Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Fisheries
Issue 17 - Evidence
OTTAWA, Tuesday, April 16, 2002
The Standing Senate Committee on Fisheries met this day at 7:00 p.m. to examine matters relating to oceans and fisheries.
Senator Gerald J. Comeau (Chairman) in the Chair.
[English]
The Chairman: This evening we have a new committee member replacing Senator Watt. I welcome Senator Baker, who was summoned to the Senate just this afternoon.
As you know, the committee is in the early phases of its study on fish habitat in Canada, and there is still much information to be gathered.
Our first witness this evening is Mr. Mark Butler, Marine Coordinator of the Ecology Action Centre, who has appeared before the committee before. The centre has been advocating environmental protection since the early 1970s and is based in Halifax. There is an NGO supported by its membership, projects and donations. The Ecology Action Centre, EAC, has a marine issues committee and deals with a number of topics such as marine protected areas, MPA, marine bio-invaders, species at risk and sustainable fisheries. If I recall, Mr. Butler appeared before the committee when we were studying the issue of privatization and individual transferable quotas, ITQs, in Canada.
Our second witness is Dr. Derek Davis, Chair of the Marine Invertebrate Diversity Initiative Society, MIDI. MIDI is a web-accessible database designed to document and map out knowledge of marine invertebrates in the waters off the Scotian Shelf, in the Bay of Fundy and in the Gulf of Maine. It is a non-profit society in the province of Nova Scotia.
Gentlemen, please proceed.
Mr. Mark Butler, Marine Coordinator, Ecology Action Centre: I want to commend your committee on the report on privatization and ITQs because it was one of the finest on that topic. It had an impact on the department's policy. Shortly after that report was released, the department began its policy review in respect of some of your recommendations. Let us hope that this exercise will produce similar results. Again, thank you.
I have video footage to present with my comments.
Mr. Chairman, you described the Ecology Action Centre. The goal of the committee within the centre is to promote both marine conservation and sustainable ocean-based livelihood. We pay attention to both nature and people in our efforts to find a balance between the two.
The first slide is of bubblegum coral with a redfish, which you would know as ocean perch in the supermarket. The depth of the water where these live is about 600 feet and the water temperature is about 4 to 5 degrees Celsius. Obviously, these images were taken by a remotely operated vehicle, ROV. This particular specimen might be 100 or 200 years old. Some of these corals can grow to 2 or 3 metres in height. Another species in this area is called sea corn.
We have approximately 30 or 40 hours of footage, so if anyone wants to view all of it, please let me know. Many people do not think these images were taken in Canadian waters when they first see them because we would never imagine there was that kind of life in the deep, dark, cold waters off Nova Scotia, but indeed there is and it is brightly coloured.
I want to show you where that video came from. That video was taken last summer on a research vessel, with combined research crews from Dalhousie, a local fisherman and DFO. It was a joint effort.
We had a cruise with this sophisticated technology because fishermen in southern Nova Scotia, and perhaps elsewhere too, started talking to the Ecology Action Centre and some scientists at Dalhousie about the fact that we had corals in our waters. At first there was disbelief; it could not be corals, it must be something else. Gradually, people realized that corals were there and perhaps we should think about them a little more and some of the damaging impacts happening to them.
We were lucky. I knew some of these fishermen. We went to the Nova Scotia Museum of Natural History, where Dr. Davis used to work for 20 years, and received a small research grant for a study where we talked to fishermen and scientists and went into the museum collections. We tried to vacuum up all the information there was on deep-sea corals and we came out with this report. The beauty or strength of this report is that it takes the conventional science and combines it with fishermen's knowledge and comes up with a solid picture.
Scientists within DFO said that this shows how valuable this approach can be. This is the best text there is on deep- sea corals in Atlantic Canada. That approach, combining fishermen's knowledge and science, can come up with a very useful product. In fact, fishermen knew more about the status and distribution of the deep-sea corals than many of the scientists.
Subsequent to the publishing of that report, we did some workshops where we invited fishermen from all gear sectors, people from the oil and gas industry, scientists and conservationists to talk about these corals and how we could further their protection. As we were looking into what was known about deep-sea corals and what other countries were doing to protect these formations, we began to realize that things were happening in different places but that people were not really talking to each other.
In 2001, a group of us, with the assistance of Department of Fisheries and Oceans, the World Wildlife Fund and Dalhousie University, put on the first international symposium on deep-sea corals, which took place in Halifax, Nova Scotia. We had scientists from 14 countries attend this event, as well as a reasonably good attendance from the local DFO.
A lot came out of it, both on the science side — there was good science being talked about — and the conservation side. It has had some ramifications, not only in Canada but around the world. I think, because of these fishermen first talking about these corals, that is why we had that research vessel cruise on Georges Bank last summer, and now at Dalhousie and DFO you have research going on, graduate students, et cetera. DFO has actually brought over a Norwegian scientist, because they have done a lot of research on deep-sea corals. He and his wife are now working at BIO in Bedford.
The Ecology Action Centre has been engaged in other research. We have done some study on the fauna, the invertebrates found in the Bay of Fundy. One of the researchers we hired may have come across a totally new species of sponge in the Bay of Fundy. That reminds me of the subtext for my talk — and this comes from a scientist who some of the Newfoundland members might know, Fred Aldrich, who was at Memorial University — that we know more about the moon's behind than the ocean's bottom. Here we are, right off Senator Comeau's hometown, and we are possibly discovering new species that we did not know were there.
We did one other study, and I will leave copies with the committee so they can, in their off-hours, read up. We did a study where we talked to fishermen about some of the changes they had seen in the ocean floor. We talked to longliners, handliners, gillnetters and draggers about some of the changes they noticed in terms of some of the animals that were no longer there, or formations, hills or valleys that used to be there. Again, fishermen's information is very useful in coming to a better understanding of the ocean.
If I could just show you some slides, a mix of science and pretty pictures.
This is a display that fishermen and conservationists in southwest Nova Scotia put together, the Canadian Ocean Habitat Protection Society. They did a display, along with the Ecology Action Centre, outside of the library in Halifax. That is Sanford Atwood, a long-time fisherman from Cape Sable Island on the left there.
This next slide is the display they put together. Fishermen call these corals trees, and indeed they look like a mini forest. People are really interested. Derek's specialty is periwinkles, or molluscs or snails. If he were to put up a display in front of the library in downtown Halifax, I do not know how many people would stop. However, when you have these big corals it makes all the difference, it makes the ocean floor come alive.
This next slide is some habitat enhancement. This is a fisherman in Sambro who has taken some liberty with the deep-sea corals and added a little colour.
This colour on the next slide is real — again, this is the bubblegum coral we saw in the video. That colour is not fake. This is a slightly different form beside it, but that coral is about a metre high and is about 200 or 250 years old. They can age them now because they found some of them growing on the hull of the Titanic, and from knowing when the Titanic went down they can gauge the growth rate.
