THE STANDING SENATE COMMITTEE ON FISHERIES AND OCEANS
EVIDENCE
OTTAWA, Thursday, November 17, 2022
The Standing Senate Committee on Fisheries and Oceans met with videoconference this day at 9:05 a.m. [ET] to examine and report on Canada’s seal populations and their effect on Canada’s fisheries; and, in camera, for the consideration of a draft agenda (future business).
Senator Fabian Manning (Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Chair: Good morning, everyone. My name is Fabian Manning. I’m a senator from Newfoundland and Labrador and I have the pleasure of chairing this meeting.
Today we are conducting a meeting of the Standing Senate Committee on Fisheries and Oceans. Should any technical challenges arise, particularly in relation to interpretation, please signal this to the chair or the clerk and we will work to resolve the issue. I would like to ask the members of the committee that have joined us here this morning to introduce themselves beginning on my immediate right.
Senator Ataullahjan: Senator Salma Ataullahjan from Ontario.
Senator Kutcher: Stan Kutcher, Nova Scotia.
Senator Francis: Senator Francis, P.E.I.
[Translation]
Senator Ringuette: I am Pierrette Ringuette from New Brunswick.
[English]
Senator Busson: Bev Busson, senator from British Columbia.
The Chair: Thank you, senators. Before asking or answering any questions, I would like to ask members in the room, please refrain from leaning in too close to the microphone or remove your earpiece when doing so. This will avoid any sound feedback that could negatively impact the committee staff in the room.
On October 4, 2022, the Standing Senate Committee on Fisheries and Oceans was authorized to examine and report on Canada’s seal populations and their effect on Canada’s fisheries. Today under its mandate, the committee will be hearing from Dr. Paul Bentzen, Professor, Dalhousie University; Dr. Daniel Ruzzante, Killam Professor, Dalhousie University; and Dr. Fred Whoriskey, Executive Director, Ocean Tracking Network, Dalhousie University. I apologize if I didn’t pronounce your names exactly the way that your mother gave them to you.
On behalf of the members of the committee, I thank you for being here. I understand that all three witnesses have opening remarks. Following the presentation, members of the committee will have some questions for you. I want to start with Dr. Bentzen. Dr. Bentzen, you have the floor.
Paul Bentzen, Professor, Dalhousie University, as an individual: Thank you and good morning, everyone. I want to briefly introduce myself, tell you a little bit about my credentials and research. I hold a master’s degree from the University of British Columbia and a PhD from McGill. I have been a professor in the Department of Biology at Dalhousie University since 2001. Before that, I was a faculty member at the School of Aquatic and Fisheries Sciences at the University of Washington in Seattle for about eight years. I have been active in research for about 38 years, and over that time my research has focused on questions related to population and conservation biology and biodiversity of aquatic species. By aquatic species I mostly mean fishes, although over the years other creatures such as some whales and sea otters have gotten into the list as well, but mostly marine fishes from both the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans.
My research over that time has almost invariably involved the use of DNA data to answer questions related to the topics that I just mentioned. Too much and too diverse research to say much about, but I will say that some examples of recent research that I have been engaged in has looked at population structure and local adaptation in species such as Atlantic salmon and Atlantic cod. Another theme in my research has been helping define designatable units for species that are recognized under the Species at Risk Act. Lately, a major focus has been on the use of environmental DNA as a biodiversity surveillance tool of relevance in both the marine and freshwater aquatic realms. Basically, I’m focusing on species that are either endangered, invasive or of concern in some way.
That’s all I have to say, and I’m, of course, happy to take questions.
The Chair: Thank you, Dr. Bentzen. Now we go to Dr. Ruzzante. You have the floor.
Daniel E. Ruzzante, Killam Professor, Dalhousie University, as an individual: Thank you. I think I will briefly follow Paul Bentzen’s pattern. I have both a master’s degree and a PhD from Dalhousie. I subsequently worked for the Danish Fisheries Institute for Fisheries Research about four years and have been a professor in the faculty at the Department of Biology at Dalhousie since 2002.
I also work on population genetics, mostly on fishes. But what I want to concentrate on today, which I thought would be the reason why I had been invited was because of the project that I’m involved in currently, and it concerns the estimation of population abundance in marine fishes or in the marine realm using genomics.
