HANSARD

Printed and Published by Nova Scotia Hansard Reporting Services

Mr. John MacDonell (Chairman)

Hon. Ernest Fage

Hon. Barry Barnet

Mr. Patrick Dunn

Mr. Sterling Belliveau

Mr. Clarrie MacKinnon

Mr. Wayne Gaudet

Mr. Leo Glavine

Mr. Harold Theriault

[Hon. Barry Barnet was replaced by Hon. James Muir.]

[Hon. Ernest Fage was replaced by Mr. Chuck Porter.]

[Mr. Wayne Gaudet was replaced by Mr. Keith Colwell.]

In Attendance:

Ms. Mora Stevens

Legislative Committee Clerk

Mr. Boris Worm

Assistant Professor, Marine Conservation

Dalhousie University

HALIFAX, TUESDAY, JANUARY 23, 2007

STANDING COMMITTEE ON RESOURCES

1:00 P.M.

CHAIRMAN

Mr. John MacDonell

MR. CHAIRMAN: Members, I'd like to call the Resources Committee to order. I'd like to welcome Dr. Boris Worm to the committee today. Dr. Worm, the usual procedure here is I'll ask the members to introduce themselves, and then we'll ask you to introduce yourself for the record, and then you have whatever time you think you need to make your presentation, and then members will have the remaining time to ask you questions.

[The committee members introduced themselves.]

MR. BORIS WORM: My name is Boris Worm, and I'm a professor at Dalhousie University. Should I just begin with my presentation?

MR. CHAIRMAN: Sure.

MR. WORM: First, I would like to thank you for the invitation, which came as quite a surprise. I'm really happy, very much honoured to be able to talk to you today about the state of marine resources and their supporting ocean ecosystems. The subtitle of this talk is Nova Scotia and the world, because a lot of the information I will present is global in scope, as are the problems I will be talking about. I want to bring it back to Nova Scotia, because that's where I live, that's where you live, and that's where I chose to move, from Germany.

I wanted to introduce myself a little bit, so you know about my background. I'm a German national, I was born in Germany. I always had a love for northern countries. I've travelled a lot in Scandinavia. When I had enough money, I came over in 1990 to Canada to travel. I moved here in 1995 to work with Professor Anthony Chapman, then at Dalhousie University. I stayed about three weeks in Halifax, until I moved out to a small fishing community in Lower Prospect. That's where I lived for the following years, and then I moved to a different small community, Duncans Cove. I have to say it was pretty much love at first sight. I was very much impressed by the natural beauty of the province and the kindness of the people, and the richness of the maritime and fishing heritage which I lived in every day as I was living in Lower Prospect.

I think through that I became very much aware of the changes that were ongoing in the oceans. I was working, then, very much on more theoretical interactions between species on rocky shores, and I more and more became concerned with the fate of the communities that were living on the shore and the income they were making from fishing and other marine uses, and how these were changing, just over the brief time I was living here.

Again, I will talk mostly about global things, but I'll try to bring it down to Nova Scotia and explain what it means for Nova Scotia. I will talk a lot about this paper which came out a few months ago in Science, which is, I guess, why I was invited here, which had global news coverage, hundreds of articles such as this one in Time Magazine, it was on the front page of The Globe and Mail, and there was a lot of discussion raised by this paper, more than anything. It's still ongoing actually, I still get media requests. There's still a very active scientific discourse going on about this paper and the conclusions we were reaching.

It also permeated beyond the headlines into the consciousness of people. This is something I learned for the first time, how much a story like this can affect people. I got hundreds, literally hundreds of e-mails, letters, phone calls, even at my home, from retired fishermen, from people who had any interest in the ocean, from schoolchildren, from poets, from people in prison, all walks of life. People came and offered their opinion on this. I felt it was something that, very deeply, was affecting people, and in their consciousness, as shown, also, by these cartoons. This is my favorite, a fish on a psychiatrist's couch, and he says, it's not your imagination, the whole world is out to get you.

My talk is structured into three chapters. First, what has happened, what are the changes that we have been observing, globally, in the oceans, what does this mean, what are the effects of this on us and on ecosystems, and what can we do about it, what are our options for reversing trends that we don't like?

Question 1, what has happened? This picture shows several happy fishermen in the 1940s. This is in Nova Scotia. According to the legend of this photo, which I got from an antique fishing reel Web site, this was a weekend's catch of these four fishermen in the 1940s. These are prized giant bluefin tuna, which come here in the summer to feed, and which can be worth up to $100,000 each in today's fish market.

In 2003, Ransom Myers, who is also at Dalhousie, and myself published a paper that also made headlines by demonstrating that these very large fish, large tunas, marlins, swordfish, and other large predatory fish had declined by 90 per cent in the last 50 years alone. How we tackled this problem is that we mapped, on a global scale, the catch rates of long-line vessels that were pursuing these large fish. This is the fishery that has been operating relatively constantly for the last 50 years. It's mostly run by Japanese vessels. Later on there were Korean, Taiwanese, U.S./American vessels also entering, but initially it was only the Japanese fleet, and still to this day the Japanese long-line fleet is the largest on the planet.

This fleet, after World War II, wasn't allowed to go out for a few years, and then in 1952 it started to go out again. The Americans forced the Japanese to record accurately where every vessel went, how much they caught, and how much effort they spent in catching things, and recorded to species. So we have this unique record of a fleet exploring an open ocean that hadn't been developed or exploited before reaching, very quickly, global coverage and then showing the effects of that globalized fishing effort.

The colour codes here are numbers of fish caught on a long-line of 100 hooks. This is a standardized catch rate. You put out 100 hooks, and this shows you how many fish were dangling off those hooks. This would be a high catch rate of 10 or higher for 100 hooks, this would be a low catch rate of one or less than one. Warm colours mean lots of fish, blue colours mean few fish.

When we go along year by year here, we see how the effort quickly spread across the Pacific and Indian Oceans. In the late 1950s, they entered the Atlantic - look at the very high catch rates they found in the tropic of Atlantic at this time, exceptional. What we also see are areas that have been fished for a few years turn their colour, and there's a rapid depletion, and the fishing effort moves out to the fringes, into new areas, like the southern Atlantic here, that hadn't been fished before.

[1:15 p.m.]

This is the year I was born. I was unaware, obviously, I think everybody was unaware, that at this point we already had a fairly drastic effect of fishing on the global ocean, everywhere these large predators were ranging. The Antarctic and Arctic and Subarctic waters are mostly too cold for tuna and billfish. Bluefin tuna go up to Iceland, and there was actually a fishery around Iceland. There was an historic fishery also in the

Baltic Sea and the North Sea, where a very large subpopulation of bluefin tuna was going in the summer to feed. That subpopulation today is completely extinct.

They were probably breeding around here, feeding in the summer here, breeding here, just as the Nova Scotia bluefin tuna are breeding either in the Gulf of Mexico or in the Mediterranean, and then doing these amazing cross-Atlantic voyages. There was a population that was doing this. There was a rich fishery for it. In Hamburg, where I grew up, there are traditional recipes for bluefin tuna steak and soup, which is never found there since about the 1950s. So that was depleted very early.

Again, we continue for a few more years, and we see the whole ocean turning a uniform blue. The series ends in 1980. Since 1980, there hasn't been much change in this. Overall we see these very low catch rates of about five to 10 times lower than at the beginning of fishing. This is the same data plotted in a different way, we just see the depletion over time. This is the Atlantic Ocean here, this is the Indian Ocean, the Pacific. These are some areas closer to shore, some Continental Shelf areas that also had records going back to the beginning of industrialized fishing, the Gulf of Thailand, South Georgia, which is a subantarctic island, the southern Grand Banks and St. Pierre Bank in Canada.

Again, what strikes us here is a very consistent picture. The idea is that we see the same process ongoing everywhere that we have sufficient data to go back to the beginning of the industrialized fishery, a rapid decline and then a stabilization at low levels for these large, predatory fishes. Again, these data are dealing with tuna and billfish, these data are dealing with all sorts of species including cod, haddock, flounder, halibut and other groundfishes, such as Antarctic ice fishes, the marbled rock cod in Antarctica or some of the more tropical species in the Gulf of Thailand. It doesn't matter what the species, it doesn't matter what the ecosystem, it doesn't matter in which climate it is, we always see this overwhelming decrease in catch rates over time.

Now those data have been criticized by fishery scientists for relying too much on commercial catch rate data. You all know that fisheries commonly are assessed by research surveys and then catch rate data and industrialized data from the fishery itself, fishery-dependent data, are used in addition to that, to inform the trend that the survey is showing. So these are the original estimates we provided for large groundfish and for tuna and billfish, indicating a 90 per cent depletion, about 10 per cent of the biomass left globally.

We compared these with estimates that others have been deriving using completely different data. None of these used commercial catch rates, they used research surveys, historical data, ecosystem modelling, a whole range of tools to come up with estimates of how much of the large predatory fishes are left relative to what was once there. We see that the estimates range between about 30 per cent left to about maybe 0.5

per cent left, and that most of the data fall at or below the 90 per cent depletion or 10 per cent left level that we hypothesized in our initial paper.

One interesting thing you see here is that, for example, for sharks we have three very different estimates. Why is that? Well, the reason for that probably is that they look over a very different time horizon. If we only look at the last 15 years - and this is for the northwest Atlantic, including the area off Nova Scotia - we find that about 30 per cent - and this is on a logarithmic scale - of what was once there is still there. Over the last 15 years, a 70 per cent decline.

If you look over the last 25 years, the data that come from the Mediterranean Sea, you get a more drastic picture. You would find a more than 90 per cent, up to a 95 per cent depletion of sharks. If you look in the Gulf of Mexico over the last 45 years, you find a more than 99 per cent depletion of sharks in the Gulf of Mexico. This is called the shifting baseline syndrome; the further you go back, the more of a decline you find. If you go back with cod on the Scotian Shelf for 20 years, we see a very different picture if we take 200 years as a baseline, and I'm going to show that to you in a second.

The data I'm showing from the Scotian Shelf is not data that I have collected, but a very well-known colleague of mine at the University of New Hampshire whose name is Andy Rosenberg, he once was deputy leader of the National Marine Fisheries Service. He was the top manager for the Eastern Seaboard in the United States. He did an historical analysis of the fleet of fishing vessels that went off Gloucester and other places in Massachusetts, and other places in New England, that went out in the 19^th Century, about 150 years ago, and fished off the Scotian Shelf. At that time there hadn't been much fishing out on the banks, most of the fishing in Nova Scotia had been close to shore. From their catch records, he calculates what the total biomass of cod must have been at that time. This is what he comes up with, about 1.2 million tons - and this is in thousands here - must have been the biomass of cod at that time, about 200 years ago, not even 200 years ago.

