[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]
Wednesday, April 26, 1995
.1227 
[English]
The Chairman: Order. Yesterday we had some officials in from both Human Resources Development Canada and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans to give us their periodic briefing on the state of the TAGS program, respective of the active components of income support, the reduction programs at the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, and other matters dealing with the implementation of this very important program. Yesterday we had, as part of the presentation from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, a chart.
Mr. Clerk, do we have that document yet?
The Clerk of the Committee: No.
The Chairman: They told us we'd have the document late yesterday or early today. I apologize to the committee, because we don't have it.
But a presentation was given, at which time some information was put up about the cod fishery - unfortunately it was put up on the flatfish - and it indicated clearly that the department is now operating under the assumption that there will not be a commercial recovery of the cod stocks in the northeastern zones off Newfoundland for at least fourteen years.
We then immediately asked some questions. The officials felt uncomfortable answering them because they aren't scientists. So we summoned a scientist. Dr. Doubleday appeared yesterday, and I want to thank him for that. I know it was on extremely short notice. We thought some of the information he had at his disposal was so interesting and germane to our debate, discussion and examination that we've asked him to come back and he's consented.
Dr. Doubleday, I want to welcome you here today officially. I don't think you got an official welcome yesterday, because you came in in the middle of the hearings.
I want to frame what I think the committee is looking for here. It's fairly clear to us that when both departments put together and got cabinet approval for the TAGS program it was based on a whole number of assumptions. Those assumptions were that there would be a recovery in the groundfishery, obviously in different areas at different times because of the state of the stock. The whole program was predicated on the belief that, first, there would be a recovery, and secondly, in recovery there had to be a substantial reduction in capacity, in both harvesting and processing. I believe the figure arrived at was 50%.
Because they were the two goals, programs were put in place to assist people with income support, training, and retraining. We wanted to define what the core fishery was and encourage those that were going to be in that core fishery to stay in and take certain options.
.1230
We also came up with a program to try to encourage a reduction in capacity by up to 50%, which was all based on the best scientific evidence at the time. That was that the stocks would recover and the recovery would take place after a certain length of time.
I guess yesterday none of us heard anything that was terribly new, except it was the first time we saw it formally in the document from Fisheries and Oceans. It seems that the scientific data, which predicated this $1.9 billion program, are unfortunately showing that there is not the recovery one would have hoped for two years ago. We don't know if the decline, in your view and the view of the biologists and scientists, is accelerating, slowing down, continuing at the same pace. We really don't know whether or not there's going to be a fishery there in 5, 7, 10, 15, 20 years.
I think the concern we have as a committee is we want to know exactly, right from the horse's mouth, what the state of the science is, what direction the stock seems to be going in, and when it appears these stocks could possibly recover. I know the language is important. One thing that's been said is they can't recover for at least fourteen years.
We're going to ask you some questions today. I hope we don't compromise your professional ethics and credentials. But we need your advice, because I hope we're going to be making some comments and some recommendations about whether or not we think, with new scientific evidence, these very programs we're grappling with are indeed the tools to get the goals that are established or that we may wish to suggest be established.
Do you have a copy of that chart? Is it possible to get that photocopied? There are the numbers. We don't have any of that.
Could you tell us a little about the scientific effort? What is it that we do? How do we figure out where the stocks are at?
Maybe by that time we'll have that back and we can start getting some questions directed to the state of the science in various zones.
Dr. William Doubleday (Director General, Fisheries and Oceans Sciences Directorate, Department of Fisheries and Oceans): Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. It's a pleasure to appear again before the committee.
I'd like to start by drawing your attention to a document that was circulated to the committee members at the time of the round table on Atlantic groundfish in March. It's entitled Overview of Canadian Atlantic Groundfish Resources. I believe this was distributed to members as part of a general package of documents related to that meeting. It describes the general condition of groundfish in Newfoundland waters, the Gulf of St. Lawrence and the Scotian Shelf. It's a good overview of the present situation.
The highlights of that document are as follows. Moratoria are now in effect on most cod stocks, and on many other groundfish stocks, with a few exceptions, such as silver hake. Total allowable catches have been reduced on other stocks. Catches from key groundfish stocks have experienced a serious reduction. Preliminary information for 1994 indicates that groundfish catches have declined to the lowest level ever recorded. I think it's safe to say the same thing can be said for almost all the Atlantic groundfish stocks. They are at the lowest level ever recorded, or very close to it.
The northern cod stock, which was the largest cod stock in the northwest Atlantic, has collapsed and has continued to decline despite the moratorium in place since July 1992. Stock biomass is at an all-time low and there are no signs of recovery. Changes in migration, in fish distribution, in abundance of non-commercial species, and environmental factors suggest that the decline in groundfish productivity is under the influence of broad-scale natural phenomena.
Scientists have observed that growth and recruitment of fish have declined and that some stocks have virtually disappeared from parts of their normal range. Groundfish fisheries of the future will have to adjust to the lower productivity levels that seem to be prevailing.
In general, prospects are poor, because year-classes in the late 1980s and early 1990s are weak and therefore will not contribute substantially to stock rebuilding.
.1235
For many stocks recovery will likely be slow. Recovery could be faster in southern areas, where environmental conditions remain favourable for higher productivity.
That's my general statement to start. If the committee wishes, I could give more detail from within this document, but it might be best if I just draw your attention to it and not speak further to the contents of that document today.
The Chairman: No, I think we'd like for you to speak to the contents of the document. I'll tell you why. So much stuff goes on in fisheries that most of us have a great deal of difficulty, even with our obvious interest, in keeping up with it. I don't think any of us has been invited to the round table, even though we're members of the fisheries committee. We usually have to track these things after they're done.
I'd like you, if possible, to talk a little about the science, because to be quite honest - I made some statements yesterday - what has happened since the turbot war is all these national reporters who never had an interest in fish - I'm not talking about the guys who are here today - who never wrote a story on fish are now all experts. So somehow anything we say now about fish is national news. It's kind of interesting if that's the case.
It seems some people in the department are trying to back-pedal and are saying this stuff is all old information. It may be old information, but it's the first time we've had it concisely put to a committee that this is where the science is going. We have great respect for the people who put the science together.
As chairman, I'd like you to go into more detail about the stock, particularly up in 2J-3K-3L, which is the one that seems to be in most difficulty.
Dr. Doubleday: I'm sorry, Mr. Chairman, if I was misunderstood in that remark. What I was intending to communicate was that I wouldn't go through the text of the document.
The Chairman: Sorry. I thought that was what you meant. If you could just tell us how this -
Dr. Doubleday: What I'd like to do now is explain something about how we monitor the groundfish stocks, particularly cod, and then perhaps go through the major cod stocks.
