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What Happens If Canada Runs Out of Forage Fish? · How To Protect The Ocean

0:00
Imagine a fish the size of your finger
0:02
that we call forage fish could be
0:04
capelin, herring, menhaden,
0:08
all these, their anchovies,
0:09
all these different types
0:10
of fish that are so small,
0:12
we don't really think about playing an
0:13
important role in nature, in the ocean,
0:16
and keeping food webs
0:17
together, but they play a huge role.
0:20
And we are losing these fish.
0:22
We are fishing down the food chain for
0:24
fish feed, for aquaculture,
0:26
and other things that are helping the
0:29
human beings and helping us eat, but not
0:31
helping the ocean at all.
0:33
And a new report called Little Being Big
0:35
Foundation released by
0:36
Oceanic Canada this past month,
0:39
shows that we are not only losing these
0:41
fish, but we don't know much about most
0:44
of the stocks here in Canada.
0:46
And so we are going to be talking to Jack
0:48
Daly on today's episode of the How to
0:50
Protect the Ocean podcast,
0:51
so that we can find out more about what
0:54
this report revealed, as well as what we
0:56
can do in the future.
0:57
This is the How to Protect the Ocean
0:59
podcast, where you get
1:00
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1:02
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We have an episode for you on the ocean.
1:17
Okay, let's talk about
1:19
what's going to happen today.
1:20
We are going to be going over a report,
1:22
not word for word, but
1:23
this is a different report.
1:24
This is not just a white paper that
1:26
people just released that organizations
1:27
release, and it's
1:28
almost like a boring report.
1:29
This is a storytelling report, which as
1:31
someone who is an ocean communications
1:33
manager for an organization,
1:35
this is a huge, huge step in the right
1:37
direction in terms of how we get
1:39
information out to the public,
1:41
so that they find it
1:42
very, very important.
1:44
This report is essentially a series of
1:47
stories that are given by or told by a
1:51
number of different people.
1:52
We have, you know, fifth generation
1:53
fishers. We have indigenous people who
1:56
are in charge of field technicians and
1:59
research out in British Columbia.
2:02
We have people who are naturalists and
2:05
research director in Nova Scotia.
2:08
There are just, we have a marine
2:10
scientist who we talked to today, Jack
2:12
Daly, who's in it as
2:13
well, talking about mackerel.
2:15
And it's just a number of different
2:16
things that go on and looking at how
2:18
Canada and other countries, of course,
2:21
but Canada, this is
2:22
particularly about Canada,
2:23
how Canada is going to help maintain
2:27
these forage fish,
2:28
maintain these fisheries.
2:30
And look, this entire week, we've been
2:32
discussing forage fish
2:33
and their importance.
2:33
And there's a reason why we do this each
2:35
and every week when we have a topic and
2:37
we have an interview.
2:38
I do the interview, say with somebody
2:40
like Jack Daly, who's a
2:41
marine scientist at Oceana Canada.
2:42
We talk about a lot of stuff and I don't
2:44
want you to hear it for the first time.
2:47
So the four episodes previous is we
2:49
prepare you. I prepare you.
2:50
I give a, you know, 10 to eight to 10
2:53
minute solo episode on that particular
2:55
topic so that you are
2:56
prepared to listen to this.
2:57
So, you know, this is going to be an
2:59
episode that you're not
3:00
going to want to miss.
3:00
If you want to know more about the glue
3:03
that keeps food webs together, forage
3:05
fish, this is the episode for you.
3:07
So here is Jack Daly, marine scientist at
3:09
Oceana Canada, talking about the new
3:11
report that was released by Oceana Canada
3:14
called Little Being Big Foundation,
3:17
where rebuilding oceans abundant, where
3:19
we, where rebuilding
3:20
ocean abundance begins.
3:22
Enjoy the interview with
3:23
Jack and I'll talk to you after.
3:25
Hey, Jack.