Now you could say that sounds like a bit too much, given that the biomass today is about 50,000 tons, or about 5 per cent of that, and that everything we have ever been assessing using modern fisheries assessment technology since about 1970, was at a much lower level. So have we been missing a lot of the picture? The answer probably is yes, because this was not the only estimate that was done.

There was another estimate done by Brian MacKenzie, who is with ICES in Denmark, and Ransom Myers here at Dalhousie. They used very different data, they used spawner-recruit data, which was assessed by fisheries surveys for cod on the Scotian Shelf to come up with the potential biomass that cod could get on the Scotian Shelf if it was left completely alone, if all the recruits would grow up to adult individuals. They came up with this estimate, which was very close to 1.2 million tons, as well. More

recently, Bob Mohn of DFO, at the Bedford Institute of Oceanography, has done a similar calculation, again using different data, and came up with an estimate that's also precisely in this range.

So three independent estimates, using different data, are coming up with the same conclusion, that the biomass of cod on the Scotian Shelf today is about 5 per cent of what it once was, and that we've been missing much of that decline because we simply haven't been analyzing data that went back to the beginning of the fishery. Again, this is called the shifting baseline syndrome.

If we compare cod on the Scotian Shelf with other regions, this is basically all the Atlantic cod stocks that have been assessed by fisheries scientists in the Atlantic, going from Labrador to other regions in Canada, the Gulf of Maine, Georges Bank, the U.S., the Baltic Sea, various areas in the North Sea and around the North Sea, Iceland is here, a lot of areas, different areas in Europe. This is the Scotian Shelf here, the Eastern Scotian Shelf is right here, again about a 95 per cent depletion, and the Western Scotian, Southwestern Scotian Shelf is a little better, about a 90 per cent depletion.

The grey bar here marks the level of biomass that fisheries scientists think needs to be maintained to give optimum maximum sustainability yield, about 30 per cent to 50 per cent of the virgin biomass needs to be there in order to give you the best economic benefit every year. We see that every single one of these stocks is below that, often by several orders of magnitude. The worst is the area of Labrador, northeast Newfoundland, the 2J stock of Labrador, which is probably at 0.1 per cent of its former biomass.

HON. JAMES MUIR: Could you just clarify that for me, please? Did you just say that 30 per cent was needed to sustain the population?

MR. WORM: Not to sustain the population, but to generate the maximum catches that you could get out of that population every year. So if you deplete the biomass lower than 30 per cent, it means that it doesn't reproduce fast enough to give maximum catches. The idea is that you can take off - it's like interest in your bank account, you can take off a certain interest every year and spend it, and not deplete the capital. The same idea here, if you start to deplete the capital, you will gain less and less interest every year.

MR. MUIR: I understand that, but what's your baseline for that? I'm missing that figure.

MR. WORM: That's what general fisheries scientists who have been assessing cod stocks . . .

MR. MUIR: But 30 per cent of what?

MR. WORM: It's 30 per cent of what was once there, of the virgin biomass.

MR. MUIR: Of the 1,200 . . .

MR. WORM: Of the 1,200. So for Nova Scotia, it would be several hundred thousand tons that are needed.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Or 1.2 million.

MR. WORM: Yes, 1.2 million. Recent data has shown that the experiences we've been making on coastal ecosystems, on the continental shelves, our main fishing grounds, and in the open oceans have not really informed changes in management, because when we look in the deep sea, which is the frontier of much fishing in Canada and elsewhere in the world now, we see that a lot of the species, like the round nose grenadier here and other deep-sea fishes, have been declining the same way fishes on the continental shelf and the open ocean and coastal areas have, just quicker because, well, the fishing technology is more advanced and these fishes tend to aggregate even stronger, reproduce slower, grow slower than their counterparts in shallower waters, hence they are more vulnerable to fishing. This is a study out of Memorial University in Newfoundland and Labrador.

So what are the causes of these patterns? I think there is no doubt with anyone studying these processes that industrialized fishing is the driving force of the decline in populations of fish, particularly large fish in the ocean. Also, everybody I know agrees that these changes are exacerbated by other processes such as the destruction of habitats, pollution, and increasingly by climate change.

For example, in the North Sea it has been shown that the plankton ecosystem has been shifting northwards over the last 30 years or so, particularly since 1980, which coincides with the general warming trend in the North Sea. So the plankton that's there today, particularly the zooplankton which feeds cod larvae, is a very different plankton than what was there 30 or 50 years ago. You can show that the survival of cod larvae decreases in proportion to those changes. So when there was still a population of large copepods mostly, the cod larvae were doing really well; when those shifted north, out of the range of cod, the cod larvae had very poor survival. So climate change can affect these processes.

The trick is that an ecosystem that is overfished or a population that is very much overfished feels much stronger the effects of climate change or pollution or habitat destruction than a healthy population. It has much less buffer capacity because it generates so little reproductive output that any change in survival of those larvae and young fish really matters. It doesn't so much matter for a population of 1 or 1.2 million tons. So these things are linked in some way that they enhance each other's effects.

So what does this all mean? This is a graph from Daniel Pauly at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. I'm really sorry that this is cut off. This shows large sharks and large fishes here and as overfishing is increasing, it's driving the ecosystem away from large predators down to small fishes and invertebrates, which is precisely what we see off Nova Scotia and other regions in eastern Canada. We see increased plankton blooms, we see a disappearance of benthic habitats, mostly due to the effects of bottom trawling, and we're left with a much simplified ecosystem that has lost its large predators, consists mostly of smaller fish and invertebrates, some of which may be doing really well, like the shrimp off Nova Scotia. As a result, the fishery shifts to lower and lower levels.

[1:30 p.m.]

This is what we see again in Nova Scotia, shifting from tuna and cod down to shrimp and crabs and even sea cucumbers. We also see a loss of biodiversity, a loss of some of the species that are making up the ecosystem and, as a result of this, the ecosystem becomes less stable, also less predictable and less productive, meaning there are more fluctuations. Climate effects are much more strongly felt. There are more irregularities, more surprises, more sudden collapses of stocks, at least that's what we're observing empirically in different areas in the world's oceans.

Now, I came to give you a brief overview of the study we've been doing in science. How am I doing for time? Maybe another 10 minutes or so?

MR. CHAIRMAN: You're doing fine.

MR. WORM: So what we did here, and this was quite an amazing undertaking, is to plot the history of 12 coastal ecosystems, among them the Gulf of St. Lawrence and the outer Bay of Fundy in Canada, but also many estuaries and coastal ecosystems in the U.S., in Europe and in Australia over the last 1,000 years. This is using historical records, sediment cores, archeological findings, reports from medieval fish markets, a large number of sources. About 800 distinct sources went into this analysis to track the collapse and the extinction of not just of fish but of species in general in marine ecosystems. This goes all the way from algae and plankton to whales, seals and large fish.

What we see is that there was a rapid acceleration of species depletion since about 1800, and, today, about 40 per cent of species are considered collapsed, meaning that the biomass has decreased by 90 per cent or more. A lot of them are not commercially viable anymore, and a lot of them also cannot fulfill their ecological function anymore, and about 7 per cent are extinct. In the Gulf of St. Lawrence or the Bay of Fundy, the extinct species would includes species like the Atlantic walrus, in that area, the Atlantic grey

whale, the sea mink, the Labrador duck - various species that have disappeared from these areas.

One striking thing that we see is that the collapses and the extinctions are negatively related to the species richness of the community. In other words, if there are a lot of species to start with, the process of depletion is slower, and there may not even be any extinctions in areas where there is a lot of species as compared to areas where there is few species. This means that species-poor areas like ours - which is naturally the species poor ecosystems compared to other marine ecosystems - are more vulnerable to these processes than species-rich ecosystems.

Together with the depletion of biodiversity, this shows the changing by diversity, below the line is a decrease, above the line is an increase. You'll see that about 90 per cent of species have declined 50 per cent or more; about 40 per cent have declined 90 per cent or more; about 7 per cent, 1 in 15, is extinct today; and about 14 per cent have recovered, mostly marine mammals and birds due to targeted protection measures.

Theory says that an ecosystem that has lost some of its species should be functioning less well, and it should be less able to provide what we call ecosystem services. This is exactly what we see in this record - the number of viable fisheries has declined by about one-third, about 34 per cent. The amount of nursery habitats - these are habitat features like reefs or algae forests or sea grass meadows that can provide juvenile habitat for fish - has declined by almost two-thirds. Also, the filter and detoxification services provided by these habitats, such as oyster reefs that filter the water or wetlands, has declined by two-thirds.

This is particularly concerning because these so-called filter functions and detoxification services are what keeps the water quality up. If those break down, we see rapid deterioration of water quality, increase in harmful algae blooms, fish kills, shellfish closures, oxygen depletion, coastal flooding, and species invasion - all things we've been seeing along the North American East Coast over the last 100 years. All increased by more than 100 per cent, in some cases up to 800 per cent increases over the last few hundred years. This, again, means that with the depletion of biodiversity, we are observing a depletion of essential services that are used by humankind and an increase in risks to coastal inhabitants.

This is the semi-famous graph that made so many headlines. This is the FAO Global fisheries data, this is all the species were eating, from clams all the way up to tuna - about 8,000 distinct stocks. The data was binned into 64 distinct marine ecosystems, called large marine ecosystems; that's not our own work. That's other people who have been doing that, describing these ecosystems, such as the Scotian Shelf or the Northeast Shelf or Antarctica, the Caribbean, the North Sea and so on. On average, we see here the

depletion of viable fisheries - these are fisheries where the catches that were generated have declined 90 per cent or more over the last 50 years alone.

What we see is this very predictable trend. The mean trend is the black dots. Today, about 29 per cent loss of fisheries that generate viable catches. So, 29 per cent of fisheries now have dropped in their catch levels 90 per cent or more. What we did was we said, this trend is so strong, what if - where does this trend lead us? What if this trend would continue the very same way as it did for the last 50 years, over the next 50 years? The answer was, if this was to continue over the next 50 years, we would predict, or this trend would project the collapse of all seafood species by the year 2050, that was the headline.