The Chairman: Could you also tell us about how the data have changed the projections? We're interested in seeing what has changed in the last two years. What were the projections being made by the scientists, based on the best evidence back in, say, 1991, 1992 and 1993, so we can get some sense as to why decisions were made a year and a half ago? What has changed scientifically in the stocks, so we can get some sense of how quickly this is happening?
Dr. Doubleday: Normally we have two main methods for monitoring the abundance of the groundfish stocks. These are surveys by research vessels that fish according to a scientific sampling plan...and monitoring the commercial fishery. During the period of moratorium, of course there is no commercial fishery to monitor. In some instances we have a small sentinel fishery, which provides some information on the trends in the stocks that are closed.
Over the past decade, the most reliable measure of abundance for almost all the groundfish stocks has been the research vessel survey, which we carry out annually. It covers all the groundfish within a specific area.
We have a major survey which covers the area of the northern cod at NAFO divisions 2J, 3K, and 3L. It also picks up the other species, such as American plaice, skate, redfish, and whatever, present in that area.
We carry out a survey on the southern Grand Banks, division 3N-3O. We carry out a survey in division 3PS. We carry out a survey in the northern Gulf of St. Lawrence; a survey in the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence; and on the Scotian Shelf and George's Bank. So all the major groundfish stocks are subject to at least one scientific survey by a research vessel each year.
When there is a commercial fishery, we collect information from the fishermen on their catches, and we sample their catches to determine the size and age composition of the fish. We also obtain information about their success in finding and catching fish.
.1240
In scientific terms we call it ``catch per unit effort''. Basically, it's how much fish a vessel is able to catch in a certain amount of time. The theory is that if there are more fish in the water, fishing for the same length of time will produce a larger catch. So this is an indicator of trends in the stock. The overall catch from the fishery is our best means of calibrating the research survey, which provides a relative index, rather than an absolute estimate, of the stock size. So we have those two major sources of information.
To look at it on a stock-by-stock or area-by-area basis, the first area that I think would be of interest to the committee is the northern cod, divisions 2J, 3K, and 3L. We've been carrying out a research vessel survey of that entire area since 1981, and generally, during the 1980s, the research survey index was fairly stable. There was one year, 1986, when there was an unexplained increase in the survey, which we now understand does not reflect a change in the stock. Other than that there were some fluctuations from year to year, but the survey was pretty steady right up until 1990. In 1991 there was a major reduction by about half. In 1992 there was a further reduction of two-thirds.
The Chairman: Was that two-thirds of 1991 or two-thirds of 1992?
Dr. Doubleday: It was two-thirds of 1991, so you have two-thirds of a half now.
The following year there was a further reduction of three-quarters of the previous year. Then last year there was a further decline, to one-fifth of what it was the year before.
The Chairman: Was that by one-fifth or to one-fifth?
Dr. Doubleday: It was to one-fifth.
The Chairman: So it declined 80% over the previous year.
Dr. Doubleday: That's right. But it was already at a low level the previous year. So if you look at the period from 1990 to 1994, at the end of that period our survey was catching about 1% as much northern cod as it was in 1990.
The Chairman: So you would say there was a 99% decrease in the survey.
Dr. Doubleday: That's right.
As I indicated to the committee yesterday, the first large and unexpected decline, which was in 1991, affected primarily the mature ages, seven and older. At that point we had quite large numbers of immature cod - the year-classes that were produced in 1986 and 1987 - present in our research survey, and they had shown up consistently in our research survey catches for several years.
At that point it was anticipated that a moratorium on the commercial fishery would allow these two year-classes to grow and contribute substantially to the spawning stock over the next few years, so there would be a fairly rapid increase in the spawning stock. But what happened was quite different. Even though a moratorium was in effect, the catches of these strong year-classes from our survey were smaller the next year. Fewer fish were caught, and it was evident that they were not surviving.
In the 1992 survey they were still fairly sizeable year-classes compared with the catches we'd had in our series from 1981 onwards. But the following year their numbers dropped quite dramatically, and the year after that they dropped further, so very few fish from those year-classes are left.
.1245
This means that the fish that were present in the early 1990s and that could have contributed to the rebuilding of the spawning stock in the mid-1990s are no longer abundant. Very few of them are left. Recovery of northern cod will depend on new year-classes that have not yet been spawned.
I understand the committee is seeking the best information the scientists have on when the northern cod stock will recover sufficiently to allow a commercial fishery similar to what we've seen in the 1980s. I'm sorry, but I'm not able to give a firm answer to that question, Mr. Chairman. The answer depends on events that have not happened yet and we're not in a position to forecast when strong year-classes of young cod will be produced in this stock.
The Chairman: But you were, Mr. Doubleday, able to project when they are most likely not to occur, based on the data.
Dr. Doubleday: Right. Now what I can say is that at present our surveys are finding no strong year-classes about to enter the fishable ages. We have had surveys for juvenile cod in the bays of northeast Newfoundland and we've picked up typically one- and two-year-old cod in significant numbers. But each year they have failed to show up at ages three, four and five in the offshore surveys. So it seems they're not surviving after the first couple of years of life. They're subject to a high mortality.
At this point the stock is so low that our scientists consider it very unlikely a strong year-class, comparable to those in the historical period, would be produced. We have a spawning stock now that's on the order of 1% or less of what it used to be, so it seems unrealistic to expect so few spawners would be able to produce the very strong year-classes we've seen, say, in the 1960s.
Consequently, without making a prediction and without saying this will happen...it seems reasonable that it would take two cycles where a significant number of northern cod would survive to maturity, which is about seven years, they would spawn, and then they would produce stronger year-classes subsequently. So one might expect about fourteen years would be the minimum for a significant recovery. But that's not a precise figure. It could take longer. It could take a shorter time. It's simply how long it takes to go through two generations of northern cod.
So we cannot predict when the recovery will occur. We can be quite clear that it's not going to be rapid. It's going to be slow. It's not going to occur within the next few years. It's reasonable to expect we would have to see at least one good year-class reach spawning age, reproduce successfully, and build up the stock before you would be back to anything like what we've seen in the past.
I think I should stop there.
The Chairman: I've one or two questions we're going to go over. To help out me and the committee...and you've given us a good idea about how the data were collected and how extreme the data changes were from year to year. When this program was being put together, I guess it was...how long now, a year and a half? One year ago? How long since we've been doing TAGS? One year ago, the data that would have been looked at would have been 1993 data. Is that correct?
Dr. Doubleday: That's right.
.1250
The Chairman: So in 1993, if you look at what would have been projected by the scientists and the planners at DFO, say in 2J, 3K, 3L, you would have looked at a minimum recovery time of what, about seven years, at that point, minimum?
I don't want you to feel we're going to pin you to the wall and say ``he told us...''. We all understand this is imprecise; figures change. But what was the period you thought it was not likely a possible recovery could take place before?