3:26
Welcome to the How to
3:27
Protect the Ocean podcast.
3:27
Are you ready to talk about the state of
3:30
Canada's forage fish
3:31
right now and here and now?
3:34
Yes, absolutely.
3:36
Awesome. I'm looking forward to this.
3:38
This is obviously a big report, but we're
3:40
talking about little fish and we're going
3:42
to talk about the importance of these
3:43
little fish, not only to
3:44
people, but also to the ecosystem.
3:46
And I think there is this new report
3:48
that's been put out, Little Being Big
3:50
Foundation by Oceana Canada, where it
3:52
says where rebuilding
3:53
ocean abundance begins.
3:55
It's a very interesting report. There's a
3:57
lot of stark information, a little
4:01
alarming at times. And so I'm here to ask
4:04
you questions about that.
4:05
We're going to find out all about the
4:06
report, but I almost I get a link to the
4:08
report in our show notes that
4:10
people can get access to it.
4:11
All the audience members can get access
4:12
to it. But before we get into all that,
4:15
Jack, you know, really
4:15
appreciate you being here.
4:17
It's your first time on the podcast. Why
4:19
don't you just let us know
4:20
who you are and what you do?
4:22
Yes. So I'm Jack Daly. I'm a marine
4:25
scientist with Oceana Canada. I'm based
4:28
in our Halifax office on the east coast
4:30
of Canada and Nova Scotia.
4:32
And I've been with the organization for
4:33
about four years. But before this, I was
4:36
working with First Nations in eastern
4:38
Canada on fish and fish habitat work.
4:40
And I originally came to Canada because I
4:44
got my degree in geography at Memorial
4:47
University in Newfoundland. So I'm from
4:49
the US originally, but I've been in
4:50
Canada for almost 10 years now.
4:53
OK, right on. So going back to just sort
4:56
of the beginning, what got you interested
4:58
in not only studying the ocean, but
5:01
getting into fisheries?
5:01
Well, I'm from Rhode Island in the US.
5:06
So, you know, coastal state, not that far
5:07
away from from Atlantic Canada.
5:10
And I did my undergraduate there at the
5:12
University of Rhode Island. But yeah,
5:14
there was just a great opportunity for
5:16
higher education in Canada and the
5:18
benefit of that as well as that it was
5:20
free, which is very un-American.
5:22
So, yeah, I loved coming up here and then
5:26
I really just kind of loved it. I love
5:28
it. I love Atlanta, Canada. I get to
5:30
travel across the country a lot, but I am
5:33
based here and a lot of my work is based
5:35
here, not to get to
5:36
the report right away.
5:37
But we do have some of sadly the most
5:40
depleted forage fish stocks in the
5:42
country on this coast. So a lot of my
5:44
work here is very place based and very
5:46
motivated by the region that I live in.
5:49
Well, that's great. I mean, I'm not great
5:52
that we're like have the most some of the
5:54
most depleted forage fish stocks, but the
5:56
fact that you're you're interested in
5:58
where you live, obviously a new place,
6:00
you know, being in working in
6:02
Newfoundland and studying in Newfoundland
6:04
and then coming down to Halifax.
6:05
You know, obviously very different
6:08
cultures, not only from moving from the
6:10
U.S. up to Canada, but just even within
6:12
the provinces and sort of the areas as
6:14
you've come to know, I'm sure in terms of
6:17
like how everybody reacts.
6:18
But everybody loves when you're in
6:19
Atlanta, Canada, people love Atlanta,
6:21
Canada. What's your just to kind of go
6:23
off and just because you're kind of new
6:25
to Atlanta, Canada. What's your favorite
6:28
thing about, you know, living Halifax or
6:30
even living in Newfoundland?
6:32
Yeah, I mean, I think one thing that
6:35
people sometimes forget on this part of
6:38
the country is, you know, still how kind
6:41
of unpopulated we are, like living in
6:44
Halifax, it does seem like a big city,
6:46
but coming from the U.S.