This work is based on the principle that an individual carries a genotype of each of its two parents. There is a method in ecology that has been around for, what, seven, eight decades to estimate population abundance, which is based on the close-kin mark-recapture principle, which is based on the fact that if you mark individuals, you release them in the population again and sample them again, then the proportion of the individuals that are marked in your second sample will be an indication of how big the population is, and you can estimate that.
You are using the principle that an individual carries a genotype of each of its two parents in the close-kin mark-recapture framework, that is, a juvenile marks the genotype of its parent. Using that framework, we’re trying to estimate the population abundance of Atlantic halibut at this moment, and it’s a project that’s ongoing. There are many advantages to estimate population abundance compared to current methods, which are based on some measure of catch-per-unit effort, which can be subject to bias and uncertainties related to the fact that year changes, misreporting, tag losses, mortality due to tagging and so on and so forth.
None of that is relevant to this approach because the tag is a genotype, and you can sample individuals that are alive or you can sample dead fish as long as the DNA is in good condition. It’s relatively cheap, and its sequencing is becoming increasingly cheap. You can get a rather precise estimate of population abundance and, with continued effort, can give indications of changes in population size.
As I said, we are doing that on Atlantic halibut. The project is about a million dollars over five years, which is a pittance when compared to the revenue that is acquired from the Atlantic halibut fishery, which I think was about $60 million last year, so $60 million a year. The approach can be used for seals, for counting seals. I’m happy to answer questions.
The Chair: Thank you, doctor. Dr. Whoriskey.
Fred Whoriskey, Executive Director, Ocean Tracking Network, Dalhousie University, as an individual: We thank you very kindly for the invitation and to speak with my good, close friends and colleagues from Dalhousie here. We’re all acknowledging that we are coming from the ancestral and unceded territory of the Mi’kmaq here. We also have to acknowledge the heroic work of Sara Gajic, your clerk, who managed to wrangle us up and get us organized in time to appear in front of your committee on a very short time frame. Thank you very much for that.
I am a marine biologist and work on a broad array of species. I completed my PhD work at Université Laval, which was followed by a one-year NATO postdoctoral fellowship in the U.K. I then did a 10-year stint as a professor at McGill University until the mid-1990s when I moved to New Brunswick to take up a post with the Atlantic Salmon Federation, an environmental non-governmental organization, to create a research division that was working on what is causing the declines of Atlantic salmon. There we pioneered the use of electronic telemetry equipment to track the movements of large and small scales of animals in the ocean.
Following on successes with this, in 2008, I was recruited to Dalhousie University to become the Executive Director of the Ocean Tracking Network, which is a recipient of the Canada Foundation for Innovation’s, Major Science Initiatives Fund, and the only national science facility of that scale in Atlantic Canada. As executive director, I oversee a global network of electronic telemetry infrastructure that is used to track the movements and survival of marine animals. Currently, we have over 340 species, including seals, that are being followed. We link these to environmental conditions.
I also oversee two major Dalhousie research programs, one involving the movements and survival of Atlantic salmon in the ocean and the second on right whales in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. I have served as the Chair of the Board of the Huntsman Marine Science Centre and the Management Board of the Canadian Rivers Institute.
As for seals, they are a persistent issue of interest and concern in almost all of the work that I have done. They also touch the family life, as my new P.E.I.-veterinary-school-trained daughter is now the veterinary head of the monk seal recovery team for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the United States. So I am happy I can tell you whatever I can about seals. Thank you very much.
The Chair: Thank you to all our witnesses, and there is no doubt that we have some wealth of information in front of us. We’ll just try to pry some of that out of you now. We’ll go to Senator Busson, our deputy chair, for our first questions. I just want to advise our witnesses that any question may be to an individual but anybody should feel free to elaborate on the answer or add anything that you want to.
Senator Busson: I’m impressed by everyone’s credentials, so anyone is welcome to address my question if they feel they have something to say about it.
My question has to do with the challenges faced when conducting seal research related to projects. Specifically, my focus is on the West Coast, but you are welcome to make any comment regarding seal populations on either coast and in the North. As a senator from British Columbia, I have a particular interest in seal populations and how the issue of conservation overlaps between seal populations and other aquatic species. I was wondering if, over the course of your research, you have run into any specific challenges when conducting research, specifically around tallying seal populations, and if you have any comments or recommendations to offer this committee as we work forward on our study of seals in Canadian waters? Thank you.
The Chair: Whoever would like to go first, feel free to do so. Dr. Bentzen, if you would like to go ahead.