Dr. Doubleday: Mr. Chairman, we've never given a precise answer to this question.
The Chairman: How do we get to that, then? Maybe you can tell us that.
Dr. Doubleday: The answer has always been of the same nature, that it's not going to be a rapid recovery. As we've been pressed to explain what we mean by ``slow'' or ``not rapid'', the explanation as we've gained more information has become increasingly pessimistic. So at the time of the moratorium, which I remember quite vividly -
The Chairman: Which moratorium, the initial one?
Dr. Doubleday: The northern cod moratorium, the initial one, which was July 1992, the year before you're referring to. I recall indicating it would be unlikely we'd have a substantial fishery before the end of the decade. I think our view the following year was similar, that the stock would not recover substantially before the end of the decade.
We made comparisons with similar events that happened in other areas and in the past in Newfoundland. There is a report that back in 1713 there was a crash of the northern cod stock and it took about ten years before the fishery recovered to the levels it was at before 1713.
There have been episodes at Greenland where cod have come and gone, and also at Iceland and the Faeroes. In most of those cases it was about ten years before the fishery was back to something resembling what it was before the collapse happened.
So we made analogies. We were very clear the recovery would be very slow and there was no indication it was going to happen within the next few years. But I don't believe, Mr. Chairman, we've ever been very specific about when it would occur.
The Chairman: Look, I realize that and I get a sense you think we're going to try to pin you down on this. I think we all understand the nature of what it is you do. But between the data you get...and data are no good unless you interpret them, right?
Dr. Doubleday: Yes.
The Chairman: So you get the data and you interpret the data to somebody and somebody comes up with a chart like this. Somebody sits down with the minister and says, I've talked to Doubleday and his group and here are the data; here's what the data most likely mean.
So we're just trying to figure out that the data went in and somebody, obviously not you, sat down and said, here are the data, and the data mean it's not likely there will be recovery to a commercial fishery for about seven years, and if that happens, we should really try in the meantime to work and get capacity reduction, and do all those things.
In the last twelve months the data would indicate that the situation is even more dire, even more bleak, and that it is a minimum of fourteen years; and that's if everything goes right. Basically, that's been how it's worked.
Initially, way back with Crosbie, you said a two-year moratorium might allow that age-class to recover. Then next year it wasn't there. They just died off or something happened to them; Martians got them. So they all went. They're not there.
Then you would have advised, through the department back up to the new minister, that the situation looks as if it's worse, based on the new data. So we came in with a five-year program hoping some of the industry would recover.
Twelve or fourteen months later the new data come in and they say no, no, we're just not finding what we would need to make that a reasonable assumption as to the earliest recovery and now we're looking at fourteen years. Is that how that would happen?
.1255
Dr. Doubleday: First, I should qualify this graph, which is not formal advice, a forecast, or anything else. My understanding is that it was prepared to give an indication of the relative resilience of the various groundfish stocks in eastern Canada.
I think it does the job quite well. About the relative ability to bounce back from the present situation, the worst case we now have is northern cod, which is from the far north and east. The best cases are in the southern gulf and in southwest Nova Scotia.
It should be read in that context; you don't have a uniform situation across the Atlantic. Some of the stocks are in poorer condition than others. Some of them have an inherently better ability to recover more quickly.
That having been said, the effort reduction would roughly correspond to reducing the fishing pressure on the stocks by about half. Generally, a unit of effort corresponds very roughly to a unit of fishing pressure or fishing mortality. So a reduction of 50% of the fishing effort would essentially correspond to a reduction of the pressure on the stocks of a comparable amount.
It's not quite that precise, because nothing in fisheries really is. But it's a very substantial move toward establishing a proper balance, or a better balance, between the capacity of the industry to harvest and the capacity of the stocks to produce.
It remains a very significant move in the right direction, whether the recovery comes in three years or ten years or whenever.
[Translation]
Mr. Bernier (Gaspé): Mr. Doubleday, you understand a little bit of French?
I understand that you don't want to speak to the contents of the document, but you said earlier on that at the time of the initial moratorium, in 1992, you did not expect, you and your science colleagues, that we could resume fishing before 10 years time. That would bring us close to the year 2002.
What I understand today is that, after having put an end to fishing, we notice that fish stocks are still dwindling and that is precisely why we are extending the moratorium for at least another four years.
Fishermen are no longer preying on fish stocks, but within the context of what you've said concerning the continental shelf and the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, we're talking about the relationship between the fish that cod feeds on and the seals that prey on cod. What is, according to you, the more important problem? Mr. Baker will perhaps enlighten me a little later on. Do people still fish for capelin? How much capelin remains along our coastline? What can the cod feed on?
You were saying that every time a new year-class appears, it shows up in your survey. You find one and two-year old cod but these fish don't show up in your next survey. Someone must be eating them, someone or some thing. Where would the balance lie? Should we invest further resources to get rid of the seals or should we ensure that the cod have more to eat in order to become strong enough to save itself? What we're trying to do here is to re-establish the balance.
I have one last question for you, but I don't know how much time we will have today. When you talk about resuming fishing in 14 years time - I say this because I'm always thinking about the number of people who are waiting - what level of fishing are you forecasting? Looking at the graph that you have brought, are we speaking about the 1990 level, or the 1993 level where approximately 200,000 tons were landed or are we talking about the level that we had in the 1980s where our fishermen would catch 400,000 tons? In 14 years time, then, how much fish can we expect to catch? I wonder about this because if we are forecasting a maximum catch of 200,000 tons, we'll know approximately how many people to keep in the industry and what their age will be. But first I would like to come back to the relationship between the prey and the predator.
.1300
Mr. Doubleday: Thank you, Mr. Bernier. That is four questions you have asked. The first question concerns a drop in the size of the cod. It is obvious that the weight of seven-year old cod, for example, has dropped pretty much throughout the whole of the Atlantic ocean since the beginning of the 1980s.
Mr. Bernier: I was speaking not of the size but of the food supplies.
Mr. Doubleday: Oh yes, the fish the cod preys on. What I have just said still applies. This drop in the weight of a given age might mean two things: the increasing scarcity of the fish supplies available to cod and a drop in the water temperature which would slow down the cod's activity as well as its biological function.
As far as capelin is concerned, we have seen substantial amounts of capelin being landed these last few years, about 100,000 tons in 1990. In 1991, foreign fishermen were allocated approximately 100,000 tons in the 3K division but the quota was not used up and I believe that a stop was put to capelin fishing in October. After 1991, very little capelin were fished in Canadian waters. I do not have the exact figures, but I believe it was something between 10,000 and 20,000 tons.
Mr. Bernier: Why was so little capelin caught? Was it because the stocks were low or was it because no one went fishing for capelin?