The next one is covered with a mucous, and the little bumps are polyps. Corals are colonial animals.
This is a photograph by Derek Davis. This shows a coral, it is the same species, one without the covering of polyps and one with. That is the same species again, but this is what it looks like when it is alive. Those individual polyps look like Rice Crispies.
This is a fisherman from Lockport, Wendell Williams.
This is a stony coral, similar to the reef forming corals that you find in tropical waters. There is a wonderful video from Norway where they have these incredible coral reefs that are about 20, 30 metres high, 8,000 years old at the base and several kilometres long, and it looks just like a tropical reef. We do not know if we have these corals in our waters, but we found pieces of them so it is a tantalising mystery right now.
This is a more delicate form.
There are other species that provide structure and complexity. The scientific term would be ``habitat complexity'' to the ocean floor. That can come in the form of corals or sponges or other things that create hiding places, et cetera, or it can come through geological formations, humps, valleys or holes.
This is a piece of mud from Georges Bank that has become hardened; the holes are made by marine animals.
This is a sponge, dead man's fingers.
This is a bed of mussels.
This shows that many of the corals are found along the edges of the banks along Nova Scotia and Newfoundland, in the gullies and valleys, including Sable Island Gully, which is off of Sable Island and is up for designation and approval as a marine protected area.
We know that fish habitat is important in freshwater and is important in coral reefs in tropical areas, but is fish habitat important when you are down 50 feet, 100 feet or 600 feet on the ocean floor? This shot is actually from Ireland but it shows the ocean floor. This is another shot without that complexity and with most of those animals removed.
Again, this is from Georges Bank. There are no corals but the little feathery white thing is a bryozoan, which is a colonial animal. Again, if you are an animal looking to hide, that is a more appealing substrate or fish habitat than this is obviously. That is the same bottom, but this is one area where most of the animals have been removed.
The term that scientists use to refer to all life on the bottom is ``structural complexity.'' When you remove that structural complexity — perhaps by removing some of the boulders — then you remove the sponges and the corals, and you also remove some of the burrows and formations made by worms, et cetera.
To give a very simple terrestrial analogy, if you were to put a rabbit on a football field and release some raptors, some birds of prey, there is not much place for that rabbit to go. If you put that rabbit in a field with some blackberry bushes and some alders, the rabbit will probably escape the predators. There is an interesting research paper from some scientists in New England that looked at the survival of juvenile cod on a sandy bottom, on a cobble bottom and on a bottom with a lot of sponge. Not surprisingly, where did they find the greatest survival? It was on the bottom with a lot of stuff on it.
We have paid a lot of attention to overfishing. We have paid a lot of attention to climate change or to environmental changes in ocean temperatures as a reason for the collapse of fisheries. However, we perhaps have not paid so much attention to the impact of predation on young fish. Predation is a big factor in survival or recruitment to the fishery.
The Chairman: That was excellent. I am sure it will open up some questions. We will ask Professor Davis to make his presentation, and then we will proceed with questions.
Dr. Derek Davis, Chair, Marine Invertebrate Diversity Initiative Society: I want to briefly go through this introduction and show you a couple of transparencies to illustrate the points I want to make. When looking at marine environments, it is important to realise that it is not just a body of water supporting fish that you want then to catch out of the water. There is a whole ecosystem that has to function well in order to get the productivity of fish, which is interesting and important to us.
We need to understand how that ecosystem functions in order to manage the fish species, and habitat has been mentioned. Habitat is the critical aspect of all this because it does give places for fish to hide. It provides the whole food system that makes the thing work.
The Marine Invertebrate Diversity Initiative, or MIDI project, comes from the work of the marine issues committee with the same group of people. If you are ever in Halifax and attend one of these meetings, you will find the age spectrum and backgrounds of the people involved to be very interesting. It is an interesting mix of people.
I came into it from the provincial government, where one year you make a suggestion, the next year someone says ``put that on paper,'' and the next year — it goes on. The Ecology Action Centre Marine Issues Committee is very frightening, because someone says ``I have a good idea,'' and then someone else says, ``I will work with you on that idea.'' At the next meeting, in a month's time, they say, ``Here is our report.'' The speed at which that works is quite frightening.
You can see from the coral activities how beneficial that was, when it took less than four years to go from knowing almost nothing about this subject to hosting an international conference. That is a remarkable achievement. I do not believe government can do that by itself — although government participates very heavily, it cannot do it by itself — so the NGO component is very valuable.
One of the ideas from the marine issues committee was to solve a problem related to habitat and how the ecosystem works. We knew very little about the benthic marine invertebrates. These corals are invertebrates, and all the little things crawling on the corals are invertebrates. We decided to pull together what we did know.
Some years before, we had looked at a wonderful book, entitled Catalogue of the Marine Invertebrate of Eastern Canada, which is actually a list that was published in 1901. Around 1970, we had two dog-eared copies of this book, one in the museum and one in the provincial library. They were getting so badly damaged that we decided there should be some reprint of it. We set about to find out who owned the document, but no one really knew. However, it was certainly Canada that owned this document. The DFO people, who were in the Fisheries Research Board at that time, produced this pirate edition. We reprinted 100 copies on one of the photocopy machines in the Bedford Institute and distributed it widely. There are roughly 140 marine invertebrates listed in that book.
I want to show you these two graphics. This first graphic was published by a famous Danish marine biologist in the 1970s in a book about the life in the sea. It is a redrawing of some work done in the Kattegat off Denmark in around 1913. It depicts the fact that for every fish you catch there has to be a sequence of invertebrates supporting that fish. In other words, what is this fish eating during its life? He calculated that if you were to look at a catch of 6,000 tonnes of cod, 7,000 tonnes of herring and 250 tonnes of haddock, quite a small amount, and you followed it through to the bottom and added up the weight of what he calls ``useless animals,'' the bottom figure is 5 million tonnes. Five million tonnes of useless invertebrates are required to produce that catch of fish.
I had some fun with this in the 1970s looking at fisheries information from ICNAF records, and I calculated, a little tongue in cheek, what we needed in the way of marine invertebrates to support the catch in 1973. That is the second graphic, which comes on next.
It was done very roughly. You should understand that this was not something I was going to publish, because it was too speculative. If you follow it through from the cod catch of 808,000 tonnes — there is a large difference of course in the size of the catch — right down to the bottom, the weight of all useless animals on the bottom is 105 million tonnes. That is the amount of invertebrate animals required to support that catch.
The ones at the top are the ones in which we are interested from the commercial point of view. You have to know something about those invertebrate animals. The earlier graphic showed the diversity involved.
We started to look at the scientific or technical content of our project. We have to produce information and keep information updated on over 3,000 species of invertebrate animals. We are attempting to do that.
We know that if you were to go to the government and ask if it could hire enough scientists to produce this catalogue it would not happen. The only way to make it work is to involve many people. We are talking about fishermen, lay people generally, school teachers and students working on surveying these animals and keeping up-to- date information.