Mr. Bentzen: I think I should really defer to Fred Whoriskey here. I have thoughts about seals, but I don’t consider myself an expert.
Mr. Whoriskey: I can speak a little to that issue. One of the prime concerns of many of our constituents is the interactions between seals and other highly valued species, especially commercially valuable fish species. Understanding the distribution of seals in relation to where those fish species are at a particular time is an important first step in understanding the potential impacts of the seals upon those other groups. We don’t really have a good understanding of the distributions of these animals, the seals in the ocean, and in many cases of the animal populations that the seals are feeding on. A lot of the work that we’re doing now with the electronic telemetry systems is trying to tease all of that out and to provide information surrounding that. Good progress is being made.
Another issue of concern is there are interactions between different seal species. We have harbour seals here on the East Coast, and we have grey seals as well. Grey seals can be a major predator, and actually they have been found to be cannibalizing their own species in some cases. We’re concerned about harbour seal populations declining in some areas and wondering about the potential negative interactions between the two species, and that could be an area of concern from a conservation perspective. Thank you.
The Chair: Dr. Ruzzante, anything you want to add?
Mr. Ruzzante: I cannot add anything substantial regarding a particular research topic. Only that in my particular experience, I wanted to use this approach, the close-kin mark-recapture approach that I just referred to — I wanted to apply it to the grey seal population on the Scotian Shelf, but there was no funding for it.
The industry did not want to collaborate, because — they told me — the minute they touched seals, it’s bad news for them, because they cannot be the winners. People will think that they are doing that because of the intention to start culling them, and DFO, Fisheries and Oceans Canada, couldn’t think of putting more money into research on grey seals.
As for the question that the senator posed on the West Coast, I don’t have expertise in that area. I’m sorry.
The Chair: Thank you.
Senator Ataullahjan: Thank you to all the witnesses.
I would like to know if climate change has impacted the seal population in Canada. If so, how, have the impacts been positive or negative and what effect has this had at the ecosystem level?
Mr. Bentzen: I see that Mr. Whoriskey has unmuted his mic and will, undoubtedly, have more to say.
I don’t know what climate change has directly done in terms of influencing the distribution of seals. It is definitely influencing the distribution of the fish that they feed on. That is beyond question. Species distribution of the items the seals prey on are definitely shifting, partly due to climate change.
How those shifts are occurring are complex, but we’re seeing declines of some species that have been very abundant in Atlantic Canadian waters, and we are seeing new species rising in abundance.
The Chair: Thank you.
Mr. Whoriskey: I would agree with Mr. Bentzen.
We don’t have a good idea of the direct impacts of climate change upon seal populations, but these impacts on the prey species that they are feeding on, one of the key ones that we’re concerned about right now are production cycles at the primary production level, certainly in the Atlantic region.
The warming climate is projected to potentially decrease that productivity by as much as 30% compared to what it has been, so if we knock out the food chain right at the start by 30%, both recovery of the currently depressed grey seal population is going to get a lot harder, but it also means that we won’t have a lot of these species around to split up between the fishing community and the seal community that’s out there at the time.
The Chair: Just as a follow-up to Senator Ataullahjan’s question, Dr. Bentzen, some of the scientists from DFO have more or less told us that the — I’ll use cod as an example. I know it was a big issue in Newfoundland and Labrador. We have heard statements to the effect that they don’t really necessarily believe that the approximately 7 million seals that are off the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador are affecting the cod fishery, but everyone I talk to that’s involved with the fishery believes that.
We have a 30-year moratorium in Newfoundland and Labrador, and we have still not recovered. The cod population has still not recovered. As a matter of fact, in some areas of the province, it’s even maybe worse than what it was. Then on the other side we hear from people that say that there is no doubt in their minds that the number of seals off our coast is having a very negative effect on the cod fishery.
Now, I realize climate change and other issues are there, but maybe you could touch on a few things if you have done some research in regard to what you believe are some of the reasons why we have a decimated stock in Newfoundland — well, not only in Newfoundland but in Atlantic Canada, for that matter.
Thanks.
Mr. Bentzen: Thank you for the question.
I need to be brief, because I have not conducted research on this specific issue. I can only approach the question from a general perspective as an ecologist, as someone who follows things going on with marine fish.
