniles for pelts, these animals are much different and their environment is much different.

So it was an understanding that it's kind of an experimental thing, lets see what you can do, and we are making progress. I'm out of Yarmouth, Claude is out of Pubnico, John, Chester Basin, we really didn't concern ourselves with this problem. Our friends up in eastern Nova Scotia were saying our fishery is being wiped out, and we didn't want their fish. Some of the sentinel fish that came in from 4VW off eastern Nova Scotia, I had one processor here in Halifax who told me that when he opened it up just to look at it, it was only fit for the trash can. You couldn't do anything with that fish.

So now it's in our area, in western Nova Scotia, and anybody who drives through Pubnico and Shelburne County knows the number of plants that we have down there and, you know, when I have one of our members, who is very big in exports around the world, told me yesterday that he can't process local fish and make any money at it. He's in the salting business, he has to buy ling cod from Iceland, pollock from Alaska, cod from the Russians, on the world market, to process in his plant, in competition with the Chinese who are also buying that product. You know, that's a sad commentary on the state of affairs, but it has us moving, that's for sure. Maybe it's too late.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Well, since I'm the last person on the list until we start our second round, I have a few questions. My background really is a Bachelor of Science with a biology degree. I run a small farm, a sheep operation, and I know about the coyote thing, for sure. I guess one of the things I haven't really been able to understand, and I think Mr. Gaudet was kind of heading in this direction, is why the numbers are the way they are. When Mr. Theriault talked about when he was a youngster, taking bread down to feed the seals, my impression is the seal numbers hadn't really changed for years and years and years and years. It seems odd, in any predator-prey relationship, and the big one is the lynx and the hare, if hare numbers go up, lynx numbers go up, and then because lynx numbers go up, hare numbers go down and then lynx numbers go down, and on it goes. It seems like fish numbers

are going down and seal numbers are going up. So it's not clear to me why there was this bloom in grey seal population. So can you explain?

[2:45 p.m.]

MR. LEVY: Well, back in the 1960s - and these are DFO's records, not mine - there was an estimate at that time of 10,000 grey seals. From 1976 to 1983, there was actually a bounty on seals, where there were x number of seals taken every year for the bounty. From 1967 to 1983 they had a cull. Actually Fisheries would take fishermen and themselves out to these islands and actually do a cull. So starting in 1967, where there were only, in the early 1960s, 10,000 animals, the Department of Fisheries thought in 1967 that these animals were detrimental to the fishery and they started a cull system. What do they think is going on now? Unfortunately, everything was stopped in 1983 because of, as you can imagine (Interruption) Well, yes, these animal rights groups and a political nightmare, but that's why the numbers were kept down at that time because, like I said, there was a bounty and a cull at that time. So that helped keep the numbers down.

MR. COURTNEY: There is another reason we see, as fishermen, for that to happen - one of the predators of the grey seals was the sharks, and the sharks have been devastated by the longline swordfish fleet. With all the other stuff that John and them have taken out of the formula, that has helped with their increase.

MR. CHAIRMAN: I'm curious about how seals are manufactured when you get them on the boat. Well, I'm not sure if CFIA would regard seals as fish, but a marine product, I'm just curious, anything else that's done - I mean, we can't kill a beef and send it to New Brunswick unless it's in a federally inspected facility. Do they set up any standard? You were saying you can't have sand, grass, whatever, on these carcasses, which would make some sense, so how do they line up, doing this on a boat - I suppose you can set a boat up as a provincially or federally inspected facility, but what kind of standard are you required to meet on that?

MR. MORROW: CFIA sees this as a fisheries product, so it's treated by the fish inspection side of their operation. What we have to do is work out a HACCP program, and I think you're aware of HACCP - Hazard Analysis of Critical Control Points - so product coming into a plant for processing can't be tainted, decomposed, or unwholesome. That's the standard, it has to be inspected coming in. So any plant that's going to process it is going to have a quality management program, a HACCP program with CFIA, and is going to have to work out a protocol with the harvesters as to how they handle that meat on board. We're talking about not contaminating it with things and also temperature control.

Yes, we are working on that. We do have co-operation from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, and of course our customers in Asia are very concerned about getting a quality product. They were very pleased with the samples we sent over.