Mr. Doubleday: There are two reasons for that. The first is that at the time the market was down. The Canadian catch has never been very high. I think we never really took more than 50,000 tons. Most of the capelin was caught by foreign fishermen and sold outside the Canadian market. But, during the 1990s, demand for Canadian-caught capelin was lower than it had been previously.
The second reason is that as far as Canadian-landed capelin is concerned, the market is for a fish of a certain size whereas in the 1990s the size of capelin dropped. The same is true of cod. Furthermore, capelin are reaching spawning grounds later than before. Important ecological changes have occurred on the Atlantic coast. There is no demand for these small capelin and that is why in 1994 so few of them were fished.
[English]
Mrs. Payne (St. John's West): Dr. Doubleday, here's one of the things I wanted to point out to you. You may have some information on this.
You're talking about recorded catches of capelin. In those figures you would not, I presume, have any indication of the numbers of capelin that were caught and dumped. Or would you have any idea of how much was dumped?
Dr. Doubleday: I was describing the reported catches. I believe the reported catch includes the male capelin, which are not retained.
There may be some capelin that are pursed up, found to be unsatisfactory, then released with mortality. I don't have any figure for the extent of that.
.1305
Mrs. Payne: Do you have any idea about those figures? I have a good idea.
Dr. Doubleday: I don't have any specific information about the extent to which capelin may have been found unsuitable for the market and then released with mortality.
Mrs. Payne: Would you consider that with so much female capelin...virtually all the female capelin that could be caught were being caught? Can you speak to the effect that will have on the recovery of stock?
Dr. Doubleday: The Canadian catches of capelin, over at least the last ten years, have never been more than a few per cent of the spawning stock. They've been a small proportion of the spawning stock. There are some capelin fisheries in the world where a large proportion of the spawning stock is taken each year, but the Canadian fishery is not one of them.
[Translation]
I would now like to get back to the seals, a topic of great interest for all the members of this committee. We are actually poring over the latest data on the harp seal and I am not in a position to give you any results today since we have not yet arrived at the definite figures.
That being said, I can say something about the overall situation. At the beginning of the 1980s, at the time of the great controversy concerning the seal hunt, we estimated at a million and a half the harp seal population. We did an aerial survey in 1990 and estimated that population at 3,100,000.
At that time, we thought that the population was increasing because of a drop in hunting activity and estimated that the population was increasing at an annual rate of approximately 7%. If you start with a population of three million you get, with an annual increase of 7%, a population of approximately four million or four and a half million at the beginning of the 1990s. Our 1994 air survey made us think that that projection had been correct and in 1994 the harp seal population was around four or four and a half million.
We have also investigated the type of fish harp seals feed on. They feed on several types of fish. The harp seal exhibits no preference for any one type. Its diet changes from one year to the next, from one season to the next. They eat whatever is available. They tend to feed on fish measuring between 20 and 35 cm.
They feed on certain types of fish that hold no interest for commercial fishing. They mainly feed on capelin and polar cod. But they also feed on shrimp, cod as well as several other types of fish such as herring and smelt. It is clear then that harp seals consume substantial amounts of various types of fish, including types that are commercially fished but I am not in a position to give you the exact figures today.
.1310
Last year we published a numerical analysis for grey seals. The grey seal is another species of seal that can be found throughout the Canadian Atlantic zone. The grey seal is larger than the harp seal, and can weigh 400 kg. It is a large animal. However, there are far fewer of them than harp seals. We estimated that there were approximately 140,000 grey seals on the Atlantic coast in 1993, and that their numbers were increasing by approximately 12% a year.
We estimated that grey seals, which eat more cod in their diet than harp seals, consumed about 40,000 tons of cod in 1993, half was consumed on the Scotian shelf and the other half in gulf of St. Lawrence.
As I said with respect to the harp seal, the grey seal tends to eat small fish, fish that are smaller than those caught in the commercial fishery. This involves a considerable number of individual fish. We have estimated that this consumption of fish was significant enough to harm the recovery of the cod stocks, particularly on the eastern Scotian shelf. Thus it is clear that seals are an important part of the marine ecosystem and they do have an impact on other species.
Unfortunately... Oh! The fourth question.
[English]
Mr. Baker (Gander - Grand Falls): You said they are not a factor in the rebuilding of the stock. Is that correct? Is that what you just said?
The Chairman: No, he said exactly the opposite.
Mr. Baker: They are a factor.
The Chairman: Dr. Doubleday, what we've heard in the past - and I'm glad it was clarified - was that there was no scientific evidence to support -
Mr. Baker: That the seals ate cod.
The Chairman: Not that they ate cod, but that the seals were a cause of the collapse of the cod stock; that - I heard this in New York last year; George, do you remember - that because of the 1% remaining stock, the number of seals was a significant factor in the slow recovery, or lack of recovery, of the stock. Would you agree with that?
Dr. Doubleday: The specific statement was made about cod in the eastern Scotian Shelf. We said in our stock status report last year that this consumption was sufficiently high that it could be impeding the recovery of that stock.
We have not produced the quantitative estimates for the harp seal at this point. About northern cod, which of course is the most important single cod stock in the northwest Atlantic, it's the harp seal that is most abundant in that area. Grey seals are sometimes found as far up as halfway up the coast of Labrador, but they're not very abundant in the northern cod area. It's the harp seal which is the main seal in that area.
The Chairman: So?
Dr. Doubleday: So the grey seal conclusions don't apply to grey seals in the northern cod area.
The Chairman: Are you saying they are not a problem with the recovery of the stock, or you do not have quantitative data that would indicate they are a problem?
Dr. Doubleday: What I'm saying is that the public statement we made last year, the definite one -
The Chairman: No, I know that. You clarified that.
Dr. Doubleday: - is cirumscribed to grey seals -
The Chairman: - on the eastern Scotian Shelf.
Dr. Doubleday: - affecting cod on the eastern Scotian shelf. Work is under way right now, and nearing completion, on harp seals in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and Newfoundland.
The Chairman: When is the conclusion to that coming?
.1315
Dr. Doubleday: I expect it will be in about the next six weeks or so.
The Chairman: So the scientists should be able to make some recommendations about the pressure the harp seal is putting on the recovery of the cod stock in those areas?
Dr. Doubleday: I'm expecting what we'll have at this point is an estimate of what is consumed. I'm not sure we'll have turned that into what it means.
The Chairman: How long does that take? Each day we wait there are more of those little cod that you're not catching. They're probably getting eaten by harp seals.
Dr. Doubleday: Producing an estimate of what is assumed, I think you'll agree, is a significant advance.
The Chairman: I agree it's a significant advance, but I think you'd agree there's been great controversy over the years as to whether or not the seals have played any role in the decline of the stock and whether or not their preponderance on the Scotia Shelf and in the other zones is having an impact on the recovery.