6:47
There is just so much open space. There's
6:49
so many beaches to go to. There's so much
6:52
wilderness to still enjoy. So it's a real
6:54
benefit to live in this part of the
6:55
country because there is just so much
6:58
space. There's so much natural beauty.
6:59
And that's why my favorite part about
7:02
living both in Newfoundland when I lived
7:04
there and then now in Nova Scotia. I love
7:07
it. That's awesome. I completely agree
7:08
with you. I'm actually headed out to
7:09
Halifax in June. And so that'll be great.
7:12
I'm looking forward to being there. I
7:14
used to I did. I went to a university for
7:16
my masters. So I was feeling I lived
7:18
there for a couple of years as well. A
7:20
long time ago, but it was still it was
7:21
still fun. Okay, let's get let's dive
7:23
into this report. You mentioned it
7:25
earlier. You know, we're looking at
7:27
forage fish. Can you just
7:28
define for the audience what for?
7:28
Yeah, so forage fish is really that thing
7:34
in the ocean that everything else eats.
7:36
So they're the smaller fish such as
7:38
mackerel herring, cape Lynn and sardines.
7:43
You know, depending on what country
7:44
you're in, people have many different
7:45
classifications for forage fish. They can
7:47
also include Yulecon on the west coast of
7:51
this country and they can include
7:53
silversides and smelt on the east coast.
7:56
But the defining characteristic is that they can have a lot of different types of fish.
7:57
And the other characteristic is that you
7:58
know, they eat all the things in the
8:00
water that we can't see. So phytoplankton
8:02
zooplankton. And in turn, and they turned
8:05
that into energy for everything else to
8:07
eat. So whales eat them seabirds eat them
8:09
ground fish eat them. And so they are
8:13
just this this really pivotal part of the
8:15
ocean ecosystem that connects the kind of
8:17
bigger animals that we see and that we
8:19
love to the things that
8:20
we can't see in this water.
8:23
Gotcha. Now the report calls forage fish
8:24
like the foundation of ocean abundance.
8:27
What does that actually
8:28
mean in practical terms?
8:31
Well, what that means in practical terms
8:33
is kind of the state of the east coast
8:35
fisheries that we have now, you know,
8:38
we're largely dependent on lobsters and
8:40
snow crabs, what we would call
8:42
invertebrates. Things that are highly
8:44
valuable, you know, really delicious
8:46
people love to eat them.
8:48
But you know, you could also kind of
8:49
describe them as bugs, things that just
8:51
kind of crawl along the bottom of the
8:53
ocean, eat a lot of the garbage. And by
8:55
garbage, I mean, you know, waste of dead
8:57
animals. And part of the reason why we
9:00
have so many of these lobsters and so
9:02
crap right now, which is a wonderful
9:03
thing for our fisheries is because we
9:05
kind of, you know, depleted all the fish
9:08
that were in the water column.
9:09
So around 30 years ago, you know, we had
9:12
the famous cod collapse. What often isn't
9:14
talked about in that cod collapse is how
9:17
we also had a collapse of all other
9:19
roundfish, all other pelagic
9:21
fish, all other forage fish.
9:23
And so, you know, one way to have an
9:26
actually abundant ecosystem to actually
9:28
have, you know, vibrant commercial
9:30
fisheries that get to fish a lot of
9:32
different fish rather than just one or
9:34
two is by having forage fish because they
9:36
really, you know, again, eat all of those
9:38
things that we can't see to provide a
9:40
good food base for the rest
9:41
of the things in the ocean.
9:43
So that is probably the best description
9:46
of them. I would say on the west coast,
9:48
they are extremely important off the
9:50
coast of British Columbia because they're
9:51
also that vital connection to salmon.
9:54
So all the different salmon species on
9:56
the west coast rely heavily on forage
9:58
fish. So no matter where you are in the
10:00
country, they have a huge impact.