By the way, this is the proportion of species that have ever collapsed, meaning they ever went below 90 per cent in their catch level, but then some of them recovered. So this is where we are currently but this is the number that has ever shown this decrease. Some of this can happen naturally but a directed trend like that is very unlikely a random trend. There is a directed change in the number of fisheries that we can pursue and the FAO's own data shows the same thing but I would be happy to discuss that with you later.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Dr. Worm, could you indicate what FAO means?

MR. WORM: Oh, FAO is the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. This is where all your catch data and everybody else's catch data go - just to get the global oversight agency to monitor the state or marine resources, really.

Just one more point on some of the ecosystem changes we've been observing, particularly in the Scotian Shelf. The science in Canada is far ahead of other places in the world in describing what the consequences of some of these changes are. We used to have an ecosystem that is dominated by big fish, particularly large cod. The average size of a cod for the last 5,000 years was about one metre, according to archeological records. So these were very large animals and they were preying very heavily on pelagic fish, such as herring or sand lance or capelin and also on benthic invertebrates, such as shrimp, crab and lobster. What this did was they were increasing the survival of their own young because the pelagic fish are known to be very efficient predators on the larvae and eggs of cod and other large groundfish.

What we see today is an ecosystem where the dominance has shifted from big fish to these small pelagic fish and also to shellfish; first, because they were released from predation. Because of the release from that predation pressure, the number of pelagic fish has increased up to 10-fold up along the North American seaboard. Also, the number of shrimp, crab and potentially lobster has increased - in some cases, several fold - due to the release from predation from large fish.

The trick of this, though, is that now we have a reverse predation going on from the small pelagic fish onto the eggs and larvae of cod, so the non-recovery of cod could partly be explained by an ecosystem that has shifted in a way that inhibits the recruitment and recovery of cod. It is called the cultivation-depensation hypothesis. It has been absolutely shown in the Baltic Sea that there is no doubt this is going on, there is data from the Gulf of St. Lawrence published by Swain and Sinclair of DFO that shows the same thing and we're working on a global analysis of this problem right now.

One of the changes - there could be more to this, more ecosystem changes. One has been documented by Ken Frank in a paper in Science magazine in 2005. He is at DFO and he showed that the release of small pelagic fish has led to more predation on zooplankton, which predate on phytoplankton, which has led to a bloom of phytoplankton on the Scotian Shelf that wasn't there before. So basically, a domino effect across the ecosystem from the collapse of cod. Also we see an increase in the benthic invertebrates that are fished very heavily today - snow crab and shrimp - and there is evidence from Newfoundland that they cause a depletion of benthic invertebrates, such as tube worms.

What we are also seeing is a surge in population of seals and some seabirds that depend very heavily on the supply of pelagic prey fish. These are very oily fishes and they are very good to build up an insulating blubber for seals and also for seabirds in this cold climate. So we find that wherever we have data that these species select these fatty fish and disregard some of the more lean fish, like groundfish. So a groundfish regime is not as good for seals and seabirds as a pelagic fish regime because these are better food for these creatures.

If this was true - and in my opinion, there is a lot of data supporting this hypothesis - it would mean that seals today are actually not hindering the recovery of cod but actually are good for the recovery of cod because they are the only left predators on the larval predators of cod, i.e. the small pelagic fish. Again, we can discuss this later on.

So I would like to finish my talk with a more optimistic outline - maybe a vision of how we can restore some of the maritime and fishing heritage of this province, because I think that is ultimately where we want to go. I think the big asset of this province, along with this natural beauty and friendliness, is the maritime and fishing heritage. This is what is attracting tourists here, this is what is employing people in coastal communities, this is what this region is known for in the world. So how can we get that back?

The success story comes from Georges Bank just south of the border, part of Georges Bank actually fished by Canadian fleets. This is the U.S. part and here we see an example of strong governance that really made a difference. Here you see the catch records of Georges Bank haddock, and cod would look very much the same, and here you

see the biomass of Georges Bank haddock showing a very similar trend as the catch. If there was lots there, they caught lots; if there was little there, they caught little.

Georges Bank had a collapse twice; once in the 1970s due to foreign over-fishing. This was changed by the 200-mile limit which kicked out foreign fishing, just as it did in Nova Scotia. We see a rapid recovery of haddock, cod and other species - the same in Nova Scotia, the same in Newfoundland, after the 200-mile limit. Then, a buildup of a domestic fleet, which also happened in Canada, which then collapsed the stock again.

At this point fishery managers, including Andy Rosenberg who I just talked about, saw the collapses coming down the Canadian side. They saw the Newfoundland stock collapse, the Gulf of St. Lawrence, the Scotian Shelf. Next would be New England, so they imposed an emergency closure of about half of Georges Bank in 1994, just two years after the cod moratorium in Newfoundland. What this shows is that this very strong measure, which was unprecedented and has since not been repeated at this scale, showed a very rapid recovery of haddock but also scallops, which increased about 14-fold in five years. More recently, there are indications that cod is also increasing - all the flounders are increasing. The whole ecosystem is rebounding in a way that even surprises the most optimistic observers. So two measures here, strong governance and strong regulation of fishing effort have made a real difference in this ecosystem and people are still making money. The scallop fishery is now the most lucrative offshore fishery in the United States, at least on the Eastern Seaboard, and the haddock fishery is better now than it has been in many decades.

[1:45 p.m.]

This is again from our Science paper, this was the optimistic part of it that didn't get reported so much. What we found was that wherever people did something like that in Georges Bank, closing a large area to fishing in order to protect fishing from going extinct, they found that not only biodiversity was increasing, the species richness and the richness of fish tax that was going up. Also the productivity was going up a four-fold increase and catch per unit effort around the reserve. The stability of the system was improving, more resistance, more recovery, less variability over time and also tourism was increasing for some of the tropic areas. So this showed that the Georges Bank experience is not an isolated experience. Wherever people have been making these bold measures in order to reverse a trend they have actually been successful, on average - not in every single case but on average.

What we found generally for all the fishing data in the world was that by diversity, the number of species was strongly linked to the sustainability of fisheries. That's why I called my talk State of Marine Ecosystems and Marine Resources, because they are two sides of the same coin; you can't divorce one from the other. You can't have

resource management without managing the ecosystem, without being aware of trends in the ecosystem - most importantly, the trend of biodiversity.

So we found that in areas that have more species, we saw fewer collapses over time, higher productivity of the fisheries, faster recovery after a collapse. We saw that areas that had lots of species, had lots of species that could be fished, they showed fewer variations and higher productivity overall, so meaning that areas that have the full range of species present have a lot of benefits that make fishing more predictable, more lucrative, more productive and more stable over time.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Is that what you call the portfolio effect?

MR. WORM: That's right, it's the same as in the stock portfolio; if you have lots of stocks in your retirement fund it is going to be more stable and, in the long term, more productive than if you are just betting on one or two companies. That's also why we think that the reduction of fishing to one or two target species, like shrimp and lobster, is a dangerous thing because we are relying on too few stocks, literally, as if you were fishing a very broad spectrum of species.

So the conclusion from this talk is that there is now no doubt that there is an acceleration depletion of marine ecosystems on a global scale in Nova Scotia as elsewhere. This province is not different from the rest of the world - that the loss of marine species has already impaired ecosystem productivity and stability - but that it is not too late to turn this trend around. However, with every single population, every species that is lost - and this is the most important take-home message - that opportunity for recovery diminishes. So there's a window that is slowly closing for getting these things to recover, restoring our maritime heritage. For that I think the restoration of marine biodiversity of the full number of species that are present and that can generate benefits to humanity should be the prime, if not the sole, focus of management. Thanks for your attention.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Well thank you, Dr. Worm. We really appreciate your presentation and I didn't say at the outset how much I appreciated your ability and flexibility around coming to this committee, with not really short notice but relatively for the way we try to operate so we really appreciate it.

I see some hands, Sterling MacKinnon - Clarrie MacKinnon - I am going to combine members here and get two to speak at once, and Jamie Muir.

MR. WORM: Can I just also say, thank you for inviting me - the short notice didn't matter. I think we really need to work together among the policy sector and science and management and resource users. I think that often enough, we are not talking to each other but we are picking up things - I pick up things that you said in the media,

you pick up things that I said in the media. It may not be entirely what we really said, we certainly don't get to know each other so I really value the opportunity to bridge that gap.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you very much. Okay, I guess I'll combine the right parts of the name here. Sterling Belliveau - I guess you made it to the top of the list.

MR. STERLING BELLIVEAU: I have about four or five questions and I know, just looking at the clock I am not going to have an opportunity but I have been waiting a long while for this presentation and I appreciate your being here today. If you want to go back to that one slide, I think the title of it was "In a Nutshell". I was intrigued by that because I have three or four questions but it taps into the first question I am going to ask. If my memory serves me correct - in 1975, there was a task force on lobsters that actually warned the fishermen of the day that they were at the state that 1 per cent to 2 per cent of our biomass of berried females was left to reproduce.

MR. WORM: I remember, I read that report.

MR. BELLIVEAU: I have it here, and they basically warned that there was going to be a collapse in the lobster fishery at the time, in 1975. You had a graph there showing that the emphasis at the time, there was a lot of interest in promoting the ground fisheries, the fin fisheries in the 1970s and actually it was the reverse. It was promoting the ground fisheries and predicting that the lobster fishery was going to collapse.

MR. WORM: And the reverse happened.

MR. BELLIVEAU: And the reverse happened, right. Can you explain that?

MR. WORM: Well, I think it shows a fundamental thing which I haven't emphasized, but which should be emphasized. It shows how little we understand. This was 30 years ago and I think we understand quite a bit more today. We are really only beginning to unravel how marine ecosystems are functioning and how our industries and the way we use them are impacting on them. There is a whole new range of uncertainties associated with climate change. We don't know whether any of the predictions we make for the future will hold because 20 years from now, the ocean will be a very different ocean. It will be more acidic, it will be warmer, it probably will be more variable.

Also in the 1970s, I think, people weren't foreseeing the effects that the 200-mile limit had. They weren't foreseeing the effects that the large buildup of a domestic fleet would have on cod. Even 10 years later, in the late 1980s, people had, on average, not a concept that the cod fishery would end within the next two years or so, it came as a total surprise. One of the messages we're trying to send here is that a system that has a lot of the species depleted would be more prone to these surprises. I have to say it's really - the story you just told is reason to be humble because a lot of what we know is based

on hypotheses and generalizations and a very scant understanding of how marine ecosystems are working.