It is a difficult thing to do, but it can be done. One of the problems in the Newfoundland and Labrador industry is this race for juveniles, to utilize the meat. The meat is not really taken care of, the harvesters in Newfoundland and Labrador, if they're getting $80 or $90 for a pelt, that's what they're interested in. The meat is something that if they can get anything for it - so they don't take a lot of care with it, I'm told.

There has been some experimentation with markets, and it's bad for us actually, what they've done. We want to divorce ourselves from the Newfoundland and Labrador industry, with regard to meat, and develop grey seal as a new product, as something completely different coming from Nova Scotia and handled in a HACCP-controlled environment.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Fage can probably correct me, but I think in Nova Scotia we're brucellosis-free in our cattle herd; there's some evidence of brucellosis in seals. How do you ensure the safety of the product if it turns out to be 3 or 4 per cent of . . .

MR. FAGE: It wouldn't be a concern, because brucellosis is a disease of animals, not humans. Nobody else has a seal population that would be tame or cultivated. I don't think they would look at it . . .

MR. CHAIRMAN: But you're not connecting it to human health?

MR. FAGE: No, brucellosis is a disease of animals, not humans. If they had TB it would be a different concern.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Okay. Well, that's the last of my questions. Mr. Sampson wanted to go a second round, but Mr. Langille I think wants to move a motion. So, Mr. Sampson, can you make this . . .

MR. GERALD SAMPSON: I'll try to be quick, yes. I had several other questions, but one thing I did say was I was impressed with the phone call I received. For the record, I want to make note of the fact of the Grey Seal Research and Development Society's training program to train new seal harvesters. I was very impressed with the fact that they actually came to Ingonish, and other places in the province, and put on a training program to teach people the proper methods on how to harvest the seals.

Does the government do a count of the seal population like they do with deer herds and moose? Do they fly over and give a basic estimate of how many there are?

MR. MORROW: Yes, there was $6 million set aside a couple of years ago for seal research, and part of that was population counting - I'm talking about DFO money. Actually, we applied or asked if we could get some of it for research and we were told no, it was all going to be internal with DFO scientists.

The number they're giving has flyover and visits to Sable Island built in. I guess what's not built into it is some of the new pupping areas that are being established, especially in western Nova Scotia. It's guesswork right now as to how many are there. The reporter from The ChronicleHerald, Ingrid Deon, her father, Ted Deon, is an avid birder and he goes out to some of the islands around Seal Island and so on, and he's telling me there are pupping colonies on some of these islands. It's just not recorded in the population count.

MR. GERALD SAMPSON: I don't want to cut you off, but in the essence of time . . .

MR. CLAUDE D'ENTREMONT: It would be an underestimate, if anything.

MR. GERALD SAMPSON: Okay. One of the fishermen I requested information from said they couldn't find any information of grey seals being in the southern part of Nova Scotia before 1940 and, since they're showing up there, that's why they're considering them an invasive species.

We're pointing at the grey seals for the loss of the cod stock. Are there any other factors that may be causing the depletion of the cod stocks, other than the grey seals?

MR. MORROW: Sure, there are other - and the scientists talk about those environmental factors. It seems a bit strange to me, we talk about depletion of the ocean and food supply and temperature and so on, when I was in Iceland, they've experienced some of the same things, and in Norway, but their cod stocks were down and they recovered, and ours didn't. So I'm looking for what's really different between us and them. One of the things that jumps out at me is this very intelligent - and when the chairman asked the question about how this large predator can really blossom, you think of the coyote, how this animal can adapt to what's there. Following lobster boats wasn't done in the past, but they're learning to do these things to get their food. They're very intelligent animals. They can get into a lobster trap.

MR. GERALD SAMPSON: Are there any other methods being used to control the grey seals other than a hunt or a cull or a harvest?

MR. MORROW: No.

MR. GERALD SAMPSON: They're free to roam. Okay, I'll cut it off there, Mr. Chairman, to save time. Thank you.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Langille.

MR. LANGILLE: Yes, thank you, Mr. Chairman. Before I go to a motion, I would like to state that we had two federal Ministers of Fisheries here in the last few years. I don't

know why this problem wouldn't have been addressed more so then, but, however, I urge you to lobby your MPs and the MLAs in your riding, all of you, on this problem.

Anyway, I'd like to make a motion, Mr. Chairman, that we extend an invitation to have the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and the provincial Department of Fisheries and Aquaculture attend our Resources Committee to ascertain their position on the grey seal population. I would request that be ASAP.