10:02
There also are forage fish in the Great
10:04
Lakes in the Arctic. This report doesn't
10:06
talk about them, but it's just good to
10:08
it's just a good reminder that they do
10:10
take place all over this this huge
10:12
country that we live in.
10:14
Absolutely. And I want to remind people,
10:16
too, and you can confirm this for me,
10:17
like this report, although it has some
10:20
some stark realities in
10:21
terms of where forage fish are.
10:23
This is not a report to say we need to
10:25
stop eating fish. We need to stop using
10:27
the fish at all. This is a report to say,
10:30
hey, we need to get better management. We
10:32
need to get better information so that we
10:34
can sustainably fish forever. Right.
10:37
I mean, that's really what Oceana is all
10:39
about. Can you just confirm that for me
10:41
or am I am I wrong on this? I don't think I am. Right.
10:43
Yeah, no, you are right on this. And one
10:46
reason why we will why we focus on forage
10:49
fish is because, you know, they actually
10:51
don't live that long.
10:52
They're very short lived.
10:54
And with forage fish, you can actually
10:56
rebuild them very fast compared to, let's
10:59
say, ground fish or invertebrates. So one
11:02
reason why we focus on them. Well, number
11:04
one is because of just the bounty they
11:06
provide our ocean
11:07
ecosystem, our coastal economies.
11:08
But number two, they're also they're
11:11
really the best bang for your buck in
11:13
terms of how to rebuild our oceans. How
11:16
do we feed everything that is hungry in
11:19
our oceans? And then ultimately, that
11:20
leads up to how do we have more abundant
11:23
commercial fisheries that aren't, you
11:26
know, stuck in a crisis in annual crisis
11:29
management that we often find ourselves,
11:31
particularly here in Atlantic Canada, but
11:33
more so a long term portfolio of healthy
11:36
fisheries to take from. So our focus is on how to rebuild our oceans.
11:38
And so our focus on this is really, you
11:39
know, you're getting the best bang for
11:40
your buck if you rebuild these fish.
11:44
Okay, awesome. Good, good to know. Now,
11:45
let's talk about the numbers here. Let's
11:47
let's go over them briefly. What is this?
11:49
What did this report overall find? Like,
11:51
I know we talked a little bit about how
11:53
there's a decrease in forage fish, but
11:54
like, how much are we talking about what
11:56
state are they in at this point,
11:58
according to Oceana?
12:00
Well, I might just take a step back
12:02
because I know you've had my colleague on
12:04
before Rebecca Skynes and she leads what
12:07
is one of our real mammoth projects every
12:10
year, which is our fishery audit. And our
12:12
fishery audit looks at, you know, 200
12:15
fish stocks in Canada.
12:17
Now, year after year, our audit, you
12:20
know, it finds a lot of good things that
12:22
the government is doing. But when it
12:24
comes to the biological reality, it finds
12:26
that only about a third of our fish
12:28
stocks in this country are healthy.
12:31
And so, you know, we've been working on
12:32
that report for for nine years now. And
12:35
we're and we kind of came to the place
12:37
where, you know, that is an extremely
12:39
valuable piece of data. But now we're
12:42
also looking for a solution. How can we
12:44
actually get that number of a third of
12:46
fish stocks up higher, maybe even 40% of
12:50
fish stocks are high, you know, in the
12:52
healthy zone, that shouldn't be a really
12:55
drastic thing to call for.
12:56
So we took a step back and we looked at
13:00
the numbers and we said, well, out of
13:02
these fish stocks, which are the ones
13:03
that have the most important ecological
13:05
function? And that's where
13:08
we focus in on forage fish.
13:10
Unfortunately, forage fish is kind of a
13:13
subset of our fishery audit are actually
13:16
much unhealthier than the fishery audit
13:19
shows. So the fishery audit shows, you
13:21
know, that a third of stocks are healthy.