You have been provided a descriptive leaflet on the project. This is a book that we give to people who want to add information into the system.
That has been going for over two years. We have 800 species in the catalogue. Ten per cent of them are produced in detailed profiles.
I will show you what a profile looks like. That is a familiar one, because it is a coral. This is the prototype done by the museum. We now have 80-plus of these different species done in this way. In the literature, these things get called many different names. It helps to know that you are working with the same animal. We also need to know something about its status, if it is common. We are changing the word ``status'' to another word, because COSEWIC uses that word in its description of species at risk. We would like to give a species status.
The profiles include an approximate description, the distribution, its habitat, where to find it, a picture of the animal and a distribution map. On the other side of this particular sheet is also all the literature. The idea is to follow from this.
If a person wants to know about something, the individual reads the profile or synopsis of that. He or she can then go directly into the literature on which that summary was based. It does not mean that people are entitled only to know that which is in the book.
This thing will be updated as people get interested and make new studies and so on.
Here is another example. This one is a little snail, which is about half an inch long. It lives in salt marshes. When you plot all the records of this on the map, you see there is a gap in the Bay of Fundy. You immediately ask yourself, is this real or not? We think it is real.
As a result of this, we are working in an international partnership with some American scientists who want to participate in this project. We have to examine the strange distribution patterns. Southwest Nova Scotia is the place to go if you want to look at diversity. It seems to be the place where all the funny things show up.
We want to keep developing the project and running international and national workshops. We particularly want to get people interested in those aspects. We want to look at the diversity of species living in the sea taking these invertebrates as a start.
People are asking us why we are not doing seaweeds as well. We respond that we have enough trouble with the invertebrates. We estimate that we are looking at 3,500 species in the catalogue at some point in time.
As Mr. Butler said, many of these species are not described in the book. We would not describe the species on MIDI but we want to get people to do that. MIDI is based upon published and accessible records. We do not want to have things that people cannot track down. Museums are important in this process.
We are suffering from two exceptional problems in this country when looking at fisheries management from an ecosystem base. We are faced with looking at the biology of these different animals. The first problem is that the provincial government and the federal government are down on natural history museums. The Nova Scotia museum is chronically underfunded.
We had a fisheries meeting in White Point Beach in Nova Scotia in February. A representative from the Royal British Columbia Museum lost his job while he was in the meeting. When he went back, his job had been scrapped. He was the last curator in the business. He is now doing public programming in the gallery.
The other problem is that even if you can get to look at the museum collections, it is difficult to have access to taxonomists.
MIDI is drawing attention to these invertebrates and providing basic information but trying to encourage more interest and study. We hope that people will eventually go into systematics and that government will put more resources into the museums. That is our objective.
The Chairman: Thank you. We are going to our questions now.
Senator Cook: I hardly know where to begin. I noticed that your organization is Nova Scotia-based. You have no members other than Nova Scotians. You have not broadened your scope to Newfoundland?
Mr. Davis: Not really. Basically, we have been trying to work with an active local group. The American input is the first real outside input. It is beneficial to us because we are able to get some development money out of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Society as a result of that American participation. People know about us in Atlantic Canada, but people do not participate.
Senator Cook: Coral is pretty and lovely. Occasionally as a child, I saw a lump of it on the deck of a dragger.
Have you established the purpose of the coral? In addition, what about the draggers that you need to drag the bottom? I am thinking primarily of the scallop fisher. What is the impact of that on this habitat?
In a few short moments, you have sent me from thinking that fish is to feed me to thinking about what to feed the fish that feed me. You have my thought processes going to a number of places.
To be more focussed, what is the purpose of the coral as it relates to the habitat of fish, as we know the fish that we eat? What is the impact on the bottom of the sea and the stuff that feed the fish?
Mr. Davis: The important thing about coral in terms of the function, apart from just a basic biological function, is it provides structure to the habitat. If you have something growing off the bottom, and it has more physical structure, that means more different species of animals can use it.
The parallel we use, and not a good one in terms of organic production, is the business between forests and fields. If you cut down the forests, as we have done in the past with agricultural lands, and then you let it go through the early growth through to old growth situations, then you have different species of animal, assemblage or associations of animals that move with that.
One of the problems we have been working at in an attempt to have a habitat classification of marine habitats for Canada is how you in fact go beyond the geological description of sand, boulder, mud, and so on, into defining associations of species. You cannot do that without the knowledge of the species involved.
That structure of the habitat provided by the coral creates something that is unique.
Mr. Butler: There is obviously some overlap in terms of our work. Mr. Davis is with the Marine Invertebrate Diversity Initiative, a separate society set up to establish this database and further education about marine invertebrates. I am with the Ecology Action Centre. We have some members, fishermen and other people, who live in Newfoundland, but we are primarily a Nova Scotia organization. We work with groups in Newfoundland or New Brunswick, and increasingly with groups in the U.S. as well.
In terms of the role of corals, part of the answer is that we do not know. We know so little about these organisms. We do not know even know many species are down there. We do not know where they all are. We do not know how much coral has been lost through dragging. This question is a whole other presentation.
We have gone forward with a court challenge around this issue, which is an extremely important question. It is not perhaps the most intelligent way to get fish out of the ocean. The word ``efficiency'' means doing things with the minimum amount of waste. That does not necessarily describe dragging, even though that term is often applied to dragging. An analogy is often used. If you want to pick mushrooms or catch rabbits, you would go 600 to 700 feet above the forest, make sure there is some cloud cover, and then put down a piece of gear and tow it through the forest and hope to catch some rabbits and mushrooms. People have made that analogy.
Another type of gear, coming from Newfoundland, has been around for hundreds of year, and that is the bottom longline gear. You can only fish it on hard bottom. Fish do not take the bait for a certain time when they are spawning. It takes the fish out of the water but does less damage to the habitat. That is an issue that we would like to see addressed. When longline gear comes in contact with corals, it does snag it.
Fishing is about catching and killing fish. There is still some impact, but the impact is less. It is our view that we should be favouring that.
You are also seeing scalloping. We are not going to send divers over the side on Georges Bank in February down 100 feet to pick up scallops. Presumably, at some point, we will see technology come out that uses lasers to identify scallops, but we are not there yet. We will probably come to identifying grounds that we will assign to this type of fishing, and those will be scallop grounds, and they will be permanently altered. Through public debate, we will come to some kind of consensus or acceptance of that.
Senator Cook: You called that little fish that was nestled in the coral an ocean perch or a redfish. There is a third name. In Newfoundland, we call them ``bream.''
Senator Baker: I noticed that Mr. Davis says that he has done some research in the ICNAF records, and that goes back to my time, which is a long time ago. Of course, that was the forerunner of that NAFO today. As everyone knows, NAFO is 17 foreign nations who share the fishery off the East Coast of Canada. No other nation in the world allows 17 foreign nations to fish its continental shelf.