MR. CHAIRMAN: I'm not opposed to that. I would also like to invite the Grey Seal Conservation Society, as well. I don't see that as the same meeting. So if I can add to your motion and get them on the list as well, would that be fine with you?

MR. LANGILLE: Certainly. Also, extend an invitation for these people to sit in as observers.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Sure.

MR. GERALD SAMPSON: I'll second that motion, and on the question, is it possible that we could have the local Minister of Fisheries and Aquaculture or Deputy Minister of Fisheries and Aquaculture sit in at this meeting to hear first- hand. He would be the one responsible for the decision or whatnot. I'm just wondering if that would be possible, that we could have the minister or deputy minister hear it first-hand or attend the meeting. Is that out of order?

MR. CHAIRMAN: It's not out of order, but I think the request would . . .

MR. FAGE: They're already represented.

MR. CHAIRMAN: I recognize that, Mr. Fage, but we can ask the minister or deputy and see what kind of response we get.

MR. GERALD SAMPSON: Through you . . .

MR. CHAIRMAN: I think that should come through us, Mr. Sampson, I don't think we can ask the bureaucrats to ask the minister. So is that fine with the committee, that we can request the minister or deputy?

Would all those in favour of the motion please say Aye. Contrary minded, Nay.

MR. LANGILLE: Could you run that question by me again - ask who?

MR. CHAIRMAN: First of all, for representations to come before this committee, DFO and Fisheries, I think was your request, along with the Grey Seal Conservation Society and also for the minister or deputy to come before the committee.

Gentlemen, I don't know if you have any words, anything you want to use to sum up for the committee, but I want to say thanks very much, we really appreciate your input here today. You kind of gave some of us, who are more inland, a look at a problem that we hear a lot of information on - and some of it contradictory - and some of us will still look for further information as well.

Mr. Levy, were you going to say something?

MR. LEVY: Yes, I do wish to say something actually - that you guys can directly affect or start in motion - in other countries like Scotland, in these wilderness protected areas that they have, or sensitive areas where they are protecting that certain island, et cetera, for the flora and fauna, grey seals actually moved into those areas and upset the whole ecosystem. Actually the very flora and fauna that was being protected was being destroyed by the grey seals and they actually had to implement a cull. That's what they ended up doing, they chased the grey seals off those islands. Here we have wilderness protected areas and the grey seals again are moving into these areas and actually disrupting or chasing or killing off the flora and fauna in that area, and we need support from you guys to get access to these areas to actually protect the flora and fauna from the seals. And I don't mean go in as an army, whatever, but a very professional bunch of guys, a limited number of guys to go into areas to do a professional harvest of these animals, and we need support from you guys to get access to these areas.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. d'Entremont, were you going to say something? (Interruption) Sorry, Mr. Courtney.

MR. COURTNEY: Yes, as I stated earlier, I'm a harvester of the harps and I also harvest the grey seals, and I think that's something that we kind of - I don't say we totally missed it here today, but we kind of didn't go into that. Harvesting 100,000 grey seals, if it took place, the economics of that in our areas would be great, especially at a time when the fishery is in the state that it's in. I'm not saying we just go out and harvest them for the money, but as we're hearing here today, they're a problem and it is being looked at as one of the factors in our other fisheries that have been all going down. So if they're there, we should be allowed to harvest it the same as anybody else with any other product or any other resource that is in the area.

Just to go back to another little thing - the Newfoundland and Labrador harvest of the harps. We'll call it the Newfoundland and Labrador harvest because that's what it is. Because they just gave us a share for the three provinces, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and P.E.I., out of a 325,000 allocation, we got 1,800. So we don't have any of the harps to harvest. So the

greys are here and they're a problem, we should be given fair access and be allowed to do it from an economical point as well as from a point on the devastation to our stocks.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you.

[3:00 p.m.]

MR. MORROW: Mr. Chairman, I would like to especially thank Harold Theriault - the MLA for Digby-Annapolis and a long-time friend, a lobster fisherman from up that way whom I've had the pleasure of knowing for many years - for working to get us here today and for the strong advocacy work that he's doing for our industry, and also it's a pleasure again to see an ex-minister, Minister Fage, who I worked with for many years when he was Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries. So I would like to really thank the committee for the invitation and the opportunity today.

MR. CHAIRMAN: You're more than welcome. Thanks for coming.

The meeting is adjourned.

[The committee adjourned at 3:02 p.m.]