13:22
While our fortress report only shows that
13:25
three stocks are healthy. So that brings
13:29
us to our fortress report where, you
13:31
know, we're showing 16 forage fish stocks
13:34
across the country. So we focus primarily
13:38
on small finfish, Pacific herring,
13:40
sardines. So those are
13:42
both on the west coast.
13:42
And then on the east coast, we have tons
13:46
of Atlantic herring stocks, we have
13:48
Atlantic mackerel and we have a couple of
13:50
capelin stocks. And so our our push here
13:53
is really as a way both to, you know,
13:56
have more forage fish, but also to have a
13:57
much healthier ocean ecosystem.
13:58
That's amazing. It's it's awesome. I
14:03
mean, amazing to know that, like, you
14:04
know, we want to have this this this
14:06
better ecosystem, we want to have a much
14:08
healthier ecosystem. Scary to know that
14:10
there's only one stock that's actually
14:11
doing well out of the
14:13
16 that that you studied.
14:14
I know I'm talking to Rebecca over the
14:19
last couple of years, we've had her on
14:21
the podcast a number of times. And, you
14:23
know, she talks a lot about how there's
14:25
not a lot of information available for
14:27
most of the stocks that they that they
14:30
want to that you guys want to analyze.
14:33
Was that the case for forage fish? Or did you have enough information for most of the stocks?
14:34
Yeah, well, you know, with forage fish,
14:40
like fisheries in general in Canada,
14:42
there are a lot of them that fall into
14:44
this uncertain category where we don't
14:46
have a good understanding of the stock
14:48
health with forage
14:50
fish, the one benefit of it.
14:52
So when we actually started drafting this
14:55
report last year, six out of 10 of them
14:58
had no stock status yet were heavily,
15:00
heavily fished by the time that this
15:02
report started to, you know, start to, you know, go through the process of the stock.
15:03
And so, you know, started to, you know,
15:05
really be finalized, we actually saw
15:07
three of those stocks get a health
15:09
status, which is a really wonderful,
15:12
exciting thing. So right now, three,
15:15
another three stocks
15:16
have no health status.
15:18
The three that formerly had no health
15:20
status are now in the cautious zone,
15:21
which is by no mean a win,
15:22
because they're cautious.
15:24
And so it looks a little bit different
15:26
now, thankfully, that we have a bit more
15:29
information on these stocks. But, you
15:31
know, even before we had that
15:34
information, some of the people that we
15:35
profile in this report, you know, they
15:37
knew that these things weren't healthy.
15:39
This, this was no shock to assign a
15:42
cautious health status to these stocks.
15:44
So even though we still have a couple
15:46
that are unhealthy, we know that by and
15:48
large across the country, they're not
15:50
doing well. And there's really no long
15:52
term management plan. Instead, it's kind
15:55
of just the annual crisis management that
15:57
we find ourselves in.
15:58
Gotcha. Now, one thing that's in this
16:01
report, which I thought was really
16:02
interesting is it's really story based
16:04
and story based based on fishers on
16:09
conservationists and where you're hearing
16:11
from a lot of different people.
16:13
Why did you guys decide to present it
16:15
this way? And why was that important to
16:18
present it this way?
16:20
Yeah, well, you know, personally, I find
16:23
talking to like the higher ups in
16:25
government, the bureaucracy, extremely
16:27
frustrating. You can show them all the
16:30
data in the world, you can show them
16:31
findings that cannot be debated.
16:34
And they will always find a reason for
16:36
why things are staying the same. One
16:38
thing that we wanted to do with this
16:40
report is make it more publicly
16:42
accessible. Have people tell stories that
16:45
the average person in the
16:47
public could understand.