I don’t think the impact of seals can be ruled out at all in terms of the effect on these populations, but the fact is that the seals and the cod are both parts of a very complex ecosystem. There are prey species below the cod, and there are competitors to the cod. It is rightfully called a “food web,” and it’s a food web that is also influenced by abiotic conditions, and by that I mean, essentially, climate and how that drives productivity.
When we see an easily visible marine mammal such as seals, it’s easy to point at them and say that they are the problem, and there can be no question that they are eating a lot of fish. But are they the root problem? I don’t think so.
The Chair: Thank you.
Would any of our other witnesses like to respond?
Mr. Ruzzante: Yes, if I may.
I would reinforce Dr. Bentzen’s point that it’s not a one-to-one relationship. There is also something in ecology called the “functional response.” If the cod may be very few, then the seals are eating something else. They wouldn’t be focusing on the cod, because there aren’t that many of them around. It’s not a one-on-one relationship. It’s a complicated food web. Other species may have come up in numbers since the cod declined.
If the question is with regard to whether we should act upon the seal population side and start culling them, well, it’s not at all clear that that would have any effect whatsoever.
Again, I haven’t done research specifically on this question. This is a general understanding of the ecology of the system.
The Chair: Dr. Whoriskey?
Mr. Whoriskey: We have done a bit of tracking work of seals coming off Sable Island and followed their feeding migration. This is not the northern cod stock, so obviously it’s not directly answering your question yet.
These animals, as they took off, we tracked them into areas where we had also tagged cod. What was happening was both the cod and the seals were concentrating on places where you had the high-fat, little silver fish — prey fish — that both of them preferred to feed on. They did not interact with each other, and the seals did not eat the tagged cod that were present that we were detecting from the seals. We had equipment on the back of the seals that were listening for these cod to see if they were interacting with them at the time, and they were in the same proximity, but, no, we did not see them getting eaten by the animals. Instead, everybody concentrated on the preferred prey, which is the one that has more of the high-calorie value, which is what they are really seeking, because they are all looking to grow and bulk up at the time. We have that bit of evidence.
Insofar as the northern cod are concerned, one of our gaps here is, from the seals that you are referring to off the coast of Newfoundland, we have not been tagging those animals with the kinds of technology that would let us see what their course tracks are and see if they are moving to the areas where the northern cod are at times when they are concentrated, for example, offshore, overwintering during the spawning season.
That would be something that would be worth doing.
The Chair: Thank you very much for that suggestion, and it may become one of our recommendations.
Senator Francis: I heard someone briefly touch on funding gaps for research earlier. I just want to get your thoughts from any of you on what the research priorities for the Canadian seal population should be, and how should the federal government support this kind of work?
Mr. Whoriskey: Thank you. At the end of the day, some hard management decisions are going to be asked to be taken surrounding seals and the population sizes. The kind of research that I think is a top priority now is understanding where the animals are, how they are interacting with the valued species which our coastal communities are depending upon for their livelihoods. I suspect that we’re going to have very different interactions in very different places so that in the St. Lawrence River, for example, the populations of seals growing there do seem to be far more active and taking far more cod than we are finding in some other places, and that may be impacting local communities. Maybe they are going to shift into taking snow crab in those places and, God forbid, lobsters in that particular time. So getting a better understanding of some of these areas like the St. Lawrence of the seal distributions, their choice of prey and how that may be changing as a function of the changing ocean are what I would be prioritizing.
Mr. Bentzen: I agree with everything that Fred Whoriskey just said. I will just add since there was a question related to research funding, I will shamelessly put in a pitch for some of the kinds of research that I do. I mentioned at the end of my introduction that environmental DNA has become a major focus. It has value as a surveillance tool. In many ways, complementary to the direct tagging sorts of observations that Dr. Whoriskey’s research undertakes. By using water samples, we can detect the presence of the fish species community. We can know what fishes are present. We can also detect seals. We cannot say anything directly about the ecological interactions, but we can certainly look at distributions of both the prey and the potential predator, the seal, quite efficiently that way.
I will say that DFO is showing signs that they are onto this as a research approach.
Mr. Ruzzante: Yes, I support everything that Fred Whoriskey and Paul Bentzen have said.
Going back to a bit of self-promotion or shamelessness, a recommendation to focus on what I am doing.
I know that a group in Alaska is using the close-kin marked-recapture method to estimate the population abundance of, I believe, bearded seals. I know it is a method that can be used for, perhaps, ringed seals or all the various species that are abundant. It is relatively cheap, like I said, because you only need a piece of DNA and a piece of tissue to start the DNA. You need to know how old the individuals are. It could be a complementary method to whatever methods are currently used to estimate abundance.