We seem to be doing everything else. We've stopped our commercial fishermen from fishing. We've gone after foreigners for fishing and overfishing. There's another predator out there that's called the seal, but it seems we're unable to conclude anything on that terribly quickly.
Dr. Doubleday: Mr. Chairman, this is a significant piece of research, and inevitably it will be a controversial one. Consequently we want to be very careful to ensure our results will stand.
The Chairman: Okay. It seems it's easier to get rid of the Spanish than it is to get rid of the seals. - Anyway, one more question.
[Translation]
Mr. Doubleday: Mr. Bernier asked another question. He asked what the level of the fisheries would be when they will be resumed. Is that correct?
Mr. Bernier: I was referring to the levels for various stocks. You say here that you are waiting 14 years for northeastern Newfoundland, because the stocks there totalled 125,000 or 200,000... in the southern part of the Gulf, in three years... in the past the average harvest was 50,000 tons. Is that the level fishermen should expect, or will it be lower?
Mr. Doubleday: We've had significant changes in the productivity of cod stocks in the last 30 years. In the case of northern cod, over 500,000 tons were caught for several years in the 60s. However, catches were in the 200,000 ton range throughout the 80s. The figure is much lower, but the catches were nevertheless substantial.
In the case of cod stocks, productivity is much lower now than it was 15 or 20 years ago. The weight of individual cod has dropped considerably as well. That means that at the moment, 1 million cod now weigh about half of what the same number of cod weighed in the past.
There's been a climate change along the Atlantic coast, with a systematic drop in water temperatures which is associated to a reduction in the weight of individuals. At this time, we are not able to predict whether there will be a reversal of this cooling trend and thus an increase. We cannot predict whether the weight of individual cod will return to what it was in the past.
We are unable to forecast today what climate changes will occur. For years, everyone thought that climate changes had been very gradual for 100 years, with a one or two degree change in temperature. Now, we know more, and we realize that there may have been some fairly significant changes happening over five or ten years. However, we cannot forecast what will happen in the future.
The only thing I can say is that we cannot be confident that the level of productivity will be the same as it was in the past. It may remain at a lower level. It may return to a level that is between the best level, and the type we have seen recently. I simply cannot say. However, we cannot be confident that we will go back to the levels we saw during the best periods in the past.
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[English]
Mr. Bernier: This is my last question.
The Chairman: Okay, if it's a short question and a short answer. I'm wondering why there are not more scientists in politics. He gives good political answers.
Mr. Baker: He's been around for some time.
[Translation]
Mr. Bernier: In reaching your conclusion, Mr. Doubleday, you say in your summary at the beginning: ``The future groundfish fishery will have to adapt to the lower level of productivity that seems to exist.'' This is in the last line of the fourth paragraph. This means that as a committee, this is the type of level we should be looking at. If we say that the lowest level of productivity or the last year in which fish were caught in 2J3KL, for example, was 140,000 tons, that would be the maximum we should be looking at.
This helps us understand why - and here I am getting into politics - Mr. Tobin is talking about reducing catches by 50%. That is the message we should be passing on to our people in our various communities, because yesterday we had HRDC wondering about how many individuals they would be working with. No one is doing anything for the time being. We are asking you, as scientists, whether the evidence you have is the maximum that could happen. You do not yet know what the worst case scenario could be. That is what I do understand.
Dr. Doubleday: In the 1960s, productivity throughout the northern Atlantic was very high. I think 500,000 tons of cod were caught in Greenland and over one million tons in Norway. That was the best fishing period. I think we would be very optimistic to forecast a return to the numbers we had during that time. It could happen, but it would be very optimistic to make plans on this basis.
The recovery we saw after the establishment of our fishing zone did not bring us back to the level that existed in the 1960s. There was an increase, but we did not reach the maximum we had seen in the past. If conditions were similar to those we have at the moment, with lower weight cod, we could not achieve the same levels of catch we saw in the early 1980s.
[English]
The Chairman: It's hard to say that the same catch would take twice as much fish at the same....
Dr. Doubleday: In some stocks, yes. Actually, that was a calculation I did for 1991. I compared 1991.... Or was it 1990? One of those years I'd compared it with ten years earlier and the catching weight was almost identical, and there were twice as many individuals in the catch in northern cod.
Mr. Baker: Dr. Doubleday, are you aware of the cod hatcheries where they're trying to grow cod at various places on the east coast of Canada?
Dr. Doubleday: I'm aware that there has been some experimental work on raising cod from eggs in hatcheries and that it is being done on a small scale in Norway.
Mr. Baker: Getting small cod and putting them in a confined area, and they're actually growing them. There are several of these projects in eastern Canada that the federal government has funded. Are you aware of those?
Dr. Doubleday: I'm aware that there has been some work that we've been involved in.
Mr. Baker: Where are they getting the cod from?
Dr. Doubleday: My recollection is that these started a couple of years ago and they were taken from contract catches on a very small scale.
Mr. Baker: Are you aware of cod being brought from Russia, for example, to put into these pens?
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Dr. Doubleday: No, I'm pretty sure that has not happened. Cod has been brought from Russia to be processed, but it was already dead.
The Chairman: You're talking about the pre-processing.
Mr. Baker: Dr. Doubleday, let me ask you a question I'm not sure you're going to answer. In your experience in suggesting quotas, especially to the international organization, the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization, when you're asked for your scientific advice and the scientists from Europe are asked for theirs, the Russians are asked for theirs and so on, why is it that your advice - from the yellow sheets I have - is usually not followed? Why is it, for example, that you didn't recommend a reopening of the fishery, say, in 3M four years ago, yet it was done? Why is it that you recommend, because of stock assessments, that substantial decreases take place and yet they don't take place? How do you feel about that as a scientist?
Dr. Doubleday: Mr. Baker, I think you're primarily referring to the fisheries commission of NAFO.
Mr. Baker: It is the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization.
Dr. Doubleday: They receive their advice from the scientific council of NAFO. It's not really a question of two independent sets of advice going up from the Canadian side and from the European side, but of a consensus report that's arrived at by scientists of all countries. So there isn't a difference in the scientific estimates in that case.
The reports, certainly for the Flemish Cap, have been extremely consistent for as long as I can remember in stating that the Flemish Cap stocks are overexploited and, depending on the year, the catches should be dramatically reduced or else the fishery should be closed.
I haven't been present at the NAFO fisheries commission, so I can't speak with any authority about how it works, but I would offer one observation. In the last couple of years, the fisheries commission has started to impose moratoria where necessary. It seems to be realizing now that it's necessary to take very strong conservation measures in some cases. But I really can't say why it arrives at the decisions it arrives at.
Mr. Baker: Is there one stock of turbot along the entire east coast of Canada, or are there several stocks of turbot along the east coast of Canada?
