Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Fisheries and Oceans
Issue No. 13 - Evidence - April 6, 2017
OTTAWA, Thursday, April 6, 2017
The Standing Senate Committee on Fisheries and Oceans, to which was referred Bill S-203, An Act to amend the Criminal Code and other Acts (ending the captivity of whales and dolphins), met this day at 8:35 a.m. to give consideration to the bill.
Senator Fabian Manning (Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Chair: Good morning, senators and guests. I'd like to welcome everybody. My name is Fabian Manning. I'm chair of the Standing Senate Committee on Fisheries and Oceans.
Before I give the floor to our witnesses, I would invite members of the committee and those filling in to introduce themselves first, beginning on my immediate right.
[Translation]
Senator Boisvenu: Senator Pierre-Hugues Boisvenu from Quebec. I am replacing Senator Enverga.
[English]
Senator Sinclair: Senator Murray Sinclair from Manitoba.
Senator Christmas: Dan Christmas from Nova Scotia.
[Translation]
Senator Forest: Éric Forest from Quebec, Gulf region.
Senator Gold: Senator Marc Gold from Quebec.
[English]
Senator Raine: Nancy Greene Raine from British Columbia.
Senator McInnis: Tom McInnis, Nova Scotia.
The Chair: We may have some more senators arriving shortly to join us.
The committee is continuing its examination of Bill S-203, An Act to amend the Criminal Code and other Acts (ending the captivity of whales and dolphins.)
We are pleased, this morning, to have guests before us. I ask them to introduce themselves first, before we begin our work this morning.
Andrew Trites, Professor, Marine Mammal Research Unit, Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries, University of British Columbia, as an individual: My name is Andrew Trites. I'm a professor at the University of British Columbia.
David Rosen, Research Associate, Marine Mammal Research Unit, Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries, University of British Columbia, as an individual: My name is David Rosen. I'm a researcher at the University of British Columbia.
Valeria Vergara, Research Associate, Vancouver Aquarium: My name is Valeria Vergara, and I'm a marine mammal research scientist at the Vancouver Aquarium.
The Chair: On behalf of the members of the committee, I thank you for taking the time to join us today and participate in our examination of Bill S-203.
I understand that we have some opening remarks, and then we will hear some questions from our senators. I think Mr. Trites is going to begin.
Mr. Trites: I'm a professor in the Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries, University of British Columbia, and Director of Marine Mammal Research Unit. I have been studying marine mammals for 37 years. My research encompasses field studies and laboratory and computer-based studies, as well as studies of animals in human care.
I've served and continue to serve on a number of advisory committees, including the marine mammal specialist group for COSEWIC, the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada. As such, I'm acutely aware of the threats and conservation challenges facing marine mammals in Canada, as well as the challenges marine mammals pose to fisheries in Canada.
I approached the Vancouver Aquarium 25 years ago to ask for their help to obtain information needed to save Steller sea lions, which had declined by 70 per cent in Alaska. Key information was needed to solve this mystery that could not be obtained from field studies. The aquarium's offer to collaborate, train and care for sea lions has now resulted in over 100 publications that have reshaped our understanding of why Steller sea lions are endangered in Alaska.
Many people will tell you that there is no need to study marine mammals held in aquariums because everything can be learned about them in the wild. This simply is not true. The fact is that much of what is needed to conserve and manage wild populations of marine mammals can only be obtained from studying individuals in aquariums. Field studies alone cannot provide all of the necessary knowledge.
For example, conserving animals in the wild requires knowing such things as how much food do marine mammals require; are they able to adapt to eating different food species that are moving northward because of climate change and warmer oceans; how does underwater noise from ships and marine traffic affect the ability of marine mammals to communicate and carry out important functions like hunting, breeding or rearing their young; and can marine mammals adapt to warmer water temperature or will they die or have to move further north.
Answering these sorts of questions starts by doing hearing tests, metabolic studies, thermal limit studies and digestive efficiency studies. These tests and studies can only be done on trained animals in facilities such as aquariums that can properly house and care for marine mammals. Animals in human care can be studied and monitored 365 days a year, while field studies are often restricted to summertime and studies of short durations.
As with many basic conservation questions, applying new technologies in the field also requires research with captive animals to calibrate instruments and sensors that can be mounted on marine mammals to measure movements, feeding and other behaviours; to assess the negative effect such instruments have on the energy requirements of marine mammals; and to validate and develop methods to assess whether animals in the wild are stressed due to food shortages, changes in nutritional quality of prey, movements of ships, the presence of industrial activities or other factors.
Being able to study calm and relaxed animals that have been habituated to human care ensures that researchers can determine normal stress levels and how they naturally change with age and time of year. In the absence of captive studies, erroneous conclusions about stress levels detected from hormone concentrations in the breath and feces of cetaceans and pinnipeds are likely to be made that could have financial consequences to the coastal economies of Canada.
These examples are just some of the research questions that aquariums can answer to help to conserve and manage marine mammals, as well as to find solutions to mitigate the impacts of human activities on mammals without doing unnecessary harm to the welfare of Canadians.
I have devoted much of my life to caring about marine mammals and obtaining scientific data needed to protect them. I have learned that it requires both studies in the field and in human care, complemented by mathematical modelling studies. All three of these interconnected lines of research are needed to conserve and manage marine mammals in Canada. None can stand on its own to provide the scientific advice and insight that Canadians expect of its scientists and that the government has called for in its evidence-based approach to decision making.
Canada has been a world leader in marine mammal research and is recognized for its contributions to marine mammal science through studies undertaken in the wild and in human care in Canada. Canadian facilities caring for marine mammals have also been an invaluable resource for the international scientific community. Yet, precious little has been invested into understanding and protecting wildlife such as marine mammals compared to investments and advancements in human health.
Research findings from studies on animals in human care not only matter to the conservation of species in the wild, but they also have implications for the shipment of goods, transportation of people, seafood production, energy development, tourism and recreation, indigenous people, and Canada's economy and ability to provide social and other services.
The proposed bill to prevent cetaceans from being cared for in Canadian facilities is effectively a ban on obtaining critically important knowledge about marine mammals that cannot be obtained in any other way. It turns Canadians away from our obligations to marine mammals when there is a greater need now than ever before to understand and protect them.
It is naive to believe that all the needed knowledge can be gathered just by studying animals in the wild, especially given Canada's funding and geographic landscape. While I appreciate the emotional concern about the welfare of animals in human care, the bill's authors have not adequately considered the consequence for thousands of animals in the wild or the potential economic and social consequences to Canada and the coastal communities.
In conclusion, I believe the proposed bill undermines efforts of Canadians to conserve endangered and threatened populations of marine mammals. It effectively limits and may ultimately stop science, learning and attainment of needed knowledge, which in my opinion is an unjustified travesty that undermines our fundamental values as Canadians to understand, respect and protect our country's natural beauty and life. Thank you.
Mr. Rosen: Good morning and thank you for inviting me to speak on the proposed bill. I'm here as a senior scientist at the University of British Columbia who has conducted research with marine mammals for over 30 years in the laboratory, in the wild and in aquariums.
I've led workshops on the role of managed marine mammals in conservation science and chaired a report commissioned by the Government of Ontario on new regulations to ensure the welfare of cetaceans under human care.
I'm also a member of the zoos and aquariums certification subcommittee of the Canadian Council on Animal Care, but as a biologist and animal lover I appreciate the Senate's interest in ensuring the welfare of all animals maintained under human care.