Now some people would turn this around and say, we don't know anything so let's just go ahead. I would say we know little, so let's make use of the little bit we know and be very, very careful about every new step. That's where I see us failing a little bit because every new step is not done more carefully than the step before. In some cases it is, but for a lot of what we call emerging fisheries we know less about them, if anything, than about cod and haddock - and we didn't get cod and haddock right. So how are we going to get shrimp and snow crab and, more recently, hagfish and sea cucumber and whelks right, when the basic knowledge that we have on these species is very limited, if existent at all? Still, we go ahead and fish these at a fairly high rate. So that's what I see as a fundamental problem.

MR. BELLIVEAU: I'll ask my second point and I'll wait my turn. The majority of fishermen, particularly the lobster fisheries around Nova Scotia and southwest Nova Scotia employs thousands and is a major industry in Nova Scotia. In Nova Scotia in the last 10 years, we've seen traditional fisheries which usually are near shore, in the last 20 years has moved from the traditional fishing grounds and that biomass, in my personal observation, is moving offshore to more deeper water; probably 20 or 30 miles or 30 fathoms.

MR. WORM: Probably more, yes.

MR. BELLIVEAU: That industry has been relatively successful and that was what I pointed out earlier. We also see a trend that on our Eastern Shore in Nova Scotia, they probably had one of the best years ever in the lobster fishery.

MR. WORM: This year?

MR. BELLIVEAU: Yes. To me, there are some pattern changes of where this biomass is located and is shifting. Could you explain it?

MR. WORM: So part of this slide and part of the argument I was making was that changes in the ecosystem that we are observing are bad for some species and they can be beneficial to other species. If you go to, say, a coral reef - I was on a very remote atoll in October that has never been fished. It is full of sharks, full of large snappers, large fish. It looks like the Grand Banks 500 years ago, everything you see is large fish. You don't see any invertebrates, you don't see any crabs, you don't see any spiny lobsters - even sea cucumbers or sea stars are relatively rare because the predation pressure on these species is so high. When you remove these you get reefs that are completely dominated by invertebrates; you see a ton of lobster - we have the same here. Invertebrates are lower on the food chain and they are also not as advanced as their predators and they get

depleted by them. If we deplete the predators, we have an increase in these species, so that is consistent with what I just said about how marine ecosystems work.

Also, the climate has been really favourable to lobsters. There is an increase in the North Atlantic oscillation, which brings onshore winds onto Nova Scotia and the Gulf of Maine, keeping a lot of the larvae trapped in the coastal currents, so they are not evicted offshore and lost. So you see time periods where the North Atlantic oscillation wasn't as strong, had a higher loss of larvae, and less supply of lobsters to the industry. So there are maybe two processes here that caused the historic high.

I think it is also important to say the lobster fishery just has been relatively well managed, as compared to some other fisheries. It has very sensible gear that doesn't destroy the habitat the lobsters depend on, it has very limited by-catch, and undersized individuals are released and survive, and the big spawners that create the reproduction don't get into the traps, so they also survive. It's what we call a slot fishery of medium-sized individuals, and for many fisheries that would be an incredibly wise thing to do. It's just harder to do with trawls.

MR. BELLIVEAU: I'll wait for the second round. I appreciate it.

MR. CLARRIE MACKINNON: Mr. Chairman, I would like to commend Dr. Worm for an excellent presentation, I really appreciate it. I want to zero in, for a moment, in relationship to seals. I think everyone realizes that humankind is responsible for the demise of many species, including cod, but environmental factors and seals certainly are involved - and the seals in retarding the recovery of cod. There used to be a bounty on grey seals, and there was something in the order of 30,000 in the 1970s in the Sable Island colony, and today we're looking at something in the order of 400,000 animals.

You talked about the seals preferring pelagics, but from stomach content analysis, we're looking at sort of 4 per cent to 8 per cent of cod being consumed by seals. They're opportunistic feeders, so they're eating whatever is there. I'm just wondering how much attention has been paid on the Eastern Scotian Shelf, because we did an extrapolation one time and 389 tons had been taken by fish harvesters and bycatch. By doing the extrapolation, grey seals eat - they need the calorie intake of two international weight-lifters, per day, and like us they consume more calories than they need. We're looking at something in the order of 20,000 to 40,000 tons in extrapolation, back when we were looking at the 389 tons by fish harvesters. Have you looked at that?

MR. WORM: I personally have not done work on this. I've reviewed a lot of the literature, because I'm personally interested in the question because it pertains to the ecosystem. The evidence that I have seen indicates that seals were not doing well at a time when there was a lot of cod around, like in the 1960s or so. They're doing great now, when there's no cod around. They're actually increasing at a maximum

reproductive rate. That doesn't imply that cod is what they depend on, first off. So the idea that they select other species than cod, I think, is supported by that. That doesn't mean that the intake of cod is zero, granted.

[2:00 p.m.]

The evidence I've been seeing is that the stomach contents that you've been referring to, a lot of those were taken - correct me if I'm wrong - at a time when there was still a lot of cod around. At that time, they were consuming cod because it was, simply, very available. Now, there's a very small biomass of cod, and what I understand is that the percentage in the stomach contents has also decreased, simply because it's not worth pursing those few cod when there are so many other fish that are better food around.

So, how much does it impact the cod population right now, in their recovery? I think you would have to weigh it against other effects of the ecosystems. How beneficial is the climate and the plankton ecosystem? How much bycatch is there? You say there's very little, so that's good. And, how much does the predation by pelagic fish on eggs and larvae count? As I said, in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, not very far from here, they've shown that was a major factor in keeping cod recruitment low. Over the last 40 to 50 years, the record there is consistent. It's not consistent with the increase in seals.

I don't dispute that seals have an effect - if they eat cod, even any cod, that would have an effect. I really, very much doubt that they are the main factor inhibiting recovery. I understand that the population division at DFO BIO, they've done a recent review of that question and came to approximately that conclusion. There is probably an effect, but it's probably not the factor that impedes recovery.

MR. MACKINNON: Just a supplementary, if I may - I think the reason why they weren't doing well when there were 30,000 of them was the fact that prior to that there had been a bounty on them, for the turning in of the jaw. The 4 per cent to 8 per cent was actually when the stock was low, as well. That was only a few years ago. This was in an FRCC publication at one time.

MR. WORM: I would probably be interested to see that. I'm not aware of that particular publication. The most recent thing I read was the DFO report, and DFO had been pursuing that question for a while because they thought that may also impede recovery. After the review of all the evidence, as I said, they concluded that's probably not. I'm not the expert on seals, I have just read the available literature.

MR. MACKINNON: Thank you very much.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Muir.

MR. MUIR: A very interesting thing, you made a couple of statements I'm kind of interested in, because I don't really understand them. Clarrie MacKinnon actually started one, because back on one of the slides that you spoke from very early, you said that the prevalence of seals was actually helping the recovery of the cod stock.

MR. WORM: Potentially, yes.

MR. MUIR: Potentially doing that. I guess you got into that kind of question. I know there are a couple of people in the room who might have some difference of opinion on that. I have a lot of friends over on the Northumberland Strait who would have a different feeling about that, too. Secondly was the other statement towards the end of your presentation, and I'm trying to understand it. You're saying that to protect the fishery, rather than targeting one or two species, where there seems to be a lot of them, you should really go ahead and harvest everything. Did I misunderstand what you said? I thought you said that selecting one or two species out of them all really wasn't that helpful, it was a better fishing plan . . .

MR. WORM: To fish broadly.

MR. MUIR: . . . to fish broadly.

MR. WORM: Absolutely. I would very strongly emphasize that, because in today's world, if you could fish very lightly for one or two species - obviously they would be doing well and everybody else would be doing well. But if you have a large fishing industry that you want to employ and if you want to get something out of the ocean, your better option is to fish broadly across the spectrum, because you're not distorting the ecosystem in the same way this picture here shows, you're not selecting out the large individuals and the large species and being left with jellyfish, plankton and invertebrates. You're fishing across the spectrum, and you're maintaining the diversity and the structure of the ecosystem. That's the idea.

The same idea is if you would invest in an economy in a lot of different companies and you would put taxes on these companies, you would not tax one or two or three companies - that would distort the economy. You would tax them all the same way, approximately. That's what you try to do in policy.

MR. MUIR: I have a couple of other questions, but I'll come back.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Your generosity moves me, I have to say. (Laughter)

Mr. Dunn.

MR. PATRICK DUNN: Again, thank you for the presentation. It was wonderful. You mentioned about fisheries shifting to lower levels, and the shellfish starting to dominate. I'm just curious, when I talk to fishermen who are fishing snowcrab down, say, along Cheticamp, Pleasant Bay and so for the past decade, they've had a pretty lucrative fishery, or it appears to be that. But you often hear, when you're talking with them around the boats or on the wharf, that they wonder just how long this will continue. I wonder if you have any opinion or any comment you would like to make.

MR. WORM: Yes, I do have an opinion. First off, we know less about invertebrates than we do about finfish. So that's a problem, because the fishery is less informed, so to speak. It would have to be managed more carefully to account for that added uncertainty. Also, if you look at invertebrate fisheries - lobsters, shellfish in general, crab, shrimp all over the world - you will find that a lot of them emerge after the large fish are gone, or at least they're pursued more heavily, and that they often generate huge profits in catches for some time and then drop off extremely suddenly.

Invertebrates, particularly crab and lobster - the large invertebrates - seem to be prone to more sudden collapses than other species, partly because they take such a long time to mature. A lobster on the Scotian Shelf, in order to recruit into the fishery, it takes about seven years. For a snow crab, I think it's more like eight or nine years. So there's a long lag time there.

If that recruitment process fails and you don't have good monitoring for it - because these things don't go into traps until they're that large - if you don't have good monitoring for it, you may have nothing coming after. There may be a big gap there, and you're still fishing happily and hard, and then all of a sudden it's over - seemingly all of a sudden. You could have seen it years ago if you looked for the larvae and the small ones, but to my understanding that's something, not even for lobster, we're doing.

I think we need to monitor much more carefully, because those large invertebrate fisheries have, all over the world, shown very sudden declines. So the fishermen may be right with that anxiety.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Theriault.

MR. HAROLD THERIAULT: Thank you, Dr. Worm. I've been waiting to meet you. The only thing I disagree with is your timing of the next 40 years; I would say sooner - sooner if things don't change. I want to get to the ground fishery on Georges Bank. We know it's still going on out there. You mentioned management under DFO, and I'd like to pick up on that a little. We do have some haddock coming back on Georges Bank, quite a biomass.