Dr. Doubleday: Well, the information is not completely conclusive. There is a small population of turbot in the Gulf of St. Lawrence that seems to be more or less self-contained. Turbot is also found all the way from the eastern Grand Banks to Davis Strait, and that seems to be essentially one continuous population.
Until last year, the NAFO scientific council considered all the turbot in Greenland waters to be also part of this stock, but tagging data that was produced by Greenland indicated that while turbot in the fiords of western Greenland may very well be coming from the offshore population, adults were not returning offshore. So that's quasi-distinct.
Aside from that, the best information we have indicates there is essentially one large population of turbot all the way from Davis Strait down to division 3NO.
The only area where there have been substantial amounts of spawning is in the Davis Strait.
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You can find some mature or ripe fish along the slope all the way from the Grand Banks up there, but the percentage that is mature in the older ages is considerably lower than it is farther north. We don't believe there is any really substantial spawning component separate from the whole stock with the Davis Strait spawning.
Does that answer your question?
Mr. Baker: The question I was going to ask you from that was this. Did your office then advise that a small percentage of the Canadian quota for turbot should be assigned to France in the last agreement, which was signed about three months ago?
Dr. Doubleday: The scientists don't advise on how fish is allocated. We provide information about how much fish there is, the implications of taking a certain level of harvest on the stock, but we don't advise on allocations.
Mr. Baker: There are at least four million harp seals right now, and their effect on the recovery of the cod stocks.... It's rather interesting that you pointed out the size of the fish they eat. Most fishermen would tell you, as well, they eat the stomachs of lumpfish and the stomachs of big codfish.
In the assessment you do - and I presume what you're analysing is the stomach contents of these seals - you're going to find the same results as the Malouf commission found, and you'll probably come to the same conclusion, which is really off-base.
Dr. Doubleday: With respect to the consumption of soft parts of larger fish, my understanding is that's primarily associated with fish that were already caught in a gill-net, for example, rather than free-swimming fish. Nevertheless, it may occur to some extent with free-swimming fish as well.
The work we're doing now on the seal diet is based on reconstructing the diet, primarily from hard parts such as otoliths that are found in the stomachs. What this gives us is the composition. The other part we need to calculate the overall consumption is how much food they consume. That's based on the energy requirements of the seal, and that depends on the size of the animal, its activity, and so on.
So the sampling gives us essentially percentages, which we then apply to the amount of food we know they would have to eat in order to live and grow.
Mr. Baker: That's exactly what the Malouf commission did.
Dr. Doubleday: The Malouf commission worked on frequency of occurrence, which is the data available to it in that time. We've taken this a step further now. Instead of saying ``Here's an otolith; it means there's a cod'', we're taking the otolith, measuring it, saying, ``That means there's a cod this big'', and working back from that point of view. That does change the picture considerably, because, for example, you might have quite a few small animals like shrimp, but they don't add up to the same weight as a single cod that's consumed.
Mr. Baker: I cover the northeast coast in my riding, and all of it is covered by the northern cod zone, 3K. If you speak to fishermen, the average captain will tell you that at times now you can see pans of ice with the heads, backbones and tails of cod in mounds on them. In fact, there's a book you can get written by Captain Peter Troake called Easter Seal.
The Easter Seal was a hospital ship that made its way up the northeast coast of Newfoundland to Labrador with the doctor aboard. The book tells of his sightings of these pans of ice as far as the eye could see with just the backbones and tails. So when you speak to captains they will tell you this, and that the scientists are all crazy because they don't understand that the seals eat the guts of large codfish.
.1335
If you go to the place where they have seals on display in Vancouver, the aquarium, and you ask the person who feeds the seals if there is any preference in fish, they'll say, ``Oh, yes, the prime one is salmon''. Then they can tell you down the line what the seal prefers.
So when you talk to ordinary people about seals you can see it fairly clearly, but when you ask a scientist about it, the scientist always balks and says, ``We haven't discovered that yet''. Sometimes that's very confusing.
We've been dealing with capelin here. Capelin is only a small portion of a cod's diet. There are also squid, herring and mackerel. Go out and catch a codfish with a jig or with a hook, and what would you put on the line? You'd put on a piece of squid, usually. You'd put a piece of mackerel or a piece of herring. You can put chewing-gum on there and catch a codfish with it.
The point is that the codfish eats all of the other species if they are small enough. It eats redfish. It eats grenadier. It eats everything you can think of.
Now, when does this come into play? For small cod, shrimp are a major source of feeding. Does this come into account when you assign quotas and when you look at the quotas that you're going to suggest for squid all along the Labrador coast? You're going to assign quotas. Well, you're not going to assign, but you're doing an assessment of squid, and right now we give it away as an underutilized species. Does this come into account?
This is what I was trying to get at the last time. Do you, as a scientist, sit back and say, ``The cod is here and we're going to have to try to bring it back up. What does it eat? Should we be giving all these quotas away as underutilized and in excess of our needs when maybe the codfish need it?''
Dr. Doubleday: We have taken a more ecological perspective in assessing the groundfish stocks since about two years ago, when we started off with a broad overview of all the species that are found in an area and their trends. Given the poor state of the cod stock and the importance of capelin as a prey species, there has been some discussion about capelin particularly and whether they should be fished at all.
My recollection of the scientific discussion to date has been that the Canadian strategy for harvesting capelin is very conservative. The quotas have been less than 10% of the spawning stock. So the Canadian capelin fishery is not large enough to be a real factor in how much capelin would be available for the cod.
With respect to squid, that's a difficult one. The main squid fishery in Canada is for the species ilex, which comes up in the Gulf Stream and in some years comes inshore in enormous numbers. In other years it's virtually absent. We don't project or forecast the abundance of that species.
My recollection is that the last major assessment of the ilex was in the nature of a risk analysis of what happens if you set the quota at what it is now and the squid don't show up, and what happens if they show up in large numbers, and so on? My recollection of the conclusions is a bit hazy because it's been a long time, but it's that the squid fishery is largely self-regulating. If they don't show, then the fishing pressure is very low whether or not there's a big quota. It didn't seem to be necessary to be more restrictive.
There are other species of squid in the waters off northeast Newfoundland and Labrador, but I don't think they're fished to any significant extent, if at all.
Mr. Baker: It's interesting to note that Canada is the only nation in the world that identifies underutilized species for use by foreign countries.
The Chairman: I think that's been on the record before. I'm not sure.
Mr. Wells (South Shore): Mr. Baker and I have discussed that at length on a number of occasions, but not today.
.1340
Dr. Doubleday, most of the discussion today has been about northern cod and cod generally. I want to expand that a little, if we might, into some of the other groundfish, especially haddock and pollock.