16:48
And also the average member of parliament
16:50
could understand, you know, fisheries in
16:52
Canada are governed federally. And so we
16:55
really wanted to have a nice subset of
16:57
people from across this country that rely
17:00
heavily on these fish, because, you know,
17:03
at some point, I was getting sick
17:05
of telling the department that there are
17:07
basically no forage fish, healthy forage
17:10
fish in this country and that kind of
17:11
landing on deaf ears. We're trying to
17:13
mobilize, you know, the wider public
17:15
because, you know, fishing Canada, what
17:18
one benefit of fishing Canada is that
17:20
they're actually owned by all of us.
17:21
They're governed for all of us. They're
17:23
not governed for any one industry. And so
17:25
that's why we took the storytelling
17:27
approach. One other reason I would say we
17:30
did that as well because the people that
17:32
we profile in this report that I get to
17:34
talk to all the time,
17:34
are just really great to talk to. And so
17:37
when I get to introduce them to my
17:38
colleagues, they're like, Whoa, this,
17:41
there's something here that, you know, we
17:43
should be sharing these voices. So part
17:45
of it was was that as well. It's just the
17:46
recognition that we get to work with so
17:48
many great people. So why not use their
17:50
voices, rather than just
17:52
our own or just the data.
17:54
I completely agree. I mean, story is the
17:57
way to really get people interested in,
17:59
in, you know, understanding what's
18:02
happening, seeing it from a lot of
18:04
different perspectives from fishers, from
18:06
scientists, from naturalists, you know,
18:08
ecotourism and so forth really helps give
18:10
a big, a big picture.
18:13
Now, one of the things you mentioned
18:14
earlier, and I don't want to dwell on it
18:16
too much, but you said, you know, dealing
18:18
with DFO Department of Fisheries and
18:20
Oceans here in Canada
18:20
can be extremely difficult.
18:22
Now I know, you know, I graduated from
18:26
University of Guelph. We had a lot of
18:27
people go to the Bedford Institute, great
18:29
institution there for DFO. And I remember
18:32
doing my master's when I went to Acadia
18:34
on fish stock assessment, it was actually
18:37
invertebrate stock, but we were able to
18:39
talk to, you know, fishery stock
18:41
assessment people. Now this is back in
18:43
the early 2000s, right?
18:44
Before the cuts from Harper and all that
18:46
kind of stuff. But there was a lot of
18:48
data, like they had data moving back for
18:50
fish, they had moving back all the way to
18:51
the 70s, you know, you can actually see
18:53
the decline of of cod and so forth.
18:57
Can you talk to, you know, your
18:59
experience and accessing data and your
19:01
team's experience and accessing data from
19:04
DFO? Because I'll be honest, I've heard
19:07
sometimes it's more difficult than you
19:10
think. Now we had an in, my advisor
19:12
taught most of the people who, you know,
19:13
who did those stock assessments at the
19:15
time. But like, is it difficult to access
19:19
the data? Or are they just not studying
19:21
certain fish at all? Because not in their
19:24
it's in their mandate,
19:25
but not in their resources.
19:26
Yeah, one one benefit of my job is I get
19:31
to attend all of the stock assessments
19:33
for forage fish. And so as someone who
19:36
attends a stock assessment, you know, I
19:37
have to kind of take off my Oceana Canada
19:40
hat. And I just attend as a scientist.
19:41
But that's an example where, you know, I
19:45
get to see how much data we're working
19:48
with, how many environmental variables
19:51
we're balancing, how many government
19:52
scientists are in the room to assess, you
19:55
know, the health of a stock that has
19:56
almost extremely minimal economic
19:59
benefit. And I find what is so
20:02
frustrating about attending those
20:04
assessments, particularly in Nova Scotia
20:07
and the Newfoundland and Labrador in
20:09
particular compared to the rest of the
20:10
country, is that they're not just a
20:11
lot of people. And so we're getting a lot
20:12
of data that we have all of this data.
20:13
We're spending all of this money, this
20:14
public money. And we can't even at the
20:17
end of these assessments say how many
20:18
fish should come out of the water. We're
20:21
getting dozens of we're getting documents
20:23
that are dozens of pages long that
20:25
basically say, you know, all these
20:28
threats are present, all of these things
20:30
are uncertain. And that's the end of it.