I should add that fisheries departments worldwide are beginning to use these approaches to estimate abundance of exploited fishes, sharks, species under conservation concern and so on. Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you. Before we go to Senator Kutcher, Dr. Whoriskey, you mentioned a study that you had conducted off Sable Island, I believe. I’m wondering if it’s possible we could receive a copy of that study.
Mr. Whoriskey: I will dig up the papers that came out of that work and see that they are forwarded to the committee clerk, Ms. Gajic.
The Chair: Thank you very much, doctor.
Senator Kutcher: Thank you all for being with us this morning. This is a highly complex issue that we are trying to determine, impact of seals on fish stock.
The discussion about a direct prey relationship, a competitive prey relationship is the key one. The complex interplays along all aspects of the food web, the impact of warming and acidification of the oceans on changes in species abundance; the fact that there are differences in these interactions between the Gulf of St. Lawrence, the Cabot Strait, the Strait of Belle Isle and other parts of the Atlantic Ocean. Yet, we are struggling with making policy that is going to promote our ability to manage our fish stocks but also how to deal with our seal population and the communities that depend on seal populations for their livelihoods.
In your opinion, what is the state of the science, currently, to help us with this kind of complex policy decision making because that is, after all, what our job is? You have already identified some areas. If there are gaps, which would we prioritize?
I want to go on about two other aspects of that, one is we have heard testimony that the methodologies that the Department of Fisheries and Oceans has been using, has not changed in decades in terms of how they estimate the relationship between apex predators, secondary predators, competitive predators or all that other kind of stuff.
The other thing that I found incredibly disconcerting was from the Auditor General’s report of 2022, Protecting Aquatic Species at Risk and we know that the cod is an aquatic species at risk. I want to read you something from that as you think about the response to my rambling question. It says:
We found that Fisheries and Oceans Canada’s analysis to support decisions on whether to list species under the Species at Risk Act was sometimes unclear or insufficient. In addition, the department’s listing advice was not clearly or sufficiently based on scientific information and other supporting assessments.
In another part it says:
Fisheries and Oceans Canada’s knowledge of some aquatic species was limited. The department did not develop timely listing advice for half the species, and the listing advice it provided was sometimes poorly informed.
I have substantive concerns about the quality, the nature, the adequacy, amount, the methodologies, the modelling of the science that we actually need to make these policy decisions. I wonder if you could comment on that. As you are thinking about that, what should the relationship between DFO and academic departments like the ones that you are in but also Bedford Institute of Oceanography, the academic work that is done on the West Coast, how can that be improved? Because you have an incredible amount of expertise. We do not see that expertise in DFO. Can you help us with ideas about these complex issues?
The Chair: Okay. Quite the question. We are looking forward to the answers.
Senator Kutcher: That was a question, not a statement.
Mr. Bentzen: Wow. There is a lot there.
The last part of your question, senator, is the clearest in my mind in terms of interactions between DFO and academia. I have to say that these are certainly occurring in my own personal experience. A very large fraction of my research is collaborative with DFO scientists. So in my own small world, it is happening.
There are a lot of administrative hurdles that I would like to see removed or diminished in terms of how that takes place. We, in academia, are, of course, dependent on grants and contracts. Sometimes organizing those and getting those through the two bureaucracies — the DFO on the one side and the university on the other — can be an almost nightmare combination, which directly interferes with what we accomplish on a year-to-year basis.
Of course, I am a scientist. I will always say more research is needed. Really, government-academic partnerships, in my mind, are clearly the way to go.
We have so many moving parts here that have come up. The complex food web interactions, the climate change, the species — I said it before, but species distributions are expected to change substantially in the coming decades.
In Atlantic Canada we are literally in a climate change hot spot in the sense that temperatures are changing, and we have a very steep climate gradient into here. The changes in the distribution and, therefore, in the ecological interactions that underpin our fisheries are in a state of flux.
We need the best scientists. We need a lot of data. We need data from every approach. We need better population abundance estimates. We need modelling and a lot of research. This is a very, very complex area, and I should stop rambling, but it is a big deal.