This is historically an emotional issue, but as a scientist I'm trained to temper by opinions with scientifically verified facts.
I would therefore like to spend my opening time by directly addressing the issue of cetacean welfare science. Specifically, I will raise three areas where I think the proposed bill falters in the face of scientific facts.
The first point is whether there is a scientific basis for the underlying assumption that cetaceans encompass a unique group that are particularly distressed by being maintained in proper facilities. This is one of the central questions we addressed in the Ontario government report, where a team of notable marine mammal scientists reviewed the current scientific literature on the well-being of cetaceans and other marine animals in aquariums.
Now there is frequently talk of how cetaceans held under human care suffer psychologically due to their unusual cognitive abilities, as has been stated in previous testimony to this committee. However, an expert review commissioned for our report concluded that while cetaceans can perform certain tasks that are relatively uncommon among other groups of animals, there is no clear evidence that cetaceans can perform tasks that no other group of animals can perform and in some areas the performance of cetaceans fall short of the abilities of other groups of animals.
Perhaps more importantly, the expert summary states that the body of scientific evidence does not support the conclusion that the cognitive abilities of cetaceans make it impossible to properly attend to their psychological well- being in display facilities.
What about ensuring their physical well-being in an aquarium environment? Our report highlighted several aspects specific to the aquarium environment that can potentially cause stress in cetaceans, although none are unique to this group and all can be mitigated through proper husbandry and habitat design.
For example, Dr. Whitehead mentioned square concrete pools as echo chambers. What he did not mention, possibly due to a lack of familiarity with modern aquariums, is that acoustic parameters, habitat complexity and proper shape of pools is now part of standard North American designs.
If there is no scientific evidence the cetaceans inevitably suffer psychologically or physically by being held in well- maintained aquariums, does that mean that Canadian institutions are somehow inferior in their standards of care? I would suggest the opposite is true.
Canada has emerged as a global leader in science-based standards of care for marine mammals. Canada's Accredited Zoos and Aquariums, CAZA, has adopted the recommendations for the care and maintenance of marine mammals produced by the Canadian Council on Animal Care, as commissioned by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. These are a set of best practices formulated by an independent agency whose sole mission is to ensure animal welfare.
This brings up a third point that I think is important for the committee to consider. It's my observation that much of the debate, including some of it before this committee, is focused on the outdated idea of going out to the wild to capture cetaceans solely for entertainment and profit. I suggest this is an outdated concern for Canadian institutions.
What we need to be discussing is how to provide the best possible care for a worldwide population of cetaceans that already exist under human care, those that may be born into aquariums in the future, wild whales that are injured as a result of human activities and cannot be released to the wild and, sadly, members of those species such as the vaquita whose very existence is likely reliant on being brought into protective care.
Open water sanctuaries as alternate care facilities sound idyllic, but in my opinion they are impractical in the foreseeable future and appear fraught with problems, including their own impacts on cetacean welfare.
I ask this committee to consider why Canada would choose at this time to forsake our responsibility to these animals. The rules followed by Canada's zoos and aquariums are among the most modern in the world. Canada is also a leader in coordinating global research efforts to improve the science of animal welfare. This is the time when Canadian institutions should be playing a greater role in ensuring the welfare of animals under human care, not disengaging from their obligations.
Thank you.
The Chair: Mr. Rosen, I note with interest that you received your Ph.D from Memorial University in my home province of Newfoundland and Labrador.
Ms. Vergara: Good morning, and thank you very much for inviting me here today. I am a marine mammal researcher and have been studying belugas both in aquarium settings and in the wild for the last 14 years, since 2002. Today I simply want to share this trajectory with you and I hope that this will help inform the very difficult and complex decision that you have ahead of you.
I really want to start by noting the significance of the fact that we are here in the nation's capital discussing these things. We have come such a long way as a society. We are essentially discussing things that involve the welfare and the subjective experiences of a fellow species. This would have been unheard of decades ago. We have gone a long way in our compassion toward non-human animals. I hope fundamentally we all agree on the fact that we share this compassion.
One of my goals when I began work at the Vancouver Aquarium in 2002 was to understand how studies in captive settings can inform studies in the wild, especially when we are looking at things like communications processes. Cetaceans tend to be a very loquacious species. Belugas are among the most loquacious of all, almost as loquacious as human beings, and studying communication processes in the wild is exceedingly difficult.
My general approach has been to take advantage of these processes with which animals can be watched and recorded in aquariums, and then use the results and ideas from this research as a springboard for research in the wild.
In early research at the Vancouver Aquarium I was able to identify one of the functions of one of the calls in their large repertoire, namely the contact call that maintains group cohesion and serves for mothers and calves to stay together and maintain contact.
When you have findings in aquariums you always want to go to the wild and test these findings. I was able to identify the same contact calls in three populations in the St. Lawrence, the Nelson River estuary and Cunningham Inlet. I spent some time in all these areas.
At the aquarium I was also able to follow in much detail the development of the repertoire of a beluga calf, Tuvaq, born in 2002. Tuvaq taught us essentially that beluga calves learn much like human babies. They are not born knowing these sounds. They need to learn them from the group they are with. This particular contact call is totally underdeveloped when they are first born. During the first few weeks of life the contact calls are hard to hear. They are lower in frequency, which makes them a lot more vulnerable to underwater noise and to masking by underwater noise.
This brings us to the issue of underwater noise, which is intimately related to the issue of cetacean communication. Sound transmits much more efficiently in water and over vastly greater distances. Levels of underwater human generated noise has increased to staggering rates over the decades and include things line military sonar and seismic air guns for oil and gas exploration, shipping and recreational vessel traffic. Cetaceans including belugas depend on sound for pretty much every aspect of their lives. Noise pollution is a really serious threat to them.
To make the problem worse, we all know the Arctic is rapidly losing ice. It is opening up to things like shipping. We don't know how the increased accessibility to Arctic areas will impact beluga whales, particularly mothers and calves.
I wanted to answer this question by targeting a pristine area. There are very few remaining. Cunningham Inlet is one. It's in the High Arctic and is summering home for the Eastern High Arctic Baffin Bay population of belugas. There is no noise yet.
In 2014 and 2015, I spent a number of weeks there collecting a baseline on communication processes focusing on the contact calls that we will learn to understand at the aquarium, to help us interpret the vocal responses to noise in noisier areas. The data showed us that the underdeveloped contact calls identified at the aquarium, which are more vulnerable to noise masking, are associated with the presence of calves in the wild, thereby validating my results.
We used both the results from the aquarium and from the Arctic to inform our current ongoing study in the St. Lawrence River estuary with our partners GREMM, the Group for Research and Education on Marine Mammals. The St. Lawrence population is reproductively isolated from the rest. Recently, in September 2016, it was declared endangered by the Species at Risk Act because of its failure to recover.
Since 2008, the belugas in the St. Lawrence have been dying. They have been found stranded on the shores in record numbers. We don't know why, essentially. Various factors are believed to play a role. It could be toxic algae blooms. We know that was the case in 2008. It could be ecosystem shifts because of climate change, pollution and noise disturbance. We are focusing on the latter, on noise disturbance.
The St. Lawrence is an exceedingly noisy place. We are testing the idea that underwater noise interferes with mother/ calf acoustic communication. This can be energetically costly at best, or apparently they may fail to reunite when they separate.