On the distinction between the trawler and the dragger, if you went to northeastern Nova Scotia and said trawlers that were bad, they would think you were crazy. I congratulate Mr. Butler because he is the only one who had the nerve to sue everyone in the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. He has a wonderful history as far as the fishermen are concerned. He is thought of highly by fishermen in Nova Scotia and in Newfoundland throughout the Atlantic region.
I wanted to ask you a few questions. First, Canada is the only nation, the only coastal state in the world, as I understand it, that has not ratified the Law of the Sea. Mr. Davis, would it be advantageous to the Government of Canada for this Senate committee, or any committee of the Senate, to make a strong recommendation to the Government of Canada to ratify the Law of the Sea?
Are you familiar with the Commission on the Outer Limits of the Continental Shelf?
Mr. Davis: I have heard about that.
Senator Baker: I wonder about your contacts with the Canadian Hydrographic Service. Could you comment on my question concerning the Law of the Sea and tie in the Canadian Hydrographic Service in the course of your answer.
Mr. Davis: I personally believe that all nations should work in the context of the international community. Not doing that is a mistake. It does not allow a country to show leadership. If Canada were involved with the Law of the Sea in a proper way, it could be a leader recognized globally for doing that. That carries responsibilities with it, obviously.
In terms of defining the boundaries, one of the documents we use — I did not bring it because it is too thick — is called ``The Natural History of Nova Scotia.'' This was a project carried out over 20 years through the Nova Scotia government. In many ways, it was done despite the Nova Scotia government. Now that I am retired, I can say things like that, within reason.
The first version of that document was an analysis of all the natural processes from geology through to living organisms on the landmass of Nova Scotia. In the 1970s, we got some sustainable economic development initiative money. It was the second largest grant given in Nova Scotia. Our objective was to rewrite that document and to include in it the whole ocean of interest to Nova Scotians.
Nova Scotia has no territorial claim as such because it is a federal responsibility. However, we still had to define the area we were interested in. You cannot document animals and plants and bottom types all the way to the Atlantic ridge. You have to stop somewhere. We decided it was logical for the documentation to cover those areas decided to be of economic importance, so it goes up to the mineral limits and the 200-mile fishery limit.
I have a map, if you want to look at the scale of it. This was a bit of a shock to the system. Look at the Nova Scotia landmass, which we wrote two volumes on in the 10 years previous, and then expand it to include all of that territory out to those mineral and resource limits. We felt that if Nova Scotians were going to use this, exploit it, participate in it, they had to have some knowledge about it.
In this book, we have described all the things that occurred there. We zoned the whole continental shelf area. This is not revolutionary; it is simply pulling together what people already knew into a single package. We were able to define the inner, middle and outer shelf areas, the slope and the abyssal plain leading up to the slope. You need to know what is there. You must have some context in which to describe the occurrence of species.
We use this book all the time. It gives us a framework to describe what is there. People who say they own this land need to know something about it and be able to demonstrate that. We can give people a copy of this book when they ask about our claim on this area.
Senator Baker: The Nova Scotia government once passed legislation in the framework of exploration for petroleum products. The Nova Scotia legislation was perhaps the most ambitious legislation in Canada. It said that they would extend jurisdiction control to the extent of exploitability. At that time, you could exploit mineral resources in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. The experts claimed that the Nova Scotia government had extended its jurisdiction to the coast of Africa. That is actually in legislation. Now I see that you have drawn up this. You have gone beyond the permissible line for the Law of the Sea. Can you explain that to the committee? The Nova Scotia government was bad enough. You are going beyond the continental shelf and beyond the slope. I think that is a key point.
Mr. Davis: In the past, in order to dispose of a shipwreck one could tow the wreck out to the continental slope and sink it. If you had munitions you wanted to dump, you could take them to the edge and chuck them overboard. No one was responsible for that.
Up to this time, the Nova Scotia government was eager to have the oil companies drill in deep water. Drilling for gas at 1,000 metres is not uncommon. I was told some years ago that the only prohibition on what they were doing was the technology and the economic climate in which to exploit the goods. A few months later I was told that they had solved the technical problem, They are just waiting for the economic climate. When the U.S. president says they have to have energy no matter where it comes from, the Nova Scotia government rolls over with delight.
I should not criticize the way they do things. Nonetheless, the opportunity is there but there is not the responsibility that goes with that opportunity, and we must look at that. If you want to exploit these resources, you must have the responsibility that goes with that, including proper environmental assessment processes, which do not currently exist.
The oil companies I talk to have all the information. The Bedford Institute has no information about what lives at the foot of the slope, but PanCanadian does.
Senator Baker: The Law of the Sea says that you control the soil and the subsoil. Therefore, if you went to the outer limits of the continental shelf, you could control the soil and the subsoil, or the destruction thereof.
Mr. Butler is of the view that we currently control the soil and subsoil.
Mr. Butler: I did not look up the relevant clause in the Oceans Act, but I believe there is some mention of it in there. I will look at it tomorrow.
Mr. Davis was talking about doing science beyond the 200-mile limit. When we had the coral symposium, a number of European scientists come over, including André Freiwald from Germany, who heads up the Atlantic Coral Ecosystem Study, a multi-national interdisciplinary project funded for three years by the EU Fifth Framework Research Program. I understand that they are doing research beyond their 200-mile limit, and they are doing it because they are interested in what is out there.
The Europeans are smart. Although I may be wrong, it is also a way to perhaps extend your jurisdiction.
Senator Baker: Dr. Davis is aware of the Commission on the Outer Limits of the Continental Shelf. You have to ratify the Law of the Sea, you have to become a part of the treaty, and then you go before the commission to extend your jurisdiction out to 350 miles or beyond, depending upon where the slope is.
I understand that people from the Canadian Hydrographic Service in Dartmouth are presently in Uruguay helping them extend their jurisdiction.
Are you aware of this?
Mr. Davis: They know how to do it.
Senator Baker: I congratulate you on the way you are putting forth this argument. A great many fishermen have made representation about the massive destruction of the shrimp fishery at the Flemish Cap, on all the banks off the East Coast and in the northern section of Nunavut. When vessels with a 30-tonne weight to keep the drag down trawl the ocean floor, that certainly destroys everything in their path.
Our fishery collapsed. Our large draggers came in and tied up in 1992. We now appear to be getting back into the same destructive technology again. It is organizations like yours that are warning the Government of Canada that we are heading down a terrible path.
Mr. Davis: It is very important to go into these discussions with a knowledge base. You cannot just say you are against cutting trees or against dragging because you do not like it. You have to be able to demonstrate the science behind it and to justify your arguments for why those things should or should not happen.