As Mr. Whoriskey mentioned earlier in his comments, we are looking, at the base of all of this, at as much as a 30% projected decrease in the overall productivity of this system over the coming decades. That is potentially huge. Well, it is not potentially huge. It will be huge in terms of its impact on the livelihoods of many people in this part of the world.
I will stop at this point and turn the floor over to one of my colleagues, whoever wants to go next.
The Chair: Mr. Whoriskey?
Mr. Whoriskey: As a joke I was thinking about asking you to repeat the question, but I think I will behave myself.
With regard to Fisheries and Oceans Canada, DFO has the ability to take in the best and the brightest scientists our school systems are producing annually. No doubt that in their science cadre, they have high-quality people working.
The second advantage that they have are long-term capabilities that the university environment does not have. Mr. Bentzen mentioned this earlier. We get a grant that is good for three to five years, and at the end of that, it is over and done with, and you have to move on to something else. That is not really a wonderful way to deal with climate change, which is a creeping change. Over 5, 10, 15, 20, 30 years, things are happening, and you need to keep repeating your work. It is government scientists who have that capability.
Also, DFO is the gorilla in the room and by far have the greatest science capabilities in the country. That is where a lot of the equipment is. The budgets are far larger than what flows into the academic environment, and that gives them a much greater potential to do things.
Having said that, turning to your issue of moving information between academia and government, that is a problem. I have been struggling for 30 years to figure out how to do this. I insert results from studies that we are doing, and I insert them at the bottom of the DFO chain; I insert them in the middle of the DFO chain; I insert them at the top of the DFO chain, and the material does not cascade down. That has significant implications for things like international policy.
We work internationally with the Ocean Tracking Network. I gave a talk at the United Nations surrounding policy issues a couple of years ago. Afterwards, the Canadian ambassador gave a statement of Canada’s position that did not incorporate any of the academic research that had been done, which could have informed that position. When I spoke to the team afterwards, they indicated that they got all of their information from DFO. They do not think to, and they do not move into academia to try to pick that information up and use it, and as a consequence, part of the story gets missed.
A lot of this revolves around the very precise mandate letter that Fisheries and Oceans Canada gets that says, “Focus on this, and do this very tightly,” and the collaborative nature of what they need to do right now.
Whenever we talk about adopting new methods — similar to what you described — what will happen is that we will bring new information to the table. Within our existing management systems, it means that in the fishing communities there will be new winners and new losers. Change like that is something that is very hard to manage, so the adoption of new technology is discouraged, just because of the acrimony that erupts surrounding the making of decisions. You already have a management system that is established; people are accepting it, and a management system only works if people agree to abide by the management system. If you change it, and nobody agrees to abide by it anymore, then the whole thing falls apart.
It is a conservative approach to dealing with these things, and that is a part of the problem as well.
Thank you.
Mr. Ruzzante: Those are all very lofty comments by both Dr. Bentzen and Dr. Whoriskey.
At a much lower level, I reiterate what Dr. Bentzen already mentioned, which is the bureaucratic red tape that exists between DFO and academia and the different deadlines for reporting and so on. There are different months. It is a nightmare, sometimes.
For instance, there is a disconnect that exists between reality and some of the requirements of the funding that is provided by Fisheries and Oceans Canada. Let me just explain this detail with a particular grant that I have — or contract, rather — not a grant but a contract I have with DFO.
For this work on estimated abundance of Atlantic halibut, DFO is very interested in the topic. That is why they funded it, but I require assistance from DFO.
One of the requirements of the program within which I got this contract is that it does not increase the workload of the DFO scientists. I need the DFO scientists to work on this project, but they tell me, “No, we cannot do any more work on this, because we are not supposed to work on it.”
It is hard to understand the logic of that. At some level, I can see what the logic might be, but in practice, it is irrational. That is all.
The Chair: Thank you.
Senator Kutcher: Thank you very much for those answers. That will be very helpful.
I will ask a more specific question, and then I will ask you, if you have two or three pieces of advice for us on this particular topic of improving the research — to give us those two or three pieces that you would prioritize. That would be important for us to understand.
The specific question is: Have you noticed any changes in terms of the seal-salmon interaction, particularly seal going up freshwater rivers, the spawning of salmon, eating the salmon on the way up the rivers, et cetera? Colleagues from New Brunswick have identified that as a specific concern in the salmon waters of New Brunswick, but I do not know what your thoughts are about that.
Mr. Bentzen: I can start.