I want to change location a little. We can go to 4X and the Georges Bank area, and perhaps into the southern gulf, which I think is 4T. On the map that you had and that was circulated, we show in those areas in the southern gulf that we're looking at a three-year period. I know we're talking about relative resilience, but in my area, which is southwest Nova Scotia off the Shelburne area, we're looking at a four-year period, which takes into account the conditions, the warmer water, and the fact that the state of the fishery is not as bad, although it isn't good.
Could you give us some commentary on those areas, especially the 4X area, as far as the state of the fishery is concerned, not just for cod but also for haddock and pollock?
Dr. Doubleday: With respect to cod, like all the cod stocks, the 4X cod is essentially at the lowest level we've ever observed. The most recent several year-classes have all been rather poor since about 1989, and we don't see it turning up right away, in the next year or two. It has the potential to recover quite quickly if one or two strong year-classes come in, and as I pointed out yesterday, that fishery is open. A fishery is occurring on 4X cod.
With respect to pollock, it's a similar situation in that the pollock has also declined over the last couple of years and is now estimated to be at the lowest level we've observed. There's quite a bit of uncertainty in assessing pollock, more than for some of the other groundfish. They aggregate quite a bit and both the research vessel surveys and the commercial catch rates are subject to fairly wide fluctuations because of changes in distribution of pollock rather than changes in abundance. So we're less confident of year-to-year changes in the estimates of pollock than we are of cod.
The recruitment prospects in the near future for pollock are considered poor, so I do not think they will bounce back very quickly either.
The haddock in division 4X - I'm looking at the groundfish stock status report for last year, because I don't have the update, which will be coming out in about two months - are also at a low level. The research surveys indicate that the 1992 year-class, which is coming into the fishery now, is either average or above average. I think that's the only stock I've discussed today where I can say there are signs of a year-class coming in that is average or above average. That's for haddock in division 4X.
From the research vessel surveys, the spawning stock in division 4X is still very low and there are quite a few weak year-classes that are still in the fishery. So our advice last year was that the fishing effort should not increase in 1995. But there actually is a sign of a good year-class for that one. I understand that our recent surveys on Georges Bank have picked up a strong year class now. I forget now - I'll have to give you the information afterward, when I check it - whether it was in the cod or the haddock, but one of them has a good year-class coming in.
.1345
Mr. Wells: So everywhere we look in the Atlantic, you're saying the groundfish are at their lowest levels ever observed. There may be an exception with the haddock in 4X.
What's the major reason? Is there one major cause?
Dr. Doubleday: We haven't been able to identify a single cause for the declines or the low productivity. There are a number of factors. The fishing mortality during the late 1980s and early 1990s was quite high. It was far more than we intended. The proportion of the stock taken by the fishery was much larger than intended.
Mr. Wells: Is that your way of saying there was overfishing?
Dr. Doubleday: Yes, that's one way of saying it.
The Chairman: Are you also saying, by implication, the quotas were too high at that point?
Dr. Doubleday: In quite a few cases the quotas were higher than what corresponded to either the F0.1 target or what we called the 50% rule. During that period, quotas were being brought down, with the intention each year of moving halfway toward what we called an F0.1 target. That means taking about 20% of the fishable ages of cod each year. So you leave 80% in the water and catch 20%.
The 50% rule is based on the previous year in which you were somewhere above that. Maybe you were taking 40%, so you try to move to 30% instead of 20%.
With the stocks declining, those adjustments were always behind what was happening in the stock. So you were aiming to take, say, 30% of x, but it turned out the x was smaller by the time you got there. So quotas were higher than that which corresponded to either of the guidelines.
There are other issues as well. We can't quantify it very well, but we know there was a lot of dumping and discarding in a lot of these fisheries in the years around 1990. The fish were becoming smaller, and many of the ones being caught were not acceptable for landing, and they weren't landed. We have tightened up on that now, but in some fisheries large amounts of cod and other species were discarded.
I mentioned the seals. We've estimated that the grey seals in particular have been consuming quite large numbers of cod in some stocks. I didn't highlight it when I spoke earlier, but the grey seals, as well as the harp seals, are considerably more abundant now than they were ten years ago. The grey seals have been growing at about 12% per year. The harp seal herd is maybe two or three times what it was ten years ago.
We've also seen a steady cooling of most - but not all - of this area, with slower growth of cod, particularly, and some other species.
Mr. Wells: Is cooling the case in the 4X area?
Dr. Doubleday: No, not in 4X.
Mr. Wells: I'm trying to concentrate, if I might, on that area, in which there's a viable fishery. It's one that, if it's properly managed, will come back more quickly, because fish are still there. I'll concentrate there and go away from the problems of cold water of the northern areas. For my purposes anyway, can we concentrate on that area? I'm trying to find the reasons for the lowest levels ever in the area in which we have not ever had problems with cold water.
Dr. Doubleday: I can very broadly put it down to two things: weak year-classes, which mean few young fish are entering the fishery, and high mortalities of those that do.
The Chairman: Can you give us a reason?
A voice: What's the reason for those two?
.1350
Dr. Doubleday: It's not straightforward to establish cause and effect as to why the year-classes are strong and weak.
The Chairman: But Dr. Doubleday, could you just help us a bit? We aren't going to publish.... Well, we are going to publish what you say, but we're not going to say it's on the penalty of death or dismemberment in the Public Service of Canada.
We're merely lay people here. We're just trying to figure out what is likely to be the cause and effect. I have the same question as Derek. If this is because of a weak year-class, then what normally causes it?
Dr. Doubleday: I'll try to give as good an answer as I can to the committee, but this is a very complicated problem. It has been around for 100 years, but nobody's completely solved it.
When you're talking about animals such as seals, you can pretty well figure you have so many mature seals so you're going to have so many pups. But it's not at all like that with fish. You can have enormous variations from one year to the next in the success of spawning and producing a new year-class.
For most of the cod stocks, you normally have something like a factor of ten. You could have it back to back. One year you'll have a very strong year-class that's, say, 150 million cod, but in the next year you'll have a very poor one of 30 million. You know the stock hasn't changed that much from one year to the next and the presence of seals hasn't changed that dramatically from one year to the next, but there are a lot of hurdles a cod has to go through from being an egg to being recruited into the fishery.
Typically, with cod, under normal circumstances, you have something like a factor of ten between strong and weak year-classes when the stock is in the same abundance.
Haddock can be considerably more volatile. I think the most volatile groundfish stock in the world is the Georges Bank haddock, in which there's a factor of 100 between very weak and very strong year-classes. The strongest one ever recorded occurred in the mid-1960s. It was after a sequence of very weak ones.
All I can say is that the natural survival from egg to harvestable size is highly variable. Lots of factors can be in play. We're not out there monitoring every day. Even if we were, I don't think we could nail all of those factors down.