MR. WORM: Yes, I know, the recruitment is very good.

MR. THERIAULT: We have boats down there today, this afternoon, they're fishing. Most of the haddock don't seem to want to grow over a foot or 16 inches long. Something has stunted their growth, but they're lugging them in anyway. What codfish they're getting with them there, which is quite a little biomass, too - I don't know how they know what the biomass is on the shelf of Nova Scotia, because there's a lot out there being killed and not being reported, and that's going on there, too. There's hundreds of tons of codfish going over the side, dead, not being reported, because they can't report it, they can't bring it in, they can't dump it, so they can't report it even being dumped. If you could, that would be a little help, but DFO, in their great management, won't let that happen.

My question is, if the whole fishery had been run, in Nova Scotia or Atlantic Canada, the same as we've run our lobster fishery for the last 100 years, how rich would Atlantic Canada be? Richer than Alberta?

MR. WORM: Well, no. (Laughter)

MR. THERIAULT: I bet it would.

MR. WORM: We would be doing so much better. But as I said, it's not too late to do that. It's not too late to turn around, I think. As this example shows and about 50 examples that went into this graph showed, it's not too late to do it. It's like in life, you make a mistake, you recognize it and you move on. I think moving on here doesn't mean moving on to other species and depleting those, doing the same thing all over again in the deep sea or to invertebrates, but it means actually rolling back some of the problems that are all well recognized, like what you just said, unreported bycatch problems, a well recognized problem that could be dealt with, particularly, I think, if you would really get resource users on board and have them have a vested interest in protecting the fishery, basically at all costs.

If you could get that done - and that's what's happening in the lobster fishery. They're policing themselves, as you well know. I lived in Lower Prospect, and some of the teenagers went lobster poaching in the summer, and they didn't do that for very long. That's the kind of mindset we need. I have to say I'm really proud of how the lobster fishery is run and the benefits it creates and the sense of ownership and pride that you find with lobster fishermen, it's a very special fishery in that way. If others could learn from that example and manage it a similar way, I think we would be better off.

MR. THERIAULT: Why do you think those haddock aren't growing well on Georges Bank?

MR. WORM: That's a very interesting question. I have a graduate student who's working on that question. It seems that we've not only distorted the ecosystem, but also

distorted the evolutionary processes that are shaping these species as species. The haddock today on the Scotian Shelf, and in particular on Georges Bank, is a different haddock, almost like a different species, than the haddock we had before. It's growing slower, it's maturing earlier, it's more skinny, it's not as fat, and it also tends to be more off the bottom, not on the bottom.

Now you could explain that very easily by saying there was a selection for those individuals because they were the only ones that got away. The ones that were fat, meaning they would not be going through the mesh; maturing late, meaning they would never be able to reproduce; and fast-growing, meaning they would grow fast up to a size where they could be caught are the ones that aren't there anymore. The ones that are there are the ones that got away and they're different. They behave different and in a way that's not good for our fishery because they can't be caught and they don't grow as fast, they don't accumulate as much biomass in a given time.

Again, this is not something that's unique to Nova Scotia, it has been shown all over the world, experimentally and in trawl survey data, that's what's happening if you have very high fishing mortality, that you're selecting for the individuals that you don't like, really, and you change the evolution of the species. That's something that may be very hard to roll back.

MR. THERIAULT: You know, your presentation was great and I understood every bit of it and I agree with 95 per cent of it, it's mostly all common sense.

MR. WORM: Isn't it? Yes.

MR. THERIAULT: You said it in a nutshell there. It's so simple to see what you were saying, even back 1,000 years. How well do you get along with DFO? Do they talk to you at all? Do they believe what you're saying? (Laughter)

MR. WORM: I have good working relationships with individuals. The individuals I talk to are scientists and I find that what scientists do is ask questions trying to understand how the world works. We can all meet on that ground and we can discuss things and we're mostly agreed. They think some things I say are stupid and I think some things they say are stupid, or not very insightful rather, but on average with the scientists, I get along very well.

I think the problem is not so much with the science branch, it's with the management and the bureaucracy which just got top-heavy, I think, and has too much discretionary power, for example, to take the money out of science and into management. Now, what do you want to manage if you don't know how the world works, right? You need to understand a situation first and then you do your management, but the management has to be solidly footed on good science.

I feel really bad for my colleagues there because they're underfunded and the funding decreases every year and they're not very well regarded by the public or by their peers. They're trying to do good science with the little they get, but then when they do good science, often it's not even listened to.

[2:15 p.m.]

One thing I would say is what's unfortunate, I think, is that DFO, as an institution, got divorced from university science too much, there was too little exchange for too long. I recently had a student who started to work on the lobster fishery, to explain the ups and downs of the lobster fishery. We went to DFO and I was shocked to find out that in Nova Scotia there are about two people working full-time on lobster. This is a $600 million industry, it's the only thing we've got. We should have dozens and dozens - and what's happening in the States, they have teams of people working on this, going out with submarines. They spend more in a day than these people at DFO spend all year, in order to protect the fishery, and that's what we should be doing.

MR. THERIAULT: We get most of our knowledge from lobster from the United States, from Maine. That's where we learn it from. Thank you. That's enough from me.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Enough from you, I'm glad we got that in Hansard. (Laughter)

I'd like to ask a couple of questions. I found your presentation very interesting and reassuring, to a point. I never grew up in a coastal community, I don't have a good vibe for the fishery and lots about it I don't understand. My background is biology and I understand the food webs and the trophic levels, and the links in the hair is an easy one to follow, but it seems that for terrestrial ecosystems and the organisms in those, you can by and large, certainly in the mammal area, count them. You know if numbers are changing, you get a pretty solid identification of what's going on - cause and effect.

In the fishery I always feel handicapped, because you can't really tell for sure what's going on and what's there. So I look at this as kind of a trophic house of cards where you're pulling these cards out and you can't be sure just which card is going to make the whole thing collapse or whatever.

We had a presentation by the Grey Seal Conservation Society, and Mr. Theriault raised this issue of the haddock and them being smaller and whatever. A position posed to us that day was the lack of nutrient in the ocean ecosystem and we were given a presentation of photographs back in the 1940s to present-day, where there were barnacles on the rocks in the 1940s, but in the same location today there were none. Also this was to make the case that the grey seals, even though they have an increase in number, they

have replaced this predator level that has been removed from the oceans and they're actually putting nutrient back into the system.

I'm just wondering, number one, whether that makes some sense to you and the other thing, I guess, at some point I would like to think that maybe my grandchildren will say to me, there'll be a report that Nova Scotia's oceans or the oceans of the world are far better than they were in 2007 and they'll say, Grandpa, weren't you a politician in 2007, so what did you do or what could you have done, or whatever. But I'd like it to be a positive story, the fact that I was here.

We hear things about dragging, we hear things about other practices and with the positive comments you made about the lobster fishery, it seems to me that what has been said about the bycatch, the stuff you bring up that you're not supposed to, that maybe that has a positive effect in the sense - if it was cross-species, because it seems to be that it's not just the number of organisms but it's the number of species that are together that impact the recovery of any one species.

MR. WORM: Very true. That's what we've been finding, yes.

MR. CHAIRMAN: So what do you suggest, we should change the way we fish? Because when you showed that chart that showed the number of hooks, and it was 10 out of 100 or whatever, those were long-lines, I think, so I was curious as to what we have to do to change how we fish to try to impact - it seemed to me that we have to reduce the number of fish we catch, I'm assuming, but also a cross-species. Are you saying we can't drag or do we set up reserves and that's good enough, or what?

MR. WORM: Okay, it's the million dollar question, obviously. First of all you said that fish are hard to count. A famous colleague of mine once said oh, counting fish is easy, just like counting trees, it just has the little catch that they're invisible and they move. (Laughter) That's generally true, and that uncertainty again makes management of the oceans harder than management on land. If you're cutting a forest and you're determining the harvest level of trees, you go out there, you measure diameters, best height, you count them per unit area, and you know what you've got. There's absolutely zero doubt about it. We don't have that luxury here.

The second problem we're having in the ocean is that once it's bust, we don't know how to bring it back, other than leave it alone. That's the only option we have right now. There's not a single example - I don't think that's well-recognized among the public, there's not a single example for reintroducing an extinct fish species or fishery species and making it viable again. Once it's gone, it's gone or it recovers on its own. If it recovers on its own - that was the point I was trying to make - it will do so more likely and quicker and more completely in an ecosystem that has a lot of species in it. With those species that are lost, that opportunity for recovery diminishes.

We can't engineer recovery; that's the thing, we can't engineer it. So what do we do? I think most people, including myself, are moving towards an approach that has ocean zoning. It says basically we should treat the ocean as we treat land. What do we do on land? We basically have a map, and if you look on the map you'll see urban centres, then you'll see industrial parks, then you'll see recreational areas, you'll see parks, you'll see wildlife refuges, you'll see agricultural areas. It's zoned, there are zoning regulations, about what can happen in any one area. An industrial area and a residential area are not necessarily compatible, and a wildlife refuge and a shooting range are not necessarily compatible. Not everything can happen all the time everywhere, including fishing.

It can't happen all the time everywhere, yet that's what we've been moving towards. As gear technology improved, fishing effort has increased, basically all habitats, everywhere in Nova Scotia, right now there's very little area - and it has been declared very recently, like the coral box or the Gully Marine reserve that I excluded from that, but it's a very small fraction. I think we have to zone the ocean the same way we zone land, for different uses.

You asked about trawling. Now, trawling can be incredibly destructive, particularly on hard-bottom habitats and those that have a lot of structure, reefs, algae forests and so on. It can be fairly benign on sandy habitats that get turned over by waves all the time anyway, and the North Sea is largely sandy. Some areas get trawled eight to 10 times a year, and they still produce fish, miraculously. Some of these areas are less sensitive than others to particular uses. Just like on land, we would recognize the same thing.

I think that's where we need to move forward. We have to recognize the ocean basically as part of our land, and Nova Scotia has more ocean area in the 200-mile limit than land area. It's a huge area to deal with, and we've been mapping it, we know what's there as for bottom types and so on, so we could really start to zone it and say, these are super-sensitive habitats and, on top of that, there are spawning aggregation areas - leave them alone. These are areas that have been trawled for a long time, there's probably not much left there. They're still producing fish, so let's keep doing it. And so on. These are important lobster fishing areas, they shouldn't be trawled because that destroys the habitat that lobsters need for recruitment. Blah, blah, blah. All of that can be done in an integrated way that's based on planning, the same way we plan on land. We don't do that yet.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Belliveau.