Acoustic responses to noise like this can be much more reliably evaluated if we know what we are looking at and if we know the function of sound that is being interrupted. Our knowledge and familiarity with these contact calls is a key piece of puzzle. We would not be able to carry on this kind of work without understanding these calls. This project is an example of how research starting at an aquarium can inform research in the wild.
Thank you.
The Chair: You certainly have put forward some interesting comments. I look forward to the questions from our senators.
Senator Gold: I spent three very happy years doing a law degree at UBC so it's very nice to welcome you. I also learned something about cross-examination at UBC. I have a law degree, so it's a professional deformation. I say that only half in jest because I also had a career as an academic. I know something about the challenges to do empirical research, especially in the field, and the funding that comes with it. I was a university administrator for 16 years at the University of Montreal, where I also had occasion to struggle with funding. I will ask you questions that are in good faith but are part of my professional deformation.
Before I ask you the substantive questions, just tell me about the Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries. How is it funded? By whom is it funded? How is your personal research funded?
Mr. Trites: The Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries is quite a diverse group of scientists, professors, research associates, post-doctoral fellows and graduate students. We have a diversity of skills and interests that range from marine mammals, to fisheries economics, to stock assessments, to ecosystem modelling. Funding comes through grants. We are funded by NSERC. We are funded by private foundations. It is the general suite that anyone in academia does in looking for money. We receive money from DFO. We receive money from the U.S. government through the National Marine Fisheries Services.
We have expertise in a wide area. We have some of the brightest minds in Canada working on fisheries and oceans issues. Sometimes we are asked to help directly, but the constituents include everything from NGOs, to the fishing industry, to First Nations, to government agencies.
Does that answer your question?
Senator Gold: I hesitate to probe. I know it will change from year to year and from researcher to researcher, but to what degree, if at all, is your funding provided by zoos, aquaria and industry?
Mr. Trites: We don't receive any funding from zoos and aquariums. In our case we have been raising grants that we have brought to support the research we have done for seals and Steller sea lions. The aquarium will provide in kind. Certainly they provide the care. In some cases they are providing paid staff time to support us, but we are not receiving any money from them.
Does that answer your question?
Senator Gold: It does, thank you. I can now turn to the substance of my questions.
Accepting that research on cetaceans in captivity can be valuable, as you've all pointed out, the question still remains whether the potential harm or the harm to the cetaceans might outweigh the benefits. We've heard, as you know, evidence to that effect.
I have an observation and then two questions. As I understand the bill that's before us, animals that are rescued and cannot for whatever reason be released back into the wild are exempted from the scope of this bill in the sense that they can still remain under human care and be the object or the subject of research. Do I understand that correctly?
Mr. Trites: I believe so.
Senator Gold: There will continue to be cetaceans available for the research that you and your colleagues are doing. That said, can you describe the state of the scientific consensus, if there is a consensus, or the division of opinion within your community of scholars vis-à-vis the harm to cetaceans in captivity?
I ask that because even though cetaceans might not be as smart as we say they are doesn't mean that they might not be affected in many different ways by not being able to dive as deep as they normally dive, swim as broadly or widely as they can, or hear as best they can in the wild. Where is the science?
Mr. Rosen: The science like most scientific opinion is not unanimous. As scientists we tend to look in the scientific literature for what has been peer reviewed; in other words a generalized consensus from fellow scientists as worthwhile science. Even within that there are differing opinions.
What you tend to hear when you talk about cetaceans in captivity is that they are not able to do the precise things that they do in the wild. The underlying assumption is that this is a negative thing for them.
When we reviewed the literature on the welfare of cetaceans we took the tack of asking whether there was evidence that being maintained under human care had a particular impact on cetaceans. We started with the premise that there is nothing unethical about keeping animals under care in zoos and aquariums. Then we asked if there was a particular problem with cetaceans. The consensus of the scientific review was that there is no evidence that cetaceans as a group are not amenable to proper care under humans.
A cetacean is a very broad categorization of animals. In any broad category of animals there will be some that are more easily kept under human care than others, and within any type of animal there will be individuals that are more easily kept under human care.
A lot of what we hear about the specific examples of animals that are doing poorly under human care is just specific individuals and not groups of animals. Yes, there are animals, no matter what animal you might look at that is under human care, that do well and those that do not. However, there is no scientific evidence that cetaceans as a group fare poorly under that type of regime.
Senator Gold: Then how do you explain the evidence about the actual behaviour they exhibit in captivity that is apparently not exhibited in the wild such as logging, if I recall, or the effects on their fins and so on? There seems to be many examples where cetaceans are not as active, not as vibrant or not as interested in their day-to-day life as they are in the wild. Is that not in some sense harm of a kind?
Mr. Rosen: First of all, equating the welfare of an animal with the same set of behaviours they perform under human care and in the wild is incorrect. I think you are starting off in many of these arguments with the wrong premise that if an animal does not do the same repertoire of behaviour it is necessarily in poor welfare.
However, there are anecdotes of certain specific individuals that do not do well in facilities. I'd like to emphasize two points on that. One is anecdotal and one is individuals. If you look through the scientific literature, a lot of this anecdotal evidence was relatively early in our experience of keeping cetaceans.
We have not kept cetaceans in human care for very long compared to other animals, particularly large cetaceans. There has been a learning curve within the zoo and aquarium community, as there has been with every animal kept under human care. We are learning more and more about animal nutrition. We're learning more and more about things like animal enrichment to keep them actively engaged. The emphasis has switched to understanding and appreciating the welfare of the individuals.
I would not want to go through each individual anecdote to any extent, but what I can say is that the number of instances within scientific literature has declined dramatically over the last decade.
Mr. Trites: If I could add one thing to that, there is a tendency for people to quote the maximum depth recorded for an individual animal of a given species or the furthest distance it has swum as though somehow those are the conditions that one should be providing for them in a captive setting.
What is missing in that discussion is the fact that the reason an animal dives deep is that it is looking for food. The reason why it swims a long distance is because it is looking for food or trying to avoid being eaten by a predator such as a killer whale.
If an animal is protected from predation and if an animal is being fed, it doesn't need to do what it is doing in the wild. One has to understand the pressures that result in the field data that we record.
The bottom line in designing pool size is: Is an animal fit? Is it physically fit? Is it mentally fit? It is up to the trainers, the animal care staff, to ensure that animals are fit in the same way we encourage our Canadian children to take part in what we call ParticipACTION. It is about being active so that an animal is fit. As long as the conditions are being provided, the animals would not need to migrate long distances or to dive to deep depths.
Senator McInnis: It is extremely interesting to hear from you this morning. Mr. Rosen, you headed a team of scientists that did quite a study. I think it was the preface or the beginning of legislation, or the genesis behind legislation in Ontario. Is that correct?
Mr. Rosen: Ye, it was a scientific review to inform their policy on whether regulations could be put into place that would ensure the welfare of cetaceans under human care.
Senator McInnis: Yes. The report states, "It is our opinion that the present standards of care that apply to marine mammals in public display facilities are insufficient,'' and you start with the premise that it is generally accepted for mammals to be kept in aquariums. As well, your report called for a number of improvements, one being an animal welfare committee, and six or seven other changes with respect to standards.
It seems that it is going against what you are saying, unless you can tell me this morning that all of those changes have been made to standards, that there is an animal welfare committee and that type of thing. Have those things been implemented?