In the 1960s and the 1970s, people were complaining about foreign draggers on the Scotian shelf and slope doing all the damage to the fishery. As we have been searching out information on bottom-living invertebrates, we have found that most of the papers published in the world are written in Norwegian and Russian. You will not find a single paper written in any Canadian journal demonstrating Canadian knowledge of the fauna of the shelf and slope. We have the responsibility to build up the argument.
Senator Phalen: Senator Baker talked about draggers and trawlers. Which is more damaging to the sea life?
Mr. Davis: It depends on the terminology you use, but a trawler is a dragger. In North America, trawlers are called draggers, and in Europe draggers are called trawlers. The confusion comes from the fact that trawling is traditionally a form of longlining.
The Chairman: The European spelling is T-R-O-L-L-I-N-G.
Mr. Davis: In Britain, they call it trawling, with A-W-L, but it is dragging, and that is the destructive technique.
Senator Phalen: Which is causing all the problems on the sea bottom?
Mr. Davis: Dragging.
Mr. Butler: Apart from Atlantic Canada, I do not think there are too many places that use the word drag. Drag is a descriptive word. I know there used to be a Nova Scotia draggermen's association. About eight years ago, they changed their name to the Nova Scotia Mobile Gear Fishermen's Association because they thought it sounded a little better.
A good report came out from the National Academy of Sciences. The National Marine Fisheries Service in the U.S., which is the equivalent to our DFO, asked the following of a scientific body: ``Can you give us some guidance on this dragging thing? We are getting a lot of flack from environmentalists and some fishermen. What should we do about it?'' They got this answer: ``You need to do something about it. No more postponing. No more procrastination. Start identifying sensitive habitats. Start encouraging less destructive gears.''
The International Council for the Exploration of the Sea, of which Canada is a member, basically came out with a similar report in January 2000. Again, the fisheries managers went to their science body and asked for some advice.
In case I do not get to mention it, there is an interesting masters thesis that came out of Memorial University in May 2001 entitled, ``The Impact of Mobile Fishing Gear on Benthic Habitat and the Implications for Fisheries Management.'' It is by Barry McCallum who is now working with DFO. There is some very interesting information in this document.
The Chairman: You might want to pursue this on your round of questions, Senator Phalen.
Senator Robertson: This will be an interesting study on habitat. It is a good way to start out.
I should like to ask if dragging has ever been subject to an environmental impact assessment.
Mr. Davis: In this area, no, it has not. In Europe, in the past 10 or 20 years, there has been some work like that done, particularly looking at the behavioural response of fish to dragging and so on. We wonder why that is. You need to do an environmental assessment to put in a kilometre of highway, but you do not need one to drag a net a kilometre along the bottom of the sea.
We have a problem relating to that methodology. The methodology for environmental assessments on land and in fresh water, shallow water, is quite well organized. There are good protocols for them. However, we must develop the protocols in order to be fair to industry. You cannot just say to them, ``Here is a problem; solve it.'' If you cannot solve it the way we would like it to be solved, then you cannot do what you want to do. There must be some protocols in place for that to happen. We do not have them.
Senator Robertson: Can we develop those protocols? Who should be responsible for developing those protocols?
Mr. Davis: That is the responsibility of DFO. We are looking at a very small piece of Canada's coastline. From our point of view, it is a huge job. However, from the point of view of the federal government, you have to produce protocols or standards that will work on the other parts of Canada's coast or marine areas. In some cases, there can be regional differences, but the principles have to be the same to be fair all around the country. There is a lot of basic important work to do. I think we need them. If done fairly, fishermen can respond appropriately.
Senator Robertson: This committee could probably press the department to see if they could take a leadership role. As you say, nothing has been done and it may be difficult to design, but that should not stop us from doing something.
Mr. Butler: We should be doing what the U.S. and the European fisheries management have done. It is not that we need more study. The U.S. study said: ``We do not need three years more of study to start taking action.'' That is what they told the fisheries managers. Nonetheless, we need some study here in Canada where there has never been a really objective, independent, scientifically rigorous study of the impacts of dragging on the ocean floor. It could even be what DFO calls a RAP, or regional assessment process, which is what they do for other types of activities or fisheries.
When left to DFO, we have seen fisheries collapse. We saw the pain and suffering that that brought with it. Yet we still have not really addressed this issue. It needs to involve fishermen, conservationists and, perhaps, a wheat farmer from Saskatchewan. It should be a public, independent process.
Senator Robertson: Do you oppose the dragger fishery completely, or do you believe that dragging could be acceptable, with certain restrictions?
Mr. Butler: Some people say it should be gone. For instance, Senator Comeau knows we will not shut down the scallop industry, but perhaps we could do it more intelligently. Let us have a debate whereby, if we say that we are going to scallop, then we will keep that part of the ocean in a permanently altered state.
There is some interesting work going on with the Canadian Hydrographic Service, the Geological Survey of Canada (Atlantic) and Clearwater. I have some concerns about it; however, some interesting work is being done and some interesting technology is being applied to reduce the amount of dragging to be more effective in the targeting of scallops.
What bothers us greatly is that we have another type of gear that produces quality fish and creates more jobs, yet there is no official recognition of it. It is always dismissed as fishermen fighting over fish or quota. Let us start at least recognizing that there is another way of fishing and that it does less environmental damage. That is what we would like to see.
Senator Robertson: In a newspaper article I read, a critic of yours said that you have exaggerated your charge that Canada is not doing enough to protect marine life and habitat from destructive fishing practices. It begs me to ask: Who is doing better, and what are they doing better than we do here in Canada?
Mr. Butler: Presently, a fisher can take his or her dragger gear and tow it over any piece of bottom. There is no restriction on where it can be towed because of what it does to the bottom. The Western Bank was closed initially to draggers, for example. The draggers and the longliners could still fish there. However, the draggers kicked up such a fuss that they kicked out the longliners, too, to ensure that conservation hurts everyone.
In Canada, our main means of managing the fisheries is to set quotas. If the stocks are low, then we lower the quota. If the stocks are still not recovering, we lower the quota again. Perhaps we are not addressing the how, where and when part of how we fish.
The U.S. does environmental impact assessments of their fisheries. They are starting to designate essential fish habitat. They have the Magnuson-Stevens Fisheries Conservation and Management Act, which sets out to identify essential fish habitat. Of course, what they are finding out is that everything is essential fish habitat. However, now they have a new category, the term for which I forget. What is of particular importance is essential fish habitat.
In Norway, the fishermen said to some scientists: ``There are incredible formation reefs out there, and draggers are knocking them down. Please study that, and do something.'' They have before-and-after footage. They showed a reef that was in tact, 20 or 30 metres high, full of fish and corals, and then they showed the rubble. That was shown on Norwegian television.
Norway is a maritime nation. I know people who have gone there on fact-finding missions and they are amazed at how knowledgeable Norwegians are about the fishery in general. When that video footage was shown, people reacted with anger toward what was happening and insisted that something needed to be done about it. They closed a 1000- square kilometre area for dragging, but not for longlining.