Again, this is not an area of direct research for me. I have, in my own research life, however, seen seals moving into rivers to feed on salmon. That was in British Columbia, but I have no doubt the behaviour occurs on the Atlantic side of the country as well.
Seals are very clever, opportunistic predators, and they figure out where fishes are concentrated and act accordingly.
Mr. Whoriskey: I could offer some thoughts.
Historically, there were seal populations in many of the river systems that harbour Atlantic salmon. If you go back and read, for example, some of the early French literature and the bishops that were patrolling the North Shore of Quebec in the late 1700s and early 1800s, they were reporting the presence of seal colonies, breeding colonies, 30, 40, 50 kilometres upriver in rivers like the Moisie River system.
The reoccupation of fresh water by seals may or may not be occurring, but we do not have concrete documentation of that at this point in time. It may be an artifact of the fact that seal populations have recovered, and they are beginning to reoccupy areas that they were not in before because of the conservation measures that were implemented and put in place. I would offer that as one observation.
With regard to other changes in the system, yes, seals eat fish, but fish also eat seals. By that, there are white sharks that are out here in our ocean. Conservation measures surrounding them have begun to really change the distribution of white sharks on the Atlantic coastline.
I also think and there is some dispute in the science community surrounding this right now but I think the white shark populations are actually also increasing. We are tracking hundreds of these animals into Canadian waters on an ongoing basis. These are mostly tagged down in Massachusetts off of Cape Cod where a seal colony developed there and that immediately attracted sharks. Now those sharks are patrolling, 30% of them, all year long down around Cape Cod and 70% come through briefly and they head for Canada. They are beginning to stake out territories up here. We are seeing and getting a lot of reports of severely wounded seals showing shark bites on them at this particular point in time.
What this is going to do is alter fundamentally, I think, the distribution and behaviour of seals and the ability of seals to, for example, stake out choke points in estuaries where salmon may be trying to come up river and seals need the concentration in order to have a chance to capture the salmon. If the seals concentrate themselves in that place, they are becoming ideal prey for sharks at the same time. We will see some big changes here that we also need to examine and understand. Thank you.
Senator Kutcher: The other aspect was if each of them had two or three priorities for the science, what would they suggest?
Mr. Ruzzante: To a certain extent, the three priorities have been exposed already. Dr. Whoriskey, I think, mentioned the need to track seals and their prey and see if they are at the same time at the same place and see if the seals are eating a particular prey of species. Dr. Bentzen talked about the environmental DNA and I talked about the use of genomics to estimate population abundance, how many seals are actually out there, do we know, can we estimate them precisely with relatively little effort? Those would be the areas that I would emphasize and I will leave it at that.
Mr. Bentzen: I agree with those comments.
To that, I will just add another follow-up comment on something that I raised before, which was the funding side. Dr. Whoriskey correctly pointed out that there are big areas of science that have to be undertaken by DFO because they involve extremely expensive ships and ship time.
On the other hand, in academia we provide an incredible value proposition in terms of the information we can provide for unit costs. Because we work with very energetic and intelligent graduate students, and postdocs, our costs are lower for the things we do. Research partnerships between DFO and academia are an important way forward to get these things done. As I said before, these things are happening.
What I see, again in my world at least, is the relative scarcity of multi-year funding. A disproportionate amount of funding I get through DFO is in single fiscal years. Typically a conversation begins in February about a potential work that may occur in the next fiscal year. By spring we have an agreement about something we can do. Then it takes until September before the project has cleared the bureaucracy at DFO. Then it comes to my university, where it takes another month or two to clear our local administration at the university.
We are left scrambling, trying to find creative ways to get research done when, in theory, we have a very short window of time in which we can actually use the funds. Not an efficient way to move forward in terms of productivity.
My number one recommendation from that perspective would be more multi-year funding to universities to enable these partnerships.
Mr. Whoriskey: I would add one wrinkle to that particular question, that is that your priorities depend on the questions you are asking in the first place.
For the Inuit up North, the big questions are surrounding ice seals, the loss of ice and what this is going to mean for their survival. Come down to the Gulf of St. Lawrence maybe it is the cod fish and interactions with seals. We live in a world realistically where resources are always going to be limited. We won’t have enough to do everything, hence the questions surrounding priorities. We also need to prioritize those questions. What are the most important things that we need to delve into? From that we can then probably give you a better answer to the question that you are asking. Right now I wouldn’t know how to answer that question because so many different user groups have such different priorities.