Mr. Rosen: To some degree they have been implemented. Perhaps I could clarify this statement that you started with. The current welfare regulations were insufficient, which was one of the conclusions of the report. This was based on the current regulations in Ontario under the OSPCA Act which were largely concentrated on cats and dogs.
The Ontario government essentially asked the following questions: "Are these generalized cat and dog and farm animal regulations sufficient for our inspectors from the OSPCA to go into a facility and judge the welfare of cetaceans'' and "Can the welfare of cetaceans be upheld in an aquarium under new regulations?'' We said that the regulations were insufficient because there essentially were no regulations at that point.
The Government of Ontario started implementing some new regulations. They have not implemented all of the recommendations. One of the main recommendations we came out with was acceptance of the Canadian Council of Animal Care standards for marine mammals. They have not turned that into legislation but Canada's Accredited Zoos and Aquariums or CAZA, which is an accreditation body, has implemented those recommendations. Although they are not legislated to accept that, by accepting accreditation by CAZA all Canadian institutions now uphold those regulations.
Senator McInnis: In effect, they are there but they are just not the law.
Mr. Rosen: They are there. They are not regulated by the government, but they are essentially regulated by the accrediting industry.
Senator McInnis: I have another quick question. Ms. Vergara, you mentioned directly one of the results of studies in captivity with respect to the belugas in the St. Lawrence.
Could you provide some other examples of research and studies that have been conducted with animals in captivity that have been of assistance to those in the wild?
Ms. Vergara: Absolutely. A seminal piece of work was that of Christine Erbe. She conducted captive studies at the Vancouver Aquarium starting in the mid-1990s. She was really the first person to test the interference of noise with real communication sounds.
She was only able to do this work because she had an extremely cooperative whale Aurora that was able to say things like yes or no. It heard a sound or didn't hear a sound by pressing a paddle. She took these results to the wild and did some complex modelling. She was able to affirm things like the radius of masking that can occur with certain propeller noises extending as far as 22 kilometres from the source. She was able to determine to what extent icebreaker noise affects beluga whales. Her earlier papers are widely quoted nowadays. They really have been the springboard for a lot of the research on masking.
I think another example is phenomenal. I wish we could do further studies on the ability of a false killer whale to cover his ears without hands. This was studied by Paul Nachtigall of the University of Hawaii. The false killer whale is able to dampen or lower the hearing sensitivity when there is a loud sound. This is something you could never be able to find out in the wild.
Furthermore, it has implications to help whales in the wild because what the doctor found after discovering that whales actually had this ability was that if you give the whale a warning about nine seconds before a loud sound by playing a soft sound, the whale learns to cover its ears before the loud sound is broadcasted. This has great implications for industry sounds in the wild. We know that false killer whales can do this. We don't know if beluga whales can do this, for example. We don't know which other species of cetaceans have this capability.
Another thing we have discovered with animals under human care is the masking of echolocation sounds. This was done decades ago when we thought that shipping noise was the most intense at low frequencies and that shipping noise really wasn't all that important at high frequencies. However, as recently as last year there were new studies because we have new technology and better hydrophones that show at closer ranges of about three kilometres shipping noise covers a large broadband of up to about 96 kilohertz.
These are the ranges that a lot of urban whales such as the St. Lawrence whales very often find themselves in. We do not know how echolocation is affected or echolocation capabilities are affected by these kinds of noises. These are the kinds of studies we can do in aquarium settings.
Senator McInnis: As we speak today is this research continuing in Marineland and in Vancouver?
Ms. Vergara: I'm not sure about Marineland. Unfortunately at the Vancouver Aquarium we have lost our beluga whales, but it would be research that we absolutely could conduct. There is current ongoing research with Chester, the false killer whale. His vocalizations and vocal development have been monitored since he was brought in as a neonate, essentially. We are also monitoring the noise in the exhibit to understand how things like external noise transfers into the habitat and might or might not affect the animals to provide better standards and better regulations for noise in aquaria.
[Translation]
Senator Boisvenu: Thank you very much for your very scientific presentation. I too am torn between animal protection and scientific research. I worked for Quebec's wildlife ministry for 10 years. When we were doing inventories to determine the capacity of bodies of water, I remember we had to install nets and catch fish. That angered the fishers a bit, but there was no other way of learning more about the bodies of water.
When you review this bill, which is designed to protect animal health, and consider the scientific importance of keeping this kind of mammal in captivity, do you think it is possible to find a compromise between the two? I would be more favourable to the scientific side rather than a total ban, which seems a bit ridiculous scientifically speaking. Is it possible to find a compromise between your scientific objectives and the bill's objective of animal protection? Is it black and white or might there be a grey area in between?
[English]
Mr. Rosen: Thank you for your question. I actually disagree that this is a bill, as I see it, about animal welfare because we're not talking about not bringing animals into captivity. We're not talking about going out and capturing a pod of killer whales. That's not the question that should be in front of us. We have these animals under human care. We have a responsibility. The question is: How do we ensure that?
I would argue quite strongly that banning them from display is not the way to ensure their welfare. If you are looking for a compromise I would suggest we perhaps need to strengthen the regulations on ensuring that these animals in our care are well cared for.
[Translation]
Senator Boisvenu: I also understand that there are injured animals in certain zoos that you keep in captivity because releasing them into their natural environment would be fatal for them. I am thinking in particular about the Amos zoo where deer, moose and bears that may have been injured are held. They could not be released because that would be a death sentence. You also have such animals in your aquariums, injured animals that you keep. This bill would stop you from keeping such animals in your care, would it not?
[English]
Mr. Rosen: I don't have a legal mind, but as I interpret the bill it's unclear what would happen to the animals currently under human care in Canadian institutions. It scares me a lot. It strikes me a bit locally as not in my backyard. If we are worried about the welfare of the animals, the Canadian institutions are the best place to ensure the welfare of these animals.
I am concerned about the three groups of animals that are already under human care, those that will be brought into human care because they are injured. Sadly, we are now looking at a scientific and human community having to rescue species by bringing them under human care. I mentioned the vaquita but there are other species as well where there are active plans to basically use aquariums as an ark.
[Translation]
Senator Boisvenu: Are there any countries that have considered similar regulations but backed off based on the scientific evidence that such a bill would undermine science rather than support it? Have any countries considered similar regulations, but stopped short of adopting them after a presentation such as yours this morning?
[English]
Mr. Trites: I'm not aware of any other countries. The United States would certainly be number one in terms of being the only country in the world that has a law protecting a single group or species, the Marine Mammal Protection Act. On the global stage North Americans tend to be more sensitive to the needs of marine mammals than other countries around the world.
Mr. Rosen: If I could speak to one other example, the United Kingdom essentially did not ban cetaceans in aquariums but they proposed regulatory changes that would effectively ban them. The whales already in the country had to be transferred to other aquariums out of their jurisdiction, some of which with highly questionable standards of animal care. It created another problem and it shirks responsibility in my opinion.
Mr. Trites: You were perhaps suggesting there might be a compromise between protecting animals and doing research as though the two are diametrically posed. The reality is that researchers care passionately about the animals they study. We abide to the highest standards of animal care and our No. 1 concern is for the welfare of the animals. The research, compassion and protection of animals, are very much intertwined.