There are not more spectacular types of reefs than these. Norway has always had inshore rules: This is where you can longline; this is where you can gillnet; this is where you handline. The fishers know the zoning of the ocean. There is a long history to that.
The Chairman: I am quite sure honourable senators would be interested in seeing that video. We would appreciate it if you would provide the video. It will become an exhibit.
Senator Phalen: In response to Senator Robertson, you said that there is an area of Nova Scotia where you would drag scallops and you would just continue dragging that area. Would the scallops remain? Would they reproduce? Would that area be barren?
Mr. Davis: Scallop dragging stops in areas where the scallops are largely gone. It is a common principle of agriculture that has been used for years that an area is left fallow. A field is ploughed, a crop is put on it, and then you leave it fallow to renew itself.
Recent geological studies using multi-beam radar techniques indicate that the scallops are reproducing and growing in good areas, but also that the young settle out in other areas where there is a different type of growth at the bottom. They like to attach to hydroid colonies, little animals growing on the bottom of the ocean. The scallop, when it is young, is different not just in terms of size, but also in the way it behaves and lives. They like to sit up on tops of things and have little attachments. They are more like a mussel when they are little. Then they attach themselves and swim around to other places.
You can have areas that are designed for the recovery of stock. In the traditional practice, the fishermen know that. If they have been working an area and are not getting scallops, off they go somewhere else.
We conducted an extensive study with DFO off Digby on the different growths of animals and areas that have been fished and areas that have not. There is quite a difference. An area left fallow allows itself to recover. It becomes a settlement place for young scallops and so on. A few years later, you can go back and get scallops there.
If that technique is well-practiced and well-managed by the fishermen, they can keep stock in a sustainable manner.
Senator Tunney: I want to ask the witnesses whether the experts are certain about what caused the disappearance of the cod. Also, do you have a list of endangered species of fish?
Mr. Davis: Perhaps I can respond to the endangered species of fish question.
Within Environment Canada, there is an organization called COSEWIC, which is the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada. That committee started, as with all things, with birds and mammals. They have now worked their way down to lower animals and now accommodate fish species in their spectrum.
The Atlantic Reference Centre, based at the Huntsman Marine Science Centre, in St. Andrews, New Brunswick, has just completed a study on the diversity of fishing species in Atlantic waters. They have listed 300 species. These species can now be categorized in terms of their distribution. They can produce maps of the distribution of these fishes and so on to determine the status of each of these species.
In Atlantic Canada, we must distinguish between different phenomena. One of the things that we see in Nova Scotia is the occurrence of tropical fishes. This may sound strange, but in terms of some south shore bays, the fishes of the Caribbean are as common as local fishes. There is an oceanographic phenomenon that causes that, which is due to the Gulf Stream. This is not a Newfoundland story.
The actively swimming fish come in as juveniles. When the weather cools off, in the fall and into winter, the juveniles that cannot get out die, or they slow down and are eaten by predators. The active species swim away. Tuna goes off to find warmer water.
When there is a list of 350 species, we have to be careful. We should not say that because one species has been seen twice that it is therefore rare and should be protected.
We are looking at the native fauna, things that live and breathe here all the time. We are getting to a stage in the Atlantic Reference Centre where we are working with the Conservation Data Centre, also in New Brunswick, to be able to say that these are the important species. They will go through the COSEWIC process to have an evaluation of the status and then make the recommendation for protection. That is the mechanism that is in place.
Mr. Butler: If you look at some of the DFO records, there was a moment of openness there in 1995, I believe, where they listed some of the port technician reports. Those are the people on the wharves listening to fishermen. There were horrendous stories about catching 500,000 pounds of fish and landing 300,000 pounds. That was never factored into the scientific estimates.
When environmental change first happened, the stocks collapsed, and it was all to do with cold water — that was DFO's answer. Now, perhaps changing water temperatures did play a role in recruitment to the fishery. I guess what we are signalling here today, in part, is that perhaps habitat loss or change has played a part. In Newfoundland and in Eastern Nova Scotia, I do not know what the quotas were in the 1970s and 1980s, but they were 50,000 tonnes and now there is nothing. People also talk about seals impeding recovery. Maybe they play a role and maybe they do not.
We are really messing around with this issue. I just wanted to say a word about extinction. You may never see the cod become extinct, but if you were to go to any small port in Nova Scotia and talk to an old-timer about where he used to catch cod, haddock or flounder, he would say, ``Just a mile offshore in that estuary over there.'' Now, that is gone. In the Bay of Fundy off Maine, experts have actually mapped where 100 years ago there were cod spawning grounds. The cod are not spawning there now. I would say the way in which dragging is done, where they target aggregations of fish, is the biggest single cause in my estimation.
Senator Tunney: I understand, from what I am hearing, that it is still somewhat imprecise. My theory is that, apart from the draggers that were coming in, we would not have seen such a decline in cod population.
Mr. Davis: — of all species.
Mr. Butler: An historian will tell you how much fish was landed in Newfoundland in the 1800s or in the early 1900s, and it was a great deal, and yet we did not see the kind of disaster we are now experiencing.
Senator Mahovlich: Does all coral have a name now? Has it all been discovered, or is there some coral still to be discovered?
Mr. Davis: When we first did our survey and made the report, we looked through the literature and found 20 species of corals that had been recorded in the offshore areas, particularly off Nova Scotia and New England but mostly off Nova Scotia. Just in the last year, two other students working on these projects went all the way around the Newfoundland continental slope and then up the Labrador slope to the northern tip of Labrador and began finding not just new populations but also species not recorded here before.
The problem we have, particularly with the lack of taxonomists, is that we cannot be sure that the species we are collecting here are the same as the ones described from other places. We are looking at them in a sensible way in terms of their growth forms. Even though you might have two things that look fairly much alike, but could be two different species, for the time you can actually conserve and work with them as a single form, knowing that someday someone will have a close look at these organisms and determine if there is more than one species there.
Senator Mahovlich: Mr. Butler mentioned periwinkle. Did someone name a coral ``periwinkle''?
Mr. Davis: This periwinkle is an edible snail species. There are many different stories to deal with these. In fact, we have a specimen here for you to see; it has an oyster attached to it. I will pass it along. The function of the periwinkle is to provide ground for oyster settlement.
That animal is well-known around Nova Scotia, in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and all the way down the New England Coast. It was believed to have been introduced from Europe in the 1800s and its history is very interesting. More precisely, it was introduced in Pictou and probably came with the ship Hector. It was recorded first in Pictou Harbour in 1865, but it also occurs in raised beaches that have been dated at 3,000 years. It is a European species introduced here. We are into a whole new dimension of understanding of what happens in this area.
When you have 3,000 animals, not only do you want to know precisely the name of each one, but you also want to examine the DNA, for instance. DFO is quite interested in doing the DNA characterization of all these species. It is a big job but every species has all of its complex stories — reproductive, feeding, introduction, demise, et cetera. Each species has its set of stories. We would like, over time, to pull all of those stories together.