Senator Kutcher: Very useful from all three of you, especially about various user groups having different priorities. You were just at the Seal Summit. Regarding the importance of the federal government sitting down with the different groups and identifying the priorities for research, would you agree that this might be a good recommendation from our committee — that the priorities for research should be set?
The Chair: I am getting thumbs up and heads nodding.
Senator Kutcher: That means yes.
The Chair: Yes means yes.
Senator Kutcher: In Newfoundland too?
The Chair: In Newfoundland. It is universal, yes.
Senator Ataullahjan: My question was asked by Senator Kutcher about the priorities.
Senator Ringuette: Thank you. I would like to follow up on your comments in regard to the seal competing with cod for high-calorie food. Are you monitoring that quantity of high-calorie food? Is there enough? And if there is not enough, then one of the predators will go somewhere else, eat something else. Are you monitoring the high-calorie species?
Mr. Whoriskey: If I could first respond, we are not doing this but the Department of Fisheries and Oceans has got the mandate to do this. They are looking after the capelin stocks, herring and mackerel. These are the three species that are being looked at. That is where the answer to that question lies. You saw some pretty stringent management measures taken this year based on the fact that herring and mackerel stocks were much lower than anyone wanted to see and they had to restrict or shut down fishing for those species because of that.
Yes, the Canadian environment is highly seasonal. We have low productivity all winter long because it is too damn cold, but come spring, summer and autumn when we turn on, this is when all of these migratory species move into our waters and occupy these particular areas.
We are seeing major distribution shifts as Dr. Bentzen mentioned earlier surrounding some animals, surrounding food supplies. Perhaps the Atlantic right whale is a very good example of this. Formerly, they occupied feeding areas off the Bay of Fundy. Now they moved into the Gulf of St. Lawrence very rapidly, not because it is a better foraging area but because the areas they used to go to became much poorer than it was and they are searching for alternate prey at this particular point in time.
Yes, these animals are going to move as a function of that but it does not necessarily mean things will get better or they will meet all of their needs.
Senator Ringuette: I understand what is happening. But it seems to me that, by your answer, instead of DFO going after either the seal or the cod in order to maintain that high-calorie food, they are reducing the fishing community from these foods.
It seems to me there is a kind of preferential treatment happening but not necessarily for the fishing people in these communities.
Mr. Whoriskey: We’re seeking the win-win on the part of all groups. Wins for the ecosystem, wins for the species that are depressed right now and wins for the communities that are present. To give you one example of something that might be done, many of these fish — the mackerel and the herring — are being fished now to provide bait for the lobster fisheries in the Atlantic region, and with their crash, this is going to have cascading effects on the ability of lobster fishermen to make money in their areas.
How could that be fixed? One of the examples is river herring. These are species like gaspereau, alewife and others. In many of our river systems, we have lost populations that would account for millions and millions of these animals because we have dams that have gone into them and blocked their migration to spawning areas. To give you one good example, the St. Croix River — the border between Maine and New Brunswick — at one point in time, the State of Maine closed down the fish passage facilities that were present, and a river that used to support 2 million or more river herring was reduced to 970 individuals. In one of the proudest moments of DFO’s history, they kept that going by trapping and trucking animals around these barriers that were put there until Canada and Maine could come to an accord.
That population has now rebounded to about 500,000. But if you think about that, if we could get that up to 2 million again and open that up for the fishing communities to take, then you take some pressure off of those other stocks that are out in the ocean and we begin to have the win-win-win that we’re looking for.
The Chair: Thank you. Thank you, senators, and thank you to our witnesses. It has been a very informative morning from a different angle than what we have dealt with in the past. I certainly want to thank you for your time and your expertise and the work that you do.
I just attended the Seal Summit in Newfoundland last week, and 80% of the discussion was about research and lack thereof in some corners, the need for it. Certainly, there are a lot of questions concerning the departmental research and the fact that they would like to see some independent research being conducted, and I think it fits into the discussion we have had here this morning in regard to that.
I want to thank you once again on behalf of our committee members for taking the time here this morning and certainly wish you all good day. We’re going to recess now for just a few moments to get ready for an in camera discussion. Thank you to our witnesses. Have a good day.
Mr. Ruzzante: Thank you for the invitation to be here.
Mr. Whoriskey: Thank you.
Mr. Bentzen: Yes, thank you.
(The committee continued in camera.)