[Translation]
Senator Forest: First of all, let me say that I am a bit surprised that scientists of your calibre are not able to clearly interpret the provisions. You have read Bill S-203, which clearly states that the paragraph does not apply to anyone who owns, has the custody of or controls a cetacean that is kept in captivity at the coming into force of this section and remains in captivity thereafter. So it is quite clear that the law does not apply to those who currently have cetaceans in captivity.
As to paragraph 445.2(3)(b), it stipulates that the paragraph does not apply to a person who:
(b) has the custody of or controls a cetacean that is kept in captivity for the purpose of providing it with assistance or care or to rehabilitate it following an injury or another state of distress.
I think the bill is quite clear in this regard. I am saying this for the sake of the clarity of the transcript of this meeting.
Mr. Rosen, on one hand, you are saying that people go out to sea to capture cetaceans, and that this is indeed an important aspect. What concerns me a great deal about this bill is the fact that cetaceans — Bill S-203 pertains specifically to cetaceans — have special characteristics in terms of acoustic sensitivity and their way of life, they dive deep and move around a great deal. I think you said initially that they could survive in captivity, but would the design of new aquariums reduce the negative impact of sound reverberations in order to give cetaceans a better way of life?
[English]
Mr. Rosen: Those are very interesting questions, senator. On the question of whether their welfare is impacted in aquariums, as I said, the scientific evidence does not support that is occurring. Certainly a chief concern of keeping cetaceans in captivity is the acoustic environment.
You heard from Dr. Whitehead about how square tanks can act as echo chambers. That is certainly a concern. About 20 years ago aquariums weren't that concerned about the acoustic environment that whales were kept in. Now it is a greater concern. There is an active modernizing of their pools. There are new designs to change the acoustic profile.
Even among scientists in the wild there isn't agreement over what the sound issues are in pools. Certainly loud noises are a problem, but Dr. Paul Sponge, another B.C. scientist, says the problem with many pools is that they are too quiet. It is finding the middle ground that is best for the welfare of animals.
When I talk about the science of the well-being of animals, there are scientific measures, such as hormone levels and health measures that we as scientists use to evaluate the welfare of animals. We are trying to come up with a quantitative measure and use quantitative measures to assess the health of all animals in our zoos and aquariums.
Pools designs have changed dramatically since the old days of let's just put a square pool and fill it with concrete. For example, aquariums now know that a lot of the noise that disturbs cetaceans comes from the machinery used to clean their pools. If you look at modern aquariums, they have gone to great lengths to separate the mechanical noise from what is perceived in the pool. There have been huge changes on improving the acoustic environment of whales because of the suggested impact of this on their environment.
[Translation]
Senator Forest: You are a member of the accreditation board of the Canadian Association of Zoos and Aquariums. Cetaceans are currently held in captivity at two locations in Canada: at Marineland and at the Vancouver Aquarium. Since these aquariums were designed, have there been changes to the pools?
[English]
Mr. Rosen: I cannot speak about Marineland. I have no direct knowledge of that. I know the Vancouver Aquarium has gone to lengths to improve the acoustic profile of their pools, not just directly for the holding of the pools but, for example, when there is construction nearby. Even though we don't perceive that as humans it has a possible detrimental effect.
In my association with the aquarium I know they set up sensitive monitoring during that process to ensure that none of the construction in the park was negatively impacting the whales in the tanks.
[Translation]
Senator Forest: I have a question for Mr. Trites. You know that Bill S-203 pertains specifically to cetaceans. Are sea lions cetaceans?
[English]
Mr. Trites: No, they are not cetaceans but they are marine mammals and they require much of the same.
[Translation]
Senator Forest: The bill does not prohibit holding marine mammals in captivity; it pertains to cetaceans.
[English]
Mr. Trites: I realize that. However, to appreciate the types of research questions that are being asked about marine mammals, we are much more advanced and further along in studying seals and sea lions in Canada largely due to the issues with our fisheries, the hunt we have had, and the needs for indigenous people.
We can use that as a model to recognize how we are just on the very tip of knowledge with cetaceans. We should be modeling and taking what we learn from the pinnipeds, the seals and sea lions, and asking these same questions for cetaceans.
As we collect more information about cetaceans in the wild, we will find out more and more of these issues coming forward under SARA, the Species at Risk Act. We will be looking for how to assess the threats and how to ensure the survival of these species and populations. We will need even more data coming from captive studies of cetaceans than everyone recognizes today.
[Translation]
Senator Forest: In your conclusion, you stated that Bill S-203 undermines Canada's efforts to protect aquatic fauna. What impact could it have on species other than cetaceans?
[English]
Mr. Trites: It is probably starting to set the precedent in my opinion.
[Translation]
Senator Forest: So it is a premise for the future.
[English]
Mr. Trites: Yes, in looking toward the future and appreciating how important it has been to be able to have access to 365 days to collect data essential to resolving what is happening to marine mammals. In this case I am talking sea lions and fur seals and how negatively fisheries would have been affected with this legislation. I can see the very same thing happening for cetaceans.
[Translation]
Senator Forest: Finally, you said earlier that, since these animals are given fish or other food, they do not have to dive, to work for their food, and that they are safe. You may recall the saying that giving a fish to someone teaches them to depend on others while teaching them to fish helps them achieve their potential.
[English]
Senator Sinclair: I was intrigued, Ms. Vergara, by one of your answers about whales covering their ears. I assume there is a flap of some kind that allows the noise to be shut out, is there?
Ms. Vergara: No. I'm not sure how it works, to be frank, but they can voluntarily decrease their hearing sensitivity by as much as 13 decibels. Decibels are a logarithmic scale, so that's a huge ability.
Senator Sinclair: I wish I could do that sometimes. I was hoping that your research would have told me how to do it.
I understand that you work directly with the belugas at Vancouver and I'm curious to know whether we yet know why the belugas died in November 2016.
Ms. Vergara: The most parsimonious hypothesis is that it was a toxin, but I'm sure that Dr. Martin Haulena, the veterinarian who will be here in two weeks, can give a lot more detail than that.
Senator Sinclair: As a researcher, though, have you looked into that question at all?
Ms. Vergara: I have not, no. I'm a behavioural ecologist and my fields of study are currently focusing on the wild. I'm not a veterinarian and I'm not a pathologist. We have a special team for that.
Senator Sinclair: Do either one of the other two panellists wish to respond to that? Perhaps this means that you don't know either, then.
Mr. Trites: Scientists around the world that have relevant knowledge of this have also been puzzling over it. It is a huge mystery. It points to how little we perhaps actually know about marine mammals. There is no stone that hasn't been unturned in trying to figure this out. They are still actively working on it. They have consulted with a lot of people, some of my colleagues as well, and all of us would like to know the answer.
Ms. Vergara: I want to point out that I'm deeply concerned by whale mortality in the wild. We don't know the answers in the wild either. We know little about these animals. It is difficult to know why they die.
Calves in the St. Lawrence are dying in unprecedented numbers. Pregnant beluga whales are found stranded and dead. We don't know the reasons. We know some reasons. We have hypotheses, but these things are difficult to understand.
Senator Sinclair: Can any of you respond to a question relating to how many cetaceans in captivity at Vancouver Aquarium have died in the last 20 years or so? Since they started taking whales or cetaceans into captivity how many have died while in captivity, other than from natural causes, which I assume would be old age?