Senator Adams: We are all familiar with fish farming and mussel farming. Is it difficult to farm scallops? Typically, they have to be on the bottom of the ocean? Mussels grow in a row. What about scallop farming?
Mr. Davis: Different techniques are required for the aquaculture of the different species. Scallops are not as easy to grow as mussels and oysters, but people have attempted scallops.
Senator Adams: Are they grown mostly around a coral area or can they be grown on a smoother ocean floor?
Mr. Davis: Usually, the area is much flatter and shallower. We are talking about 20 metres of depth or maybe a little more. The ocean floor is usually a sand or gravel bottom.
Senator Adams: Is the crop declining for scallop farmers? How long does it take to grow a scallop to the size that we would see in the stores?
Mr. Davis: They grow to 20 years in age. It is very interesting when people find new scallop grounds for exploitation. You can see this visibly in the supermarket, because suddenly the scallops in the markets are quite large.
Just a little anecdote, if I may. In the 1970s, I used to go out on the research vessel EE Prince. It was agreed, the way the crew were working, that all fish, once they were counted, became the property of the crew and that I could have the invertebrates. Just north of Sable Island, we discovered some amazing scallops. I shucked scallops for hours. They were very large scallops; thus, it is referred to as the giant scallop. It is biggest one to be found anywhere.
In fact, in later years, those large populations were worked out. As long as scallops are commercially viable, the growers will harvest the small ones, although they could ultimately grow into much larger animals if left alone.
Senator Adams: In the meantime, it is beneficial to add fish to the coral to increase the fertilization of the eggs. Is that correct?
Mr. Davis: Some fish reproductive patterns are different, but most invertebrates produce their larvae in the plankton. The fertilization is external, and the eggs develop in the plankton and eventually settle to the bottom in a suitable habitat. They become widely distributed as a result of that and millions of larvae are produced. Thus, a suitable habitat can be re-colonised quite easily. If an area is left alone, whether it is corals, scallops or whatever the association of species will be, they will recover quickly as a result of the availability of the larvae.
Senator Adams: I was listening to the local radio from Rankin Inlet, the CBC, and someone from Iceland has invented a computer and gone fishing with it. Have you heard about that? He went to Baffin Island and tested it. If he caught one fish, he would catch another one every time, but no one knows how long the battery will last. Have you ever heard of that?
Mr. Butler: I did not hear about that one. It is better not to be dependent on a battery.
Senator Cook: This is more in the nature of an observation. I am reading your diagram showing the food relationships of certain species. I am looking at a cod feeding on crabs and snails, and a haddock. I know the difference between a cod and a haddock; however, when you cook them the difference is negligible. Yet, the food they eat is radically different.
Mr. Davis: I would not rely too heavily on these diagrams. Certainly the sea urchin looks unpalatable, even to a fish, but basically some animals are feeding on different things at different stages at their lives. When cod are younger, they feed mainly on smaller fish. It is the adults that are feeding on the invertebrates.
Senator Cook: When they are adult, the difference is not that great, is it?
Mr. Davis: It depends on their migrations and their adult behaviour, whether they feed predominantly on the bottom or up in the water column. It varies, yes.
Senator Robertson: This is going to be interesting. Internationally, we have had some bad experiences with the devastation of fish stocks. The one close to home in recent years is still clear in our memories. At another meeting this morning, there were questions about how to get governments to respond to our recommendations and our reports. How do we get them to listen to what we have to say, and what our witnesses have to say?
I can remember Senator Marshall being exhausted with this argument, trying to get the government to listen and respond. I do not understand why, in the areas where the fishery is so important, we are not leading in areas of protection of the habitat.
Would you gentlemen have recommendations of how we could rattle the chain a bit?
Mr. Davis: Our approach is that you have to, in many ways, embarrass the government into doing its job. We know there are important considerations and priorities and so on. If there is an issue that must be looked at and should be attended to, you have to keep working at it. You cannot just say we tried and we failed. You have to keep working at it.
Our policy in the marine issues committee is that many of our members are young students and they have 30 or 40 years to badger the government to get these things done. We are not letting up on it. It is a constant drawing of public attention. We have found that collaboration is very important. Our working collaboratively with government probably produces more benefits than by suing them, although Mr. Butler and I disagree on this. That is why MIDI is a separate organization. They kicked us out.
There are different approaches to that: collaboration, sharing, participation in the experience. However, from the MIDI and the EAC point of view, it is the education of the public to be knowledgeable about issues that is important.
In environmental issues generally, the Ecology Action Centre has been very successful. It is 30 years old and doing very well. Much of the success of that is the education of the membership and the people they deal with in terms of their environmental issues. We have to educate the public in how the sea works, how important it is to us, and the responsibilities the government should be taking. Then the public is informed enough to ask the right questions, where it affects the local MP. They ask informed questions about what the party is going to do about things.
Mr. Butler: You have to look at who benefits from the status quo. You can look at who benefits from the existing situation. Some do and many do not.
DFO is not a homogeneous organization. I think where much of the problem lies is in the fisheries management branch. It is not an easy job managing fisheries, and people who know fisheries know that. Since the collapse of the stocks, there has never been an honest, open review of what went wrong and how we can fix it, without any retribution.
Maybe 15 years ago we were a leader in fishery or ocean science, but we are not today. We have been overtaken. When the U.S. decides to do something, they usually do it. They go to the National Academy of Sciences and say give us an answer, and the academy comes back with one. They do have their own problems, and we are ahead in some ways, but in some crucial ways we are behind. We have decided to go to court. There is no one answer.
However, with this committee, it is frustrating not to be listened to. We have seen the Fisheries Resource Conservation Council of Canada tell DFO and the minister to do things, and it does not seem to have much of an impact. When the National Academy of Sciences comes out on this issue of gear and says that there is no more debate, that you need to take action, the representative they are talking to does not argue about the science.
Senator Baker: The Canadian Hydrographic Service is asking for $30 million to complete a mapping of the ocean floor outside the area you are talking about. How important is that?
Mr. Davis: It is very important. As an example, in terms of the invertebrate work we are doing, if you end up with many records of marine invertebrates, what do you do with that data? You have to publish tables of data. However, if you can express that information in a map form then it means a lot to people. They can see where species are and so on. Without a map you cannot do that.
For many species, maps must be detailed because we want to be able to demonstrate — and we can gather the data — changes in populations over time. There are two factors, the spatial and the temporal change in the population of the species. That is what you want to know about fishes. You can do that now with wonderfully good computer programs to show where the fish were at different times of the year, and so on.