MR. BELLIVEAU: Mr. Chairman, just for a point of clarification, so when my grandchildren look back in 50 years time, you talked about trawling, you're referring to

dragging. The locals in my area, when we talk about trawling, we're talking about long-line. Just a point of clarification.

You said three words, "It's not too late." I seriously believe that we were here, and I think somebody's going to look back in 50 years time and think that we had some input in getting this back in the right direction.

The approaches to the Bay of Fundy and the number of banks surrounding Nova Scotia and the Atlantic Provinces, to my understanding, have some of the best ecosystems in the world. John Cabot recorded that some 600 years ago.

MR. WORM: Yes, amazing reports.

MR. BELLIVEAU: We're talking finfish here. My question, you talked about it, can the fisheries be restored? If we, today, had the wisdom to target a certain species, and I'm going to pick halibut, for instance, and that's also kind of a byproduct or a benefit of these closed areas in Georges, and you didn't mention in your slides that Browns Bank also has a "box" there, and the local fishermen have benefited, Mr. Chairman, from an increase in halibut lately.

If we had the governance and understanding that we're going to pick one species, and we have some of the best hatcheries in Nova Scotia - I'm promoting Scotian halibut here now - in Nova Scotia, if we put an enhancement program and targeted that one species, is that the way we should be doing it, species by species? Can we make a difference?

MR. WORM: Based on the evidence for enhancement programs, I think they're pretty much a huge waste of money, what I've seen. Salmon is a good example. There's huge controversy over whether salmon enhancement is actually helping the fishery or destroying the fishery. Again, it's a genetic problem. You're selecting for different . . .

MR. BELLIVEAU: I'm talking in the wild now, releasing them in the wild.

MR. WORM: No, I'm not talking about salmon aquaculture. I'm talking salmon enhancement programs in the Pacific Northwest, for example, hatcheries that put in salmon eggs and larvae. I probably wouldn't do it, because there are other ways, like this, that are simpler and, as you point out with Browns Bank, have already benefited the fishery. If the stock still has potential to increase on its own, the only thing you really have to do is cut down its mortality.

The identified sources of mortality: bycatch; destruction of habitats; destruction of juveniles; maybe catch in other areas where they migrate to, where they're caught, like the bluefin tuna. The bluefin tuna that come to Nova Scotia, a lot of them are caught in

the Mediterranean, something we have zero influence on. How do we deal with this? If you wanted to protect this species, we have to deal with it on a trans-Atlantic scale, not just here. Other things are more local, definitely the invertebrates, the halibut, the cod. I think there are a series of tools, and some of them have worked really well, like large-scale closures; and others have worked not so well, like enhancement programs. I think we should just move on that evidence.

What you said about 50 years, looking back to this, I'm actually really hopeful that we will look back and we will say, around 2000 was a low point, globally, in fishery, and since then we've been learning from our mistakes and we've been really bringing it back.

Was it you who talked about Georges Bank and that they're fishing there right now, this afternoon? Okay. Some of that fishery is moving, self-organized pretty much, they weren't asked to do that, to a hook-and-line fishery, rolling back the technology basically, because hook-and-line brings up a better product. You can sell it at almost twice the price. You select for a certain size of fish; the very large ones may be left alone and the very small ones may be left alone. You have zero bycatch, or very little bycatch. It's done in a cost-effective fashion, you don't need to spend as much fuel as dragging the net over the sea floor.

There has been a recent move to market for hook-and-line-caught haddock as environmentally sustainable fish here in Nova Scotia. In fact, it's part of a larger movement, and I brought these seafood cards here that are distributed to consumers, which fish are environmentally sound and which ones should not be eaten. I think consumers have to play a role here, too. Some fisheries can simply be pursued in a more intelligent manner, and benefit the species, benefit the ecosystem, benefit the consumer. This hook-and-line-caught haddock on Georges Bank would be a good example, I think. That's my opinion on it.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Muir.

MR. MUIR: Mr. Chairman, I want to talk a little bit about the lobster fishery. I'm no expert on it. I know down in the State in Maine - and Junior had said that most of the information we have comes from American sources. You were decrying the lack of resources put into scientific management here . . .

[2:30 p.m.]

MR. WORM: Striking, yes.

MR. MUIR: It's awful. In the State of Maine, I think they can fish lobster year-round.

MR. WORM: Right.

MR. MUIR: But we only fish them here, at least in the Northumberland Strait with which I'm most familiar, for two months.

MR. WORM: Right.

MR. MUIR: How can they fish them year-round down there, and they can't fish them year-round in the Northumberland Strait? I know down in Clarrie's area, they're rich down there. What I'm most familiar with is the lobster fishery, sort of from the New Brunswick border down to Pictou Island. I'm not really sure why they continue to put the boats in the water.

MR. WORM: We had a recent paper, it came out last week. Ransom Myers was the first author. It was called, "Saving endangered whales at no cost". That was about the lobster fishery in Maine and in Canada. We actually said the way we do it here in Canada is a much more rational way of doing it. What happens in Canada is that the lobsters accumulate over the years, so they grow for seven years and then they become large enough to be caught legally. Every year there's a certain cohort of lobsters that come into the fishery and that reach that size. Around 90 per cent of those are caught every year, about 10 per cent go on, to live.

What we do in Canada is that we catch them all at once; 50 per cent in all of Canada, in all the different areas, 50 per cent of the lobster that are caught every year are caught during the first month. If you farm in Shelburne or South West Nova you'll know that during the first month there's always a flurry of activity and then it kind of peters off and then there may be another flurry in the spring, because again there was an accumulation of lobster and it's worth going out again.

In Maine, for historical reasons, they don't do that, they fish year-round. But what they do is they don't have this rush of lobsters coming in, it's basically a trickle over the entire year and they catch them - as soon as they become available they're caught and they have a much, much higher effort there. Here I think the trap limit per fisherman is about 250; there they have 800 and they're fishing year-round. In Maine alone you have about 3.5 million lobster traps in the water, year-round, which is a tremendous effort and it's very uneconomical because they have to tend those traps the whole time, they have to feed them. They feed them about 500,000 metric tonnes of herring every year, which is a huge cost, and also the fuel costs are very large.

So they make less profit than their Canadian colleagues and, because they have these huge expenses, they can only afford it because the lobster fishery is doing so well. If it wasn't doing so well, a lot of these people would have to drop out. It's a crazy way of doing the fishery.

In Canada the system is much better. What we focused on in this paper is that there is an added benefit to the Canadian way of doing it, that you have the traps out of the water in the summer when the right whales are there, so they're not getting entangled; whereas they do get entangled in Maine and some die from it.

MR. MUIR: One follow-up question, Mr. Chairman, back to the lobster fishery. I know that in the Northumberland Strait it's cyclic and it's at a low point in that area now. I know that what they refer to as "down east", they're still doing very well down there. Do lobsters migrate? Why is it so bad in this one particular section, yet they're really doing well there, including - I was over on the Magdalen Islands last summer and that was a very lucrative lobster fishery over there. Now I don't know, maybe the water in the Strait is shallow and it's deeper down there.

MR. WORM: There are a lot of differences and this is something my student, Stephanie Boudreau, who works the lobsters, is trying to find out because what you see and what worries us is that at the southern range of lobster, where the water is warm, they used to go all the way down to the Carolinas, American lobsters, and those fisheries have collapsed one by one and it has been coming up the coast, all the way up to Rhode Island, New Hampshire and Massachusetts recently. So when you see the year it was peaking and the year it collapsed and you plot that against time, you see the straight line, that this has been coming up the coast from the southern range, while the northern range has been doing exceptionally well.

Now your area, the Northumberland Strait, is the warmest in Canada. That's why people go there to swim in the summer. It may be that it's at least consistent with what we see in the U.S., that the warmest area declines first and then the other areas. So we're really worried, if this warming trend continues, that it may not be good for the lobster fishery overall.

MR. MUIR: The depth of the water might have . . .

MR. WORM: And it's mostly sandy, which is not great for lobster, too, it's not the best habitat you can think of. South West Nova has this amazing habitat, it's like a maze, like a reef, really, of boulders where the lobsters can hide for seven years and not get eaten and grow, and the food availability is also enormous. So that area is just - I mean, if God would create lobster habitat, it would go to South West Nova, that's exactly what you need.

MR. BELLIVEAU: I always said it was God's country. (Laughter)

MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. MacKinnon.

MR. MACKINNON: Thank you very much. Just a comment on the last question, perhaps one area can be feeding another area in relationship to larval drift in lobster because you're dealing with a surface situation at one point, which could be feeding another area.

MR. WORM: Yes, potentially.

MR. MACKINNON: Anyhow, my area that I would like to look at, I worked on a Ph.D. for several years in earth, ocean and planetary science and I was looking at international fishery organizations in the North Atlantic. I was looking at successes and failures, strengths and weaknesses, and I almost came to the conclusion - and I have boxes of research, and when I'm much, much older I'm going to finish this off, I think.

Anyhow, the situation is that some of these international organizations, when you interview people, the comment is that it's better than having no organization at all. These are, like the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization, very Mickey Mouse to some degree. How can we possibly make these organizations, organizations with teeth and without the influence of politics, like an ambassador saying one time about the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization, we don't want to get their hackles up, meaning the European community, so we sacrifice fish for trade in other areas and so on.

MR. WORM: I know, that was common practice for a long time.

MR. MACKINNON: These things are really horrible situations and a senior DFO person saying that the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization is not a finger-wagging organization, right? Well, it damn well should be a finger-wagging organization . . .

MR. WORM: Or whipping, for that matter.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. MacKinnon, we tend to follow the Rules of the House so we will refrain from "damn", I think, in the Chamber.

MR. MACKINNON: Sorry, it's a very emotional subject, this fishery issue. I could say worse, I'm sorry.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Don't do it here, please. (Laughter)

MR. MACKINNON: No, I won't, I will respect that.

MR. WORM: I totally agree with your assessment and again I don't think there is any doubt that the system has failed royally. I think the only thing that can turn it around is a sense of crisis because if everybody is doing well, you know, there's not much reason to worry, but I think when people begin to worry deeply they begin to

change. I think that's what we see now, is that people are really assessing, what the heck have we been doing? What's an organization worth where countries can just opt out because they don't like the quota - they said I'm out, too low for me this year, I'll just opt out.