Ms. Vergara: I could comment on the calves that have died since I've been there. In the past 20 years one lived until he was three years old. He died very suddenly. He was a very healthy animal. It was an incredibly puzzling thing. It is believed to have been heart arrhythmia.
Tikva and Nala were both looking very healthy. Tikva died of pneumonia, which occurs in the wild as well. Nala died unfortunately from pebbles lodged in her blowhole. Qila was another calf born at the aquarium. She was actually born at the aquarium in the 1990s and, as you know, she died very recently.
Mr. Trites: There is an element in your question that I find interesting. I am referring to the applied assumption that all animals should die of old age. Throughout history, if you look at humans, we have high mortalities among children. All of us have friends who lost people that were far too young, people who died of cancers or pneumonia. These things are true of animal populations as well.
When you look at the ages that whales die, yes, we would like every animal to live to be the oldest age possible. Their mortality rates appear to be the same as what you find in the wild. In the case of belugas we know in western Hudson Bay that the average life of an animal is about 15 years. At the same time we know that the oldest animals are up in their 40s and 50s.
Just as we know the oldest human might be 110, it does not ensure that all of us will get there. We know the reality is that we will all die much younger than that. Fortunately, we have medicines and doctors that can do surgeries to extend our lives but animals don't have that.
The reality is that we need to frame this in terms of what is the normal life expectancy given the range of illnesses and disease that happen to marine mammals naturally.
Mr. Rosen: If I could speak directly not about the Vancouver Aquarium but about cetaceans in captivity, one of the big questions is: Do they live a full life as far as longevity? A lot of numbers are thrown around that are somewhat confusing. Even though scientists can be working from the same numbers, it is how to interpret those numbers.
You will hear things like what is the median age that animals live. Quite often for populations of cetaceans under human care, particularly if there are a lot of those animals, that number is lower than in the wild. That's actually partially a mathematical issue.
In the wild we can look at hundreds of animals and say: When did all these animals die? How old were they? What was the mean age? Mathematically we have a problem with animals in captivity because a lot of them are still alive and they don't count into the average age.
For example, if you have three whales, one that dies at one year old, one that dies at five years old and one that's still alive, your average age of death is going to be three because you are only counting the ones that are dead and not the ones that are alive.
There are other measures that scientists use for these populations such as annual survival rates. What is the chance of a whale that's alive at the start of the year making it to the end of the year? For most marine mammals that are commonly held in aquariums, such as killer whales, bottlenose dolphins and belugas, those numbers are really close. Depending on which way you look at the numbers it's actually higher for captivity.
Some of the earlier lower numbers were also again from the early 1970s when scientists and veterinarians did not have the knowledge base of how to care for animals, which brought the number down. Now, as far as the scientific reviews go, they are equitable. We are just squinting at differences between those two populations.
Senator Sinclair: Keeping in mind the point made by Senator Forest about the exemptions in the legislation, can you tell me whether any of the research that any of you have conducted with regard to cetaceans in particular could also have been or were in fact conducted on whales that were in captivity because of being rescued?
Mr. Trites: In our case, with Mr. Rosen and I working with students, we put out four publications on cetaceans at the Vancouver Aquarium in 2013. Some of those were done with the Pacific white-sided dolphins that had come from Japan, that had been caught in fishing nets and were unreleasable. They were perfect candidates for us to be able to measure metabolic rates, from which we could determine how much food white-sided dolphins needed and from which we discovered that we now have a resident population of Pacific white-sided dolphins living in the Salish Sea. They hadn't been there for 100 years.
We now know that these animals are essentially the Ferraris of the ocean. They require high-octane fuel. It gets us thinking. We need to consider our herring fisheries. Are we leaving enough for them? These animals cannot live on white-fleshed fish. They need high-lipid fish such as herring and sand lance. That's one of the discoveries we made in a short period of time working with an injured animal.
Mr. Rosen: I would like to add a caveat. There are specific studies that you can do with rehabilitated animals depending on the reason for their non-releasability. For example, the same animals that we studied for resting metabolic we cannot use for measuring swimming metabolism because they were physically injured.
If the animals have suffered some nutritional assault early on in their lives, we don't know how that will specifically impact their cognitive abilities. We can use them as a comparison. They are valuable in that way. However, as a scientist you always have to be very careful if you don't know how the animals have been impacted that may not make them representative of their species as well.
Ms. Vergara: Although I appreciate very much that the bill makes provisions for rescue and research, I'm afraid that perhaps unintentionally it is eroding our capacity to do research and to rescue. Much of the revenue we use to be able to rescue and research, much of the training we have in place, and much of the capacity-building we have in place to be able to rescue these animals happen because of revenue at the gate.
If the frame is to be just rescue and research but no display, what economic model would we use? Who would fund that? Would it be the government? Right now we rely to a large degree on public funding. I'm afraid that unintentionally the ability to fund our teams of conservation biologists, our teams of vets and the training of our interns would be eroded under the proposed exemptions.
Mr. Trites: My final point is that scientists are very conscious of sample sizes. A sample size of one will not be statistically valid. In terms of doing research this means from our side it's being able to maintain small populations of animals that can be used for research so that we have replicates and controls in our studies.
In the bill, as I understand it, the breeding of animals will not be permitted, which means that the only source of animals for study would be essentially waiting on the off chance that an animal should strand; in the end, it would not be possible if there isn't some attention given to the care or the management plan for a population that can be used for research. We've many questions about reproduction, gestation periods, development of calves and lactation. You are essentially saying we would not be able to do any of that research. It's off the table.
In the end, I don't think it would be feasible to rely only on animals that might be injured as a source. Every animal that comes in would go through a period of time where you're still trying to keep it wild enough in the hopes it could be released. By the time it might be deemed by DFO to be unreleasable, it will probably not be able to serve the purpose even though there is desire to let the research continue. I don't believe meaningful or useful research would result if that were the only means to proceed.
Senator Sinclair: Generally, we heard evidence the other day from an individual who said that the current numbers of cetaceans in captivity which are exempted from the legislation will be sufficient to provide information for a period of time to come.
Do you have any comment with regard to the number of cetaceans in captivity at the Vancouver Aquarium since that's your area of awareness that will continue in captivity and be available for research?
Ms. Vergara: At this point it would be minimal if the legislation stays as proposed. We have a harbour porpoise, a false killer whale and a white-sided dolphin. A lot of them are rescue animals. We have and we are conducting research on them, but as I said my concern about this is how we are to continue to fund the structure we need to have in place for this research to move forward and to continue and for the rescues to occur.
If we have only three animals under our care and there is a stranding of a species as rare as a false killer whale four years down the line, will we have the team in place and the resources to help this animal? Will we have the team in place to conduct research on this animal?
Everything works as a structure. When you erode parts of that structure I am not entirely sure that the remaining structure will work, essentially.
The Chair: I remind everybody that I like to have a free flow of conversation. It has been very interesting and we are on schedule here.
Senator Raine: I really appreciate the work that you've been doing, but we have heard speakers tell the committee there are very few studies with captive cetaceans that have added to the scientific literature. Is this true?
Mr. Trites: We've also heard that criticism and it's a surprise to us. It appears to stem from a report that Naomi Rose and colleagues prepared in 2009 for the Humane Society of the United States and the World Society for the Protection of Animals. She drew the conclusion that only about 5 per cent of marine mammal research had been involving captive marine mammals.