However, you must have a base map to do that. The Canadian government has a recognition of that in a program called GeoConnections, which I am not sure many people know about. This is a $50 million program over many years to provide the map bases so that all information about Canada can be expressed on maps. It is no good saying, ``Yes, I have a periwinkle.'' Under the program, they will say: ``Give me the latitude and longitude of where that periwinkle came from, and, if possible, give me the date of when you collected that periwinkle and those coordinates,'' because that becomes useful data to map. As those approaches of handling data in a geographic sense become commonplace — and the computers are allowing this to happen — a map base becomes essential.
Senator Baker: The technology now exists such that with respect to, say, a school of mackerel, sounders that they use in Norway and Sweden and to a certain extent in Canada can fish a school of mackerel so they will only take the bottom layer of that mackerel. They can adjust the net down by computer to the point where they will take only the bottom layer. That is how they manage their fisheries with this sophisticated gear.
Here you are concerned, as every Canadian should be, about the total destruction of the marine environment and the bottom of ocean. The destruction is generally associated with the two big gates on the trawlers. There are about 40 of them out there now. They come along and they drag, causing a suction that goes into the net like a whirlwind. All the dust, along with everything else, comes off the bottom of the ocean and into this net. It goes right out to the end of the net, where there are grates to separate the other types of fish.
Have you ever thought about this? We have progressed to the point of being able to take layers of fish apart but we have not progressed to the point where we can fish shrimp, any of the flatfishes and any of the bottom dwellers without those big steel gates each weighing 30 tonnes down on the bottom of the ocean, dragging and destroying the ocean.
Have you ever given thought to why we have not progressed beyond that? That was used 50 years ago. You have a line going down to the bottom of the ocean. The fish are down here, and you have these gigantic steel things dragging along the ocean with this little net behind it. It is only a sock net dragging everything and ruining everything. Have you ever thought about why we do not have the technology to eliminate those gates in front of the nets? Have you ever read anything about that? Is there any organization in the world that has come out with a solution to the problem?
Mr. Davis: The studies of fishing gear technology have been ongoing for years. I came across a historic view of the Scottish fishery some time ago, which I gave to Mr. Butler. It is about a complaint given to the Scottish fisheries committee in about 1876 that the bottom trawlers were destroying the spawning grounds for herring. This bottom trawling technique was actually invented by the Dutch. So there has been 150 years or more of experience with this. All the innovations of technology are put aside by the economic gain in terms of when the fishing boat goes to sea. It is the production per man hours and the profit related to that which count.
Senator Baker: How would you adjust the net? The rope is going up here and you have the big weights to keep it on the bottom of the ocean. If they can adjust the net up a tiny bit off the ocean for this part, they might lift it up a bit more. How would you adjust the net if you did not have the big drags on the bottom of ocean?
Mr. Davis: Our solution to that is this: Stop doing that and use longlines. That is the basic simple approach to it. We have known that for years.
Senator Baker: It is interesting.
The Chairman: Mr. Butler, you and I were talking about the Oceans Act before the meeting. I was mentioning the tremendous potential of the Oceans Act, if it were given the kind of implementation that it needs. I am on the record as being one of the strong supporters of the concept of the Oceans Act.
I know that you as a group are into marine protected areas, which is one of the great tools of the Oceans Act. We have a bill before the Parliament at present concerning marine conservation areas, which will fund the creation of various parks. We are not seeing the full potential of marine protected areas and protecting them at the same time as we are funding marine parks.
Have you been asked to appear before a parliamentary committee to give your views on that piece of legislation? The reason I bring this up is that it should be embarrassing for DFO to have a department that has no history, no knowledge, no background, no corporate history and little contact with the fishing communities out there in the process of implementing marine parks at the same time that we are not implementing the marine protected areas that we should be doing. Have you considered this question at all?
Mr. Butler: We appeared before the House of Commons Committee on Fisheries and Oceans about the slow implementation of the Oceans Act, particularly given the rapid pace of oil and gas development and some other activities. The Oceans Act was passed in 1997, yet we have seen very little — much internal study and discussion, but not much action.
On the question of marine protected areas, we tend to differ from some of our other conservation colleagues. We see that there is a role for marine protected areas — marine protected areas offer more flexibility than the marine conservation areas, I believe, that would come through Heritage Canada. A marine protected area will only protect perhaps 10 or 15 per cent of the ocean.
What we want to see — a friend of mine who is a fisherman has said this too — is not marine protected areas but all areas protected. If you create a marine protected area, you protect 10 per cent of the ocean. You are presumably doing it because you are protecting it for something, so perhaps you are protecting it from certain types of fishing. You will displace that fishing.
Where is that fishing going to go? It will go somewhere else and do some damage there. It is bit like Costa Rica, where 13 or 14 per cent of Costa Rica is protected and everyone remarks about how wonderful that is, and it is. It is truly remarkable. If they had not done that, they would have lost a lot. However, when you fly over Costa Rica, you will see circles of green and outside of those there is very little. When it comes to the ocean, fish move and water moves.
We need to take a more integrated approach to protecting the ocean. It may be appealing to say that we created an ocean wilderness and protected a lovely area with corals and whales. The public gets the message that everything is fine but the remaining 90 per cent is left unresolved. Perhaps we have not addressed the issue of dragging.
In the Oceans Act, there is the integrated management provision, where you take a large area like the eastern Scotian Shelf and, thinking of everything going on there, you start to restrict activities. We are more interested in that.
Senator Adams: Right now I am on the committee reviewing Bill C-10 regarding marine parks. I am a member of the Energy Committee. We will be having some witnesses. We have people from Parks Canada coming to our committee already. We are studying Bill C-10 currently.
Mr. Butler: I would make one more point. Professor Davis is a taxonomist, which means he identifies species and knows about marine invertebrates. In the 1970s and 1980s, that entire field was neglected. Molecular biology was fashionable. Genetics were fashionable. Modelling ecosystems by using calculus was fashionable. We have now suddenly discovered that we have not got the skills to identify the species out there. If you do not know a species, it is hard to do much else. We have seen in the last few years many young people coming back into this field, and it is exciting.
We should return to that fairly basic part of science. I do not know if that is a recommendation that the committee could endorse.
The Chairman: We will be seeking you, if we need clarification.
Honourable senators, do you agree that the materials submitted by the witnesses tonight be appended as part of our exhibits?
Hon. Senators: Agreed.
The Chairman: I have one other favour from our witnesses. We as a committee would like to look at positive stories that may not make the news. We would like positive news that we could put on our Web site or in our information exhibits. The explanation of Dr. Davis on how they got together and copied an old document is one of those good stories, as is the cataloguing, which should be done by DFO. It should not have to be done by NGOs.
However, as it was not done, you went ahead and did it. These are the positive stories we would like to get on our Web site, and eventually in our report. If you think of any positive stories, please get them to us.
It has been an interesting evening. We had planned to end at about 8:30. As you can see, it has gone over. It shows that you have attracted the interest of the members. We are appreciative of that. We appreciate your time, as well.
Thank you for sharing your knowledge and passion with us.
The committee adjourned.