There's another way in which you can have a weak year-class appearing. It may not really have been weak, but a lot of young fish were caught and discarded. We suspect some of these year-classes were stronger than they appeared from the catches but substantial numbers were caught and discarded. Some might have been landed and sold but not reported.
Mr. Wells: You said there was a lot of dumping and discarding. Who was mainly responsible for that?
Dr. Doubleday: I can't be specific. It's one of those things in which you hear enough from enough people who know in order to realize it's occurring on a substantial scale. But I've never observed it myself, so I can't make a specific statement in front of the committee. I think it's common knowledge and correct that particularly in the late 1980s and early 1990s, significant amounts of cod and haddock were discarded.
Mrs. Payne: One of the things you didn't mention when you answered Mr. Wells's questions in terms of the factors for declining stocks is the fishing techniques and technology. You also mentioned to me that it's not something about which you have a lot of information. Or you're not sure just what effect this has on it.
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I would like you to give us some general opinion on what you feel the effects of otter-trawling and dragging for cod, shrimp, scallops, or any other species might have on the cod fishery.
Dr. Doubleday: I can make two specific statements there that may be of some interest to the committee. One is on the effects of trawling or dragging on the bottom and the animals that live in the bottom.
There have been several studies on this. We carried out one ourselves over the last few years under the northern cod science program. We picked an area that was not otherwise being fished and we set two parallel rows. We trawled one and left the other one alone, and then made a comparison. The results of that were reported at the northern cod symposium in St. John's last fall.
Mrs. Payne: Could I ask you what area that was?
Dr. Doubleday: That was on the northeastern Grand Banks, in division 3L.
You could detect that trawling had taken place. The doors were making furrows maybe 4 inches, 5 inches, 6 inches into the sand. It was a sand bottom. The trawl itself made very little impact on the bottom. This is something people find a bit hard to understand, but in the water the trawl weighs very little, because it's buoyant in the sea water. So the doors are heavy, but the trawl itself is essentially just neutral in buoyancy. We sampled with crabs and we couldn't find evidence of mortality of the benthos - the animals that were living in the bottom - from that study.
Other studies, particularly in the North Sea, have found that repeated trawling results in a change in the animals that live in the bottom. The longer-living, slower-growing, hard-shelled species tend to be replaced by faster-growing animals, particularly worms that don't have shells. Now, whether this is good or bad is quite debatable, because cod, particularly cod that are less than 30 centimetres long, eat these worms, and they would benefit from it.
So that's the effect of trawling on the bottom.
Another aspect of trawling that has been raised is the black catch or the unintended catch of other species. This can be a serious problem if the fishing practices are not responsible.
In recent years we've had observers on almost all the large trawlers and we've introduced changes in the way that, for example, the shrimp fishery is carried out. In the Canadian Atlantic shrimp fishery, for example, it is my understanding that in recent years the by-catches of small cod and redfish have been quite minor, although in some fisheries in some parts of the world they're very substantial. So depending on how it's carried out, when and where, and whether separator trawls or separator grates are used, trawling can be a very clean fishery or it can have a significant by-catch.
Mrs. Payne: I have a supplementary question. Having said that, and knowing full well that a trawler or a dragger can actually go after every single stock there is, because of the technology they have...would it not be your opinion that in fact - let's apply it to the foreign draggers, the foreign trawlers - they could very quickly destroy a stock?
Dr. Doubleday: Trawling can be a very efficient way to catch fish, but there are other ways that are quite efficient too.
Mrs. Payne: Yes, that's true.
The Chairman: We are fast approaching 2 p.m., when we must go to the House. I just have one final question for you. I think we can get a quick answer to this.
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As a scientist, can you tell me if there is a point when the size of the spawning stock of the species means it is commercially extinct? If there is, has this stock reached that point when you deal with the northern cod stock?
Dr. Doubleday: I'm not sure exactly what you mean by ``commercially extinct''.
The Chairman: ``Commercially extinct'' means it's not likely ever to return...because of the stock numbers - I'm trying to speak like a scientist here - it's unlikely it will soon return to a commercial size. Are we dealing with a commercially extinct species here?
Dr. Doubleday: I tend to think of ``commercially extinct'' as meaning sufficiently low in abundance that it's not worth catching. But if you think of commercially extinct as being unlikely to return to a level where a commercial harvest would be worth while, no, I don't think we've reached that point.
The Chairman: But by your first definition of ``commercially extinct'', the northern cod stock is a commercially extinct species. What's your definition, and according to your definition, is northern cod a commercially extinct stock?
Dr. Doubleday: Scientists normally become quite concerned when spawning stock biomasses fall below about 10% or 15% of normal levels. With northern cod we're well below -
The Chairman: You're at 99% below. So if it gets to 10% to 15%, the scientists get really concerned, and this stock is at 99%.
Dr. Doubleday: That's right. We would be very concerned if there were any fishery at this point. Now, whether or not a commercially viable fishery could occur on northern cod right now is a moot point. Our assessment is based primarily on the large offshore component, which has sustained the fishery for hundreds of years.
There are pockets of cod in the bays, where they overwinter. It might be quite possible for a few fishermen fishing locally to make a few dollars out of this small fishery on northern cod. I don't know if you'd call that commercially viable.
The Chairman: Are there any statistics, is there anything historically, that would indicate a stock that has gone down to 1% of its spawning size, biomass, has ever recovered? If there is, can you tell me what the species was?
Dr. Doubleday: I think the best comparison for cod is Greenland. During the 1800s cod came and went in the offshore area of Greenland.
The Chairman: Did it ever go down to 1%?
Dr. Doubleday: Several times. They didn't have research vessel surveys in those days, but the impression given in looking at the historical reports is that cod were absent, then cod were present, then cod were absent. Now the Greenland cod is linked to Iceland.... Larvae drift in there, so it's seeded by cod from Iceland. When conditions are favourable, an offshore spawning component becomes self-sustained.
The Chairman: But my question is, is there any scientific evidence that's quantifiable and that says somewhere in the world a stock has gone down to 1% naturally and has recovered?
Dr. Doubleday: With some of the pelagic species, the ones that live up in the water column, that's happened several times.
The Chairman: Has herring gone down by that much?
Dr. Doubleday: The California sardine and northern anchovy have alternated, where one of them will increase by a factor of 100% and the other one will drop down, and vice versa. The Japanese pilchard may produce harvests of millions of tonnes for a few years and then go down to a few thousand tonnes for a few years.
The Chairman: Down to about 1%?
Dr. Doubleday: Yes, in that order.
So it does happen.
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The Chairman: Thank you very much for coming today. We appreciate today how difficult the science is, and we appreciate even more how imprecise its conclusions can be when you deal with something as complex as the fishery. Thank you.
We'll come back at 3:30, folks.