That led other colleagues to dig into the report that she had filed. A paper was written and published in 2010 by Hill and Lackups because it didn't match their perception of what the truth was. They collected all the literature they could find between 1950 and 2009. They looked for cases where we had species in captivity that also exist in the wild and compared the two. There were 16 species of marine mammals or cetaceans in this case. She found 1,628 publications, published in 290 journals. She discovered that 29 per cent were on captive studies, not the 5 per cent that was being touted. It turned out the 5 per cent was based on conference proceedings from South Africa. It was not reflective of the state of knowledge.
The reality is that about one-third of the publications involve captive animals in the marine mammal literature on cetaceans and two-thirds come from field studies. The truth is that captive studies have played a key role in the conservation, management and knowledge of cetaceans.
Senator Raine: Thank you for clarifying that. I really like your analogy where you talk about the need to interact between studying a species that is at hand which you can use and doing studies in the wild.
If you take part of that out of the equation, how can you design studies to be done in the wild that will be relevant to the ongoing survival of these species? I'm very concerned that this bill will interfere with the ability to continue the studies in the aquariums.
I am curious, though. Would it be possible for our leading edge aquariums and the scientists working there to import whales located in other lesser quality facilities for the research that we could do in Canada?
To lose the beluga whales in the Vancouver Aquarium is tragic for the whales but also tragic for the whole research program. How can we replace this? I understand Marineland has a lot of beluga whales. I don't understand why they have so many and Vancouver doesn't have any. Is there a way to keep the scientific program going in the Vancouver Aquarium without bringing in more wild-caught animals?
Ms. Vergara: That's off the table. The Vancouver Aquarium committed to not ever bringing animals from the wild in the 1990s. This is not what is being discussed.
Actually, the only way to move forward with any studies of beluga whales would be to bring them from other institutions.
Senator Raine: Can this happen even if this bill passes?
Mr. Rosen: That's a legal argument that I can't go into, but I can tell you that the movement of whales between facilities is part of what aquariums consider proper species management. You have to be concerned about appropriate social groups, appropriate genetics and appropriate facilities. If facilities are having difficulties, obviously one of the tools in the tool box is to move them to other facilities that are better at animal welfare. To my understanding that is a common practice within the zoo and aquarium world. Whether this bill allows that is a legal discussion.
Mr. Trites: Your question was around the value of doing research with captive animals. I recognize that the committee has heard from other people with PhDs in marine mammal science and you are getting conflicting information from those who say it's critically needed and those who say we don't need it.
It's important for committee members to recognize that not all Ph.Ds were created equally. As with medical doctors, we all started with a common bachelor of science degree, but the reality is that we all trained and specialized in areas.
When you think of research like the human body, the field biologist would say they are the legs and feet of marine mammal science. The modelers would say they're the brains and the head that make everything function, but it's those working on animals in human care that see themselves as being the arms and the hands that help connect the feet to the head.
Each specialty sees the importance of their particular area of expertise. They tend to frame things in terms of what value captive studies would bring to me: I don't need it, so it is not needed.
Just as you might look at whom you would speak to about the overall health of the body, would you speak to a podiatrist or a brain surgeon? The reality is you would go to your GP to understand how the three pieces fit together.
Senator Raine: It's a good analogy. Mr. Rosen, we have heard some speakers say that universities and research- specific facilities are more appropriate settings for research than aquariums with trained animals. Can you comment on that idea?
Mr. Rosen: I'm the ideal person to comment on that because I have worked in both settings. I did my graduate degree in a university laboratory with what we perceived were trained animals. A lot of our research is now done at the Vancouver Aquarium where we realize we now have trained animals.
From a scientific point of view, having the resources for proper animal trainers is best both for the science and the welfare of the animals. When you are working within a research laboratory my contention is the scientists can have too much say over animal welfare. If I'm working within the Vancouver Aquarium I'm essentially working not only in tandem with the veterinary department and the professional trainers. In some ways I am in an opposing relationship.
We all want to get the best science done with the animals but their primary concern is animal welfare. My primary concern is the science. We're obviously interested in both sides, but I always say the best relationship is if we have a bit of pushback. Then we realize the animals are serving the best purpose they can from a scientific point of view, but we're also ensuring their welfare.
Then there are the financial considerations as well. I would like to state, and I don't think it's a personal thing, that all university laboratories which have held marine mammals that I have happened to work at are now closed because they don't have the financial support in Canada to maintain a very expensive program.
Senator Raine: I have a clarification. When the average public hears "animal trainers'' they think of them training to put on an entertainment show, but I've seen myself how they are trained.
Ms. Vergara: They are trained to perform husbandry behaviours that will help the vet team and the husbandry team to take care of these animals. Also, cetaceans are incredibly social animals. They are very much like humans in that sense and they are intelligent. In aquariums they bond with the humans. The humans become part of their pod in a sense, of their social group. They form extremely strong relationship with the trainers. The trainers are friends to the cetaceans that the aquariums hold.
Mr. Rosen mentioned research in university settings. Another thing that concerns me about the allowance for research and rescue but not for display in this bill is that if you are a research only institution you don't have the interaction. The animals would be deprived of the interaction they have on a daily basis with humans. From having watched those interactions at the aquarium I believe the whales and dolphins in aquarium settings have fun with those interactions, which again are no longer training for shows. That's very much an outdated notion.
Senator Christmas: I have two substantial questions, but there are two questions I would like to ask for clarification.
Mr. Rosen, you mentioned that some cetaceans do better under human care than others. What cetaceans do better under human care?
Mr. Rosen: There is already quite a bit of self-sorting, so no aquarium in the world keeps baleen whales just because the nutritional requirements are impossible. Larger animals, regardless of the type of animal we are talking about, have larger requirements.
There have been studies looking across mammalian species that suggest there are some characteristics that might indicate whether animals do better in care. A lot of the species that we predicted would not do well in captivity by how they behave in the wild actually do well under human care.
One of the hypotheses is that animals with very large home ranges would not do well in a more confined aquarium setting, but in fact for some of those species that's not true. When we are talking about our experience with cetacean species, the bulk of our experience is really with three species.
Senator Christmas: Which three?
Mr. Rosen: Killer whales, bottlenose dolphins and beluga whales which have been the vast majority of cetaceans held under human care.
Senator Christmas: Mr. Trites, I'm not sure I heard you correctly, but you mentioned that this bill would have some economic consequences for a number of groups. You also mentioned indigenous people. Could you elaborate?
Mr. Trites: If we take the Steller sea lion, which is declining and is an endangered species, the perception by scientists was that it was all caused by fishing and therefore there was a need to close fishing. Fishing on the world's largest fishery, which is for walleye pollock, is equivalent to Canada's cod fishing on the East Coast.
We discovered through our research that the trouble was not that there wasn't enough fish for the animals to eat. The trouble was that there was too much of it. The scientific knowledge at the time was completely wrong. The only way we discovered it was wrong was by doing feeding studies where we gave animals pollock, cod, herring and high-fat fish.
We saw that the young animals did not have the stomach capacity to eat enough to meet their daily needs. We now know there is nothing we can do as humans. We can't put fatty fish into the oceans for them or we can't reduce the others. That it is one example of how we would never have known what we now know to be the cause of it.
We have a similar case now with our southern resident killer whales and sound affecting them. Does that mean we have to reduce the sound, which could mean reducing ferry traffic to Vancouver Island? It could mean reducing cruise ships coming in. It could mean lots of different things.