That has been changed. We would do this in no other area of life, I think that's again my strong feeling, that for some reason the oceans and fisheries have been exempt from a lot of the rules and the everyday, common-sense practices, if only cordiality, among others, that are so natural to us on land. I think it's partly just because it's such a foreign thing to us and most people never, ever got to see it. In fact, a lot of the people who manage the ocean never, ever get to see it because they sit in Ottawa and they don't know fishermen, they've never been out on a boat, they never, ever see the destruction that a trawler does, for example. You need a submarine to see that, you need to fund that, you need to be looking for it.

So I think all of that is changing because of the sense of crisis that's emerging. There has been a lot of talk by the federal Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, and the Fisheries Act is being revamped right now and I don't know, I just see it as a slow change in thinking and it hasn't yet percolated into action in this country. It has in the U.S., it definitely has for decades in countries like Australia, New Zealand and Iceland. It hasn't at all in the European Union, which I'm following very closely because I'm from there. It hasn't at all in the developing countries, so globally it's a real mess. Some countries have pulled ahead and I think Canada needs to be one of those countries.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Theriault.

MR. THERIAULT: Thank you. Dr. Worm, I think it's all about proper balance. You mentioned it there in your presentation. In Iceland, and you probably know this, how they balance it is they have a cull of seals, too, in Iceland and Norway and they see so many worms coming into the groundfish that they upped the cull on the seals. They work it.

You mentioned the herring was coming to a big population in the waters, and that could help keep the codfish down because they're eating the larvae of the codfish. So why shouldn't we be upping the herring quota to bring that down to let that codfish come back?

MR. WORM: I think we should.

MR. THERIAULT: In the meantime, too, to bring the seals down - you're saying the seals will eat the herring.

MR. WORM: They do.

MR. THERIAULT: Every fisherman I talk to, and every time I've seen a seal in the Bay of Fundy - that's where I fished for 35 years - they'll pop up out of the water, never with a herring in their mouth, with a codfish. And that's a fact. Isn't it the balance we have to find, especially for this herring fishery that's coming on big?

MR. WORM: I think managing ecosystems is more so about managing people than anything else. It's less turning little wheels and levers in the ecosystem, it's more so managing how we change the ecosystem. That's the first step. But I agree with you, when something is out of balance, there may be steps taken to bring it into balance. I was in Iceland last summer, and I have to say I was struck by - I had a conference and after that I went to western Iceland, which is a very good cod-fishing area, and I went down to the wharf. It was like being here 100 years ago.

Small boats about from me to you, about the size of this, less than this room, really, small boats, one operator, coming in, crates and crates, cubic metres of codfish, the catch of a day, handlines, all handlines. The average size of the cod is about this, average, this is not the large ones, it's the average. The smallest ones being like this. It popped my eyes, because I had never, ever seen something like that. Where I grew up in the North Sea, the average cod is this, if it is existent, and similar here. So they're doing something right.

I think what they're doing right is they talk to each other, it's a small country, about the population of Halifax in the entire country. Everybody knows everybody. So the managers are not somewhere far off, they're actually brothers and sisters of the fishermen themselves, which can create a conflict of interest but also creates responsibility. They have a trawler industry, but a lot of the cod fishing is done with handlines, which we don't do here anymore, so much, which we maybe should be doing, because it's a much more benign way of fishing. You're right, they try to balance the ecosystem, actually calculating the relationships between some of the species. I know the people have been doing it for many years.

It's an interesting observation that the cod fisheries have not collapsed as hard, and have certainly recovered better in countries that eat herring. I love to eat herring, because I come from Europe, we eat herring all the time. It's a very prized food fish, as it is in Iceland. You can see that the areas where herring has been fished, they're doing relatively well for cod. Where is the only remaining cod fishery in Canada, it's in 4X, which is in your area. What do they also fish there? Herring. There's a big herring fishery there. Is that a coincidence? Maybe, maybe not.

[2:45 p.m.]

As I said, we're working on a global analysis of this problem, because you can never say for sure in any one area, but if you see a pattern over 20 or 30 areas, then you

can be sure. I agree with your comment on balancing, it has to be done very carefully. Again, more so managing humans than managing ecosystems, or maybe doing the two together, hand in hand.

MR. THERIAULT: We always said in the lobster fishery, and I heard my father say it before me, and grandfather, you'll receive what you give. In the lobster fishery, it has always had something given back to it. And the Americans, Jamie, even give a little more back than we do to be able to do what they're doing. They've v-notched lobsters for the last 60 years, all the female-producing, reproducing lobsters. They don't bring the large ones in like we do. They catch less per capita. There are a lot, 7,000 fishermen alone in Maine.

MR. WORM: And the minimum size is higher.

MR. THERIAULT: But they all earn a living from it. They have to give more back to be able to do what they're doing. You receive what you give in nature, and that's what we have to do to all of our fisheries.

MR. WORM: I totally agree, absolutely.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Belliveau.

MR. BELLIVEAU: I think I'm going to get all my questions in here, I believe. I was interested in your statement, I first noticed in your statement that you talked about the collapse of the fishery by 2050. I believe it has the interest of most fishermen, if not all fishermen right across Nova Scotia. I was also interested in the statement by one of the large processors, John Risley from Clearwater, almost within days of your comments, that dragging has no effect on the habitat. I believe, in fairness to Mr. Risley, I think he tried to correct that comment, and said that dragging may have some effect in sensitive areas. I think that was almost within days of your comments. I think this whole two hours here, we're basically coming down to having a direction for this industry.

I'm hoping that you are in agreement with this, that by reducing the classes of activities within marine protected areas, such as spawning areas - and you talked about ocean zones, and I refer to it as coastal management . . .

MR. WORM: Not just coastal, though, it has to be over the entire shelf.

MR. BELLIVEAU: Yes, the ocean. I just want to be clear on this, because you made reference to Iceland, and I think they have reverted back to hook-and-line, and I think this is what we need to say, as the public of Nova Scotia, is this the trend that we need, to have more protection of our coastal areas and revert back to hook-and-line or fixed gear? I think, in a nutshell, that's it.

MR. WORM: The problem, I think, with the discussion, often, is that it concentrates on quick fixes, and it says, if you just stop trawling, it will be okay; if you just put in marine-protected areas, it will be okay. The answer is no, it won't be okay. You need to do these things in concert, you need to reduce fishing effort while you put in MPAs. Why? Because if you just put in MPAs, what happens is that the fishery just moves to another area and fishes that even harder. We had a paper a few years back where we showed that can actually have negative effects on biodiversity if you close the wrong areas. If you close areas with few species, all the fishery will move to the area with lots of species and cause greater harm there, more bycatch, more problems.

It needs to be done in concert with a reduction in fishing effort and more benign gear, more selective gear. If you've ever seen a trawl come up, some trawls are better than others. For example, the shrimp trawling industry of Nova Scotia is relatively clean, which is laudable. Some others, like the clam dredging, are a pretty horrible way of going about it. You basically liquify the bottom and you suck everything out of the bottom, because there's nothing living in the water anymore, nothing living on the bottom anymore, you go into the bottom and get everything out there. Clearwater is doing that on a large scale in the Grand Banks now.

I think these things - think about the gear you're using, think about the area, think about the total effort you're spending in trying to rebuild fisheries with clear targets, like this one in the U.S.

I didn't explain what those lines are, the dotted line there, the dotted horizontal line is the biomass at which the stock is called overfished. That's about one-quarter or 25 per cent of the total biomass that it could have. It's about half of where the species would be at maximum sustainable yield. So that's when it's called overfished. The U.S. legislation, once it's there, it triggers a series of actions, you don't even have to think about it anymore, it's an automatic trigger of reduction in fishing effort, closing of areas, and so on and so on, until it is rebuilt. All the overfished fisheries in the U.S. are now under rebuilding plans, which are legally mandated. We don't have that in Canada. Why not? Why not have clear targets and plans for every single species, and bring it back?

Also, I would like to emphasize that closed areas and those kinds of ecosystem protection tools are no substitute for good fisheries management. You need to manage the open areas better while protecting some areas entirely. It's a lot to do, but there are good examples from around the world, some just across the border, where we can learn from and which we can apply. As I said, for the lobster fishery, we're doing some things right and well and have been for the last 150 years. Why not apply those lessons elsewhere?

MR. CHAIRMAN: Dr. Worm, we have one other item that we'll probably need five minutes or so to deal with, but I'd like to give you an opportunity to sum up before

you leave, anything that is forefront in your mind that you'd like to leave with the committee.

MR. WORM: I have to say I'm grateful and impressed by the concern you show, which is an experience I've had with other people in politics, as well. We've testified to the U.S. Congress and U.S. Senate Committees, as well as in Europe. I find that there's a lot of concern among politicians, and confusion about what the exact best way is to reverse this process. My main summary point here would be that there's not any one thing or any one species that we need to deal with, we need to deal with the suite of species and the suite of tools, all of which have been time-tested and we know about. There's no miracle. We just have to get down and do it and be a shining example for the rest of world, because that's what we could be, I think.

MR. CHAIRMAN: On behalf of the committee, I want to say thank you very much. We appreciate your time, and the time spent with you and your group on that study, and the fact that you were willing to come and speak to us. I certainly hope that this will have some effect on policy development. It's a bit of a difficult row to hoe in the sense of federal jurisdiction related to provincial jurisdiction and what this province can do compared to the feds. It certainly, for maybe things that are not our jurisdiction, gives some ammunition and some information to go to the federal government to say these are changes that need to be made, and that I think Nova Scotians would like to see made.

MR. WORM: That would be wonderful, if that could be empowered locally. I've brought a stack of reprints of this study, if you're interested. It has colour figures, so it's a little nicer than the photocopied ones. Also, there's a stack of these seafood choice cards, which are always nice to look at, because they talk about single species and in which position they are. I'll just leave them here for you to pick up. Do you want me to leave now?

MR. CHAIRMAN: Not that we want you to, but we may need you to, so we can get on with that other item on the agenda. Thank you very much. (Applause)

[2:54 p.m. The committee recessed.]

[2:57 p.m. The committee reconvened.]

MR. CHAIRMAN: For members of the committee, there are two items of committee business. One is, there was a motion for a subcommittee on fisheries. I may let Mora speak to this. I know the members who posed it may want to speak to it, but I'm thinking that just in the motion that's stapled to the back, it looks like quite a good idea. I just want the members to recognize that this doesn't necessarily mean any additional

funding for whatever plan you may have. That doesn't mean we couldn't request it if there was some particular issue you wanted to pursue.