Without the ability to test things such as hearing and digestive abilities and to run controlled studies to get at the mechanisms, we would be making lots of incorrect decisions based on imperfect knowledge and wanting to be precautionary in the absence of any knowledge.
Senator Christmas: What would be the connection to indigenous people?
Mr. Trites: We are going to see, particularly in the North, where some populations of beluga are in trouble. We need to sort out if it is human caused or due to other things.
We are aware that some species of fish are moving north; the balance is changing. We know that killer whales now have access to it. Food security such as ringed seals for indigenous people is very important. We can do studies with ringed seals and belugas to get some of the basic premises we need to see whether the food needs of the belugas and ringed seals are being met and whether we can assess stress levels to ensure that the food they depend upon will thrive and be healthy.
Senator Christmas: Mr. Trites, I agree with Senator Forest about the scope of this bill. You made a couple of comments that concerned me. One was that this would be in effect a ban on science or it would stop science. My understanding of the bill is that it is not about science; it is about capturing wild animals for captivity.
Am I missing something here? I don't see the bill as banning science.
Mr. Trites: I agree the intent of the bill is not to ban science but that is effectively what will happen.
Ms. Vergara: It is an unintended consequence.
Mr. Trites: If we are unable to breed animals, which the bill will not allow, we will probably not be able to answer a lot of the questions about survival of animals in the wild that go back to those early stages of development. Those are the most important questions.
We will not be able to maintain sample sizes. Essentially, the researchers will be doing what I would call potluck science. You may get lucky to have one animal to study or there may be nothing. We will not be able to train graduate students who will ultimately take jobs with DFO or NGOs to be involved with marine mammal science. It has these unintended consequences.
My comments here were to make people realize some of the things that may not have been thought through already. Ultimately that is what I see will happen: We will stop learning very much about cetaceans from captive settings. I think that really is a tragedy.
Senator Christmas: I don't think the impact or intent of this bill is to stop science in the wild. I assume science continues, right?
Mr. Trites: Science will certainly continue in the wild, but the point I have been trying to make is that if you only rely on science in the wild you will only see one piece of that puzzle.
There are two other important pieces. One of them is models. All of us rely on models for everything from knowing what the weather will be like tomorrow to how a jet plane is flown. We use models in biology as well. Models need data and those data come from field and captive studies. In the absence of them we can make up numbers and assume they might be this or that, but all of us know the dangers of assumptions. It is key for models. It is key for testing hypotheses. It is key for understanding mechanisms that affect policy decisions about management and species at risk.
Senator Christmas: One of the interesting observations I have about this process is the premise that it's an either/or situation. It is either science under human care or science in the wild. The testimony I have heard from everyone so far is that we have learned little about these cetaceans. I think you said we only have the tip of the knowledge.
If there is dearth of science about these cetaceans, I would hope and think that all scientists would work together whether in the wild or under human care. There would be collaboration, not an either/or situation. All science would benefit the species.
Mr. Trites: It is a collaborative effort. There is an overall appreciation, particularly when someone asks how much food marine mammals need and are they competing with fisheries. When you ask those sorts of questions people sit back and wonder how to answer them. Yes, they need that measurement from a captive dolphin or a captive beluga whale. We can't get it any other way.
Senator Christmas: I'm glad to hear you say this is not an either/or situation. For the sake of the species we need all science.
Ms. Vergara: It is a marriage of both.
Senator Christmas: One of the teachings in the indigenous world is a holistic world view of all species. The best way to describe it is the medicine wheel which has four quadrants that consist of the mental, physical, emotional and spiritual aspects. Over the years many people both in the indigenous world and in the western science world have mentioned that science is really good at the mental, psychological and physical aspects. We are really good at that. Traditional knowledge is good at the spiritual and emotional sides.
When I heard you say that there is no clear evidence that cetaceans suffer under captivity, to me that was more of a spiritual and emotional question. As you mentioned cetaceans are very social animals. There is more of an emotional and spiritual element. I take that as a certain limit on western science. Western science can't gain all the knowledge needed to understand cetaceans properly at least holistically in the Aboriginal world.
I am not sure if we are done collecting all the knowledge that we need to understand these cetaceans. I am uncertain if we collected enough knowledge at this point to say they are not suffering under captivity. Under the indigenous world view, the emotional and spiritual well-being of a species is dependent upon their freedom and ability to socialize. If you take a being out of their family or their pod they will suffer. If you take a being that is no longer able to have a relationship with their creator they will suffer.
Would you agree that there is more scientific work needed to properly determine whether cetaceans suffer in captivity?
Ms. Vergara: I absolutely would agree with that. I really appreciate this question because as a society we have reached a point where we need to discuss these things. We need to put them on the table. I am really glad that we are discussing and considering these things. As I said before, a century ago we would not have been considering these questions. At least non-Aboriginal people might not have.
Do I think this is the time to make drastic decisions when the world is falling apart around us? No, probably not just yet. Do we need the research on their welfare, their suffering and their inner experience, which is probably the most difficult research you can conduct? I wish we could ask them but we can't. We need that research.
I would also be hesitant to use the word suffering, which is a loaded word, and would ask instead if they have more fulfilled lives in the wild versus captivity. Many of us would say that they probably do. It would be wonderful if we could see a world where all animals would be out of the zoos and aquariums, but I don't know that we have reached that point in history.
The Chair: I would ask that we keep our answers as tight as possible because we are pushing the clock.
[Translation]
Senator Forest: I do not have a question, but rather a comment. Bill S-203 pertains to cetaceans. We expect you, as experts and scientists, to be able to make extremely rigorous statements. When you conclude that this bill jeopardizes all animal research, that is based on hypotheses and unproven premises, in my opinion. Personally, I find that undermines the arguments you have made.
That is the comment I wanted to make in closing.
[English]
Senator Raine: We are hearing witnesses with two different points of view, and they are all scientists. I am trying to balance that with my own analysis.
It is very evident to me that the framework for the protection of cetaceans in captivity in Canada has changed dramatically over the last 10 or 20 years. With an absence of legislation, what assurances do we have that the welfare of cetaceans will be looked after by CAZA and by other organizations in Canada?
I have come to the conclusion that we have leading world scientists who need a place to work. What assurances are there that the self-regulation of zoos and aquariums will be of the highest standard in the world?
Mr. Rosen: At this point it is a self-regulating industry through CAZA and other accreditations such as the Alliance of Marine Mammal Parks and Aquariums. Those organizations are constantly improving their standards of animal care.
I know that CAZA has great regulations and expert panels to give the best advice on specific aspects such as tank size, nutrition and acoustics. How can they continuously improve those regulations? I do not see a need right now for overarching federal legislation that says you must belong to these organizations because at this point they are doing an excellent job at producing their own set of criteria.
I want to point out that there are also independent verification procedures in the aquarium world. For example, the American Humane Association has started an independent certification process called humane conservation. These are the guys who say, "No harm came to these animals during filming.'' It is an international organization. They have their own inspectors. The Vancouver Aquarium is one of nine institutions in the world that have passed their accreditation. There is an internal and external emphasis on ensuring that these institutions are meeting the highest standards possible.
The Chair: I thank our guests for your time here this morning. It was certainly a lively conversation. When we started our examination of Bill S-203, I don't think we realized what we were getting into as a committee.
There have been interesting discussions and there are more to come. Once again, thank you for your time.
(The committee adjourned.)