If Mr. Belliveau or Mr. Theriault want to speak to the motion for the request for a subcommittee on fisheries - do you want to talk to that?

MR. THERIAULT: Sterling and I have talked this out. The fishing industry itself is quite complex. You could get a group in here every week on the fisheries, different species. I've been thinking, too, that not only the fisheries, but agriculture could also use this. Why not? There's room. We know we have a lot of people who would like to come present to the panel. I guess a subcommittee would be three of us, one from each Party, I believe that's what I understood that to be. It's a job. We have Dr. Worm here on fisheries, but for another year we may not get fisheries in here again.

It's a very important issue, the fisheries, for this province, and I think we could make a little more headway if we had a subcommittee. Sterling agreed with this also, but I'll let him speak. That's where my thoughts are on this. I also think this could be good for agriculture, too. Two important issues, industries to the province.

MR. BELLIVEAU: If I could, Mr. Chairman, I just want to echo Junior's comments. First of all, I think that it is a very important industry in Nova Scotia. The lack of time, you know, the schedule. I think it's important that some of these issues need to be addressed on a more a regular basis. I think that's the mandate of this subcommittee. I would just point out, for instance, there is a new Fisheries Act that's being circulated as we speak, and most fishermen have not even had time to digest that. That has been out since December 12^th, I believe.

We have low prices in our fisheries, and we're also faced with issues in other sectors, like the hog industry. So I think that whether it's farming or fishing, by all means, it's the right way to go, to identify a subcommittee and address these complex issues.

[3:00 p.m.]

MR. MACKINNON: Mr. Chairman, not to prolong this, but I've been involved in the discussion since day one, and we've been sort of meeting on an ad hoc basis on some fishery matters. The motion was put forward for at least three members, one from each Party, or that's the way it is written. I, for one, would really like to serve on that, if it could be more than three, certainly at my own expense. I would go anywhere to be part of it. If we could in fact broaden that with your blessing.

MR. CHAIRMAN: The wording is fine, it says at least three, so there's nothing to stop you, unless they decide they don't want you. (Laughter)

MR. MACKINNON: They haven't excluded me yet.

MR. CHAIRMAN: I would say there's nothing in the way this motion is worded that would have a problem with allowing more, certainly more than three. I think that's fine. I guess the question is . . .

MR. CHUCK PORTER: Mr. Chairman, my own question, and I don't disagree, I do agree actually, but is it a subcommittee to bring other subcommittees, to form a witness list and then bring it to the committee, or are you talking specifically a subcommittee on agriculture and fisheries? Is that the intent? I just want clarity, that's all.

MR. CHAIRMAN: I think this motion is for a subcommittee on fisheries.

MR. PORTER: That's why I'm looking - you talked about two things here, I guess, Junior, so I was just looking at what you really thought it was.

MR. THERIAULT: I thought about it this and I haven't even - I guess maybe I did mention it to Sterling, but this could work for agriculture, too. Like I said, the fishery is quite complex, there are so many different issues, there are different groups that would like to come in and air their concerns publicly. I am sure that is the same way in agriculture, so it could serve both industries - agriculture and fisheries.

MR. PORTER: So is it then just a Subcommittee on Resources that we choose maybe to delve into fisheries for a time or delve into agriculture for a time . . .

MR. THERIAULT: Well, we could bring fisheries and agriculture into the whole committee, but like last year there was a list as long as my arm from fishery groups that wanted to get into Resources and just couldn't get here. So we thought if we had this subcommittee on the side, to help that out some. I don't know just how well . . .

MR. PORTER: Just so we're clear, I do agree with it. I was just kind of wondering when you added agriculture, how does that work or what do you call it? I'm certainly in favour of . . .

MR. THERIAULT: Fisheries and agriculture subcommittee

MR. CHAIRMAN: My question is more around the legitimacy of the committee and its role. I am just wondering if you meet with a particular group, does that mean you have to write a report and submit that to this committee? Or do you have enough flexibility if you meet with a group then you want to make a recommendation as a subcommittee, to the committee here that we entertain them, as panelists before the committee. Would that be about the extent you would deem . . .

MR. THERIAULT: We could either bring that group in here, if there was room, but if not, have it sub from that and bring the report back to the committee as a whole - the whole committee. That's the way I thought it would work. Am I speaking out of turn here?

MR. CHAIRMAN: I'm just concerned about the resources of who is going to type the report or who is going to put it together, whether that falls here or if you are going to take care of that.

MR. THERIAULT: I haven't gotten that far yet.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Well I really kind of like the idea, I have to say, and I am only speaking as a member and I don't want my role here as Chair to be seen to be - you know - but I think I'd like to see this fleshed out a little more and maybe bring it back at our next Resources Committee.

MS. MORA STEVENS (Legislative Committee Clerk): It's in the motion.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Oh, okay, well I should read the motion, I guess. Anyway, Mr. MacKinnon.

MR. MACKINNON: Mr. Chairman, if they let me on the committee, I would be secretary and do a summary.

MR. DUNN: Well, you do want to be on it.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Okay, I guess I need someone to give me a little direction from here, whether you want to kind of flesh this out a little more and bring it back, or do you think you guys - I'm not entirely clear as to where you're going with it, so I'd like to be a little . . .

MR. THERIAULT: I thought we could work through the Resources staff to make this happen. I don't think it's going to be overwhelming or anything, I mean it's just going to be - we can do it, we could do it at a time when maybe the staff is free to help us out for an hour. It doesn't have to be two hours. If we can get a group, say, the Bay of Fundy inshore fishermen's group would like to come in and do a presentation on something, maybe somehow I'm sure we could arrange an hour in here for the three of us, or however many of us are on the subcommittee, to hear them out. That's how I pictured this to happen. Then we don't have to call the whole Resources Committee together two or three times a week.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Okay, so your thought on this is, you wouldn't need a binder prepared for that. I'm just thinking about what resources are available. Do you want to speak to this?

MS. STEVENS: Sure, what is in the actual motion is to - if it is passed, the subcommittee will form and then they would get together and put forward a list. They would sit down and talk about who they would like to have, bring it back to the full committee and say these are the issues and the witnesses we'd like to look into because you're doing it through the Resources Committee, so you'd have to ultimately get the approval. It is like the Subcommittee on Public Accounts - they meet so they can recommend things to the full committee and then it is with the approval of the full committee that a subcommittee could go ahead and do that.

Whether it is like holding an all-day meeting in the Red Chamber and bringing groups in, but if you're doing that or if you are travelling, you would have to get funding and you would have to put together a proposal. You know staff is here to do that, to put together a proposal to ensure that there is funding there, if you're bringing witnesses in, or just what you are going to do. That would come here and then it would be approved or not approved by the committee and then sent forward to the Speaker and the funds would have to be allotted to that, if funds are going to be spent.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Well, I guess my thought is that it's a good idea. We may have a few bumps along the road getting this smoothed out, so I think that maybe it is something we should pursue and as we come up against wrinkles, we'll deal with them and I think as long as we are up front and above board on this, I think that would be in the best interest of the public, so for sure. I've always been one who thought that it would be nice if the committee could see more people in the run of a year than we do, so if this is a way to help facilitate that . . .

MR. THERIAULT: Without the full committee, that's all it is.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Yes, and I'm thinking about the workload. One of the impediments to having the committee work, say to meet somebody twice a month instead of once a month, is the idea that staff here would put together these binders, which is a fair load, so if we can avoid some of that, then all that is helpful.

MR. THERIAULT: I don't think we need any of that. I believe that there are groups out there that would just like to come in and air their issues, invite the media in to let the people know what is going on with this issue or that issue. I don't think we need all the binders.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Okay, well I guess the question is to the committee. Would all those in favour of the motion please say Aye. Contrary minded, Nay.

The motion is carried.

Okay, thank you very much.

MR. MACKINNON: Mr. Chairman, just one issue. The brown spruce longhorn beetle issue has become of paramount importance because we're looking at areas perhaps being quarantined or managed and so on. I think we should have a witness or a couple of people, a couple of leading authorities appear before this committee because I've attended a meeting on the Eastern Shore, I'm getting phone calls and there is a lot of concern in all three Parties about this issue.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Well, I guess the question is, who do you want? CFIA or entomologists, the Maritime Lumber Bureau, or . . .

MR. MACKINNON: There are a couple of entomologists who I would like to think about and also someone particularly from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. These are so important to bring to the fore.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Well, okay.

MR. THERIAULT: I could come under the subcommittee - agriculture, forestry.

MR. CHAIRMAN: So do you just want to make that request to the committee, to get - do you know who you want to get? CFIA or the entomologists? I am not sure you are going to get them both at the same time.

MR. MACKINNON: It is kind of tough to have two witnesses there simultaneously.

MR. CHAIRMAN: There might be one we can bring with CFIA who is actually an entomologist with CFIA - that might be a possibility. So let's narrow it down: CFIA staff, with the possibility of an entomologist with them and I guess to try to put that on the schedule, in light of who else we have listed, but as soon as possible.

MR. MACKINNON: There is an entomologist who is involved with Friends of Point Pleasant Park, who has written stuff that is certainly the best I have seen in relationship to the brown spruce longhorn beetle. His name if Christopher - I can't think of his last name but I can get his card, he has written some material recently.

MS. STEVENS: We had the provincial entomologist in when this crisis first arose, Eric Georgeson.

MR. CHAIRMAN: I don't think he's with the province anymore. I think maybe he's retired. Probably CFIA would have an entomologist, or I'm thinking they should.

MR. MACKINNON: I think it would be nice to have it balanced with somebody outside the Canadian Food Inspection Agency . . .

MR. CHAIRMAN: I don't know if we want them the same day, then. That's my problem. I don't think we want them battling here.

MR. MACKINNON: The Canadian Food Inspection Agency.

MR. CHAIRMAN: And it's just as soon as we can.

MR. MACKINNON: ASAP, I would think, if there is agreement.

MR. CHAIRMAN: What does the committee think about that?

MR. THERIAULT: I think they should be separate, though. We don't want two in here getting into it.

MR. CHAIRMAN: The next meeting, Wild Blueberry Producers Association of Nova Scotia, and that's February 13^th. I want to thank members for being here today, and certainly those who were here in place of somebody else.

The meeting is adjourned.

[The committee adjourned at 3:12 p.m.]