20:32
When we have stock, when we have
20:34
scientists, you know, that will sit in on
20:35
these assessments from DFO Quebec, or DFO
20:38
Gulf region, or even
20:39
DFO British Columbia.
20:40
They'll often at the end of assessment
20:42
say, wait, are we not providing any
20:46
science advice here in terms of how many
20:48
fish should be taken out of the water?
20:50
And the answer is often no, because, and
20:53
this is just my perspective, I almost
20:56
think is because they know that these
20:58
decisions are so political, the
21:00
scientists, you know, they're scientists,
21:02
they're not politicians, they don't want
21:03
to be in the middle of that maelstrom.
21:06
And so they often just create science
21:08
reports that show the general trends of
21:10
our stocks, but really leave it up to the
21:13
minister to the fishing industry into
21:16
environmental NGOs to have to essentially
21:18
all paint our own picture of what we see.
21:20
So it's really unfortunate, particularly
21:23
with forage fish, you know, these fish,
21:26
they're hard to assess, you know, they
21:28
don't live that long, they're schooling
21:30
fish. So, you know, if you see a school
21:32
of forage fish, it doesn't mean that
21:33
there's a ton of fortress in the water,
21:35
it means that there's one school.
21:36
Right. So that is one of the most frustrating
21:39
things I think as someone who attends
21:41
these stock assessments and then
21:42
subsequently attend the advisory
21:44
committees, which is where everybody's,
21:45
you know, kind of teeth come out, because
21:47
we're all just kind of working with data
21:49
that isn't explicit in terms
21:51
of what we should be doing.
21:55
Yeah, it's interesting to me, like,
21:56
especially going back to seeing like the
21:57
other DFO offices coming in and being
22:00
like, wait, are we not providing any
22:01
advice? Does that mean other offices so
22:05
like DFO, you know, West and Quebec and
22:09
Central and Arctic, are
22:10
they providing advice?
22:13
Like even on forage fish. Yeah. So what
22:15
one great example of a stock that has a
22:17
really robust assessment is done out of
22:20
DFO, Quebec, and that is on Atlantic
22:22
mackerel. So it's a it's a hugely
22:25
controversial forage fish stock.
22:27
It's one when I was in Ottawa the past
22:29
couple of weeks, MPs from every single
22:31
party asked me about mackerel because
22:34
there is such there is a very complicated
22:37
stock. Essentially, you know, in Eastern
22:39
Canada, we have what, you know, six,
22:41
seven herring stocks, we have one
22:43
mackerel stock that stock covers all of
22:46
Atlantic Canada and Eastern Quebec.
22:48
So it moves all around. It's all over the
22:51
place. It's hard to get a handle on. But
22:54
it's also extremely important for lobster
22:57
for snow crab as a source of bait. So
23:00
that's a stock that's assessed out of out
23:02
of DFO Quebec, really great science, you
23:04
know, they're able to pinpoint that we
23:06
can only take 500 tons of fish out of the
23:09
water every year to ensure that it grows
23:12
at a 75% chance over two years.
23:14
So very, very scientific versus other
23:17
stocks where we have absolutely no
23:19
guidance. There's there's one stock I
23:22
work on, Caplin in the Gulf of St.
23:24
Lawrence, where in the past 20 years,
23:26
it's been harvested between
23:27
1000 tons and 11,000 tons.
23:30
And the science advice says anything
23:33
within that should be okay, which is
23:35
really crazy. You know, thousands of tons
23:38
of fish are a lot of fish. So, yeah, so
23:42
mackerel is a great example where we have a lot of fish.
23:43
And that's a great example where we have
23:44
really good advice. Other stocks, we
23:47
don't have that benefit. And then
23:49
therefore the minister has a lot more
23:51
power a lot more discretion into making a
23:53
decision, and then pulling out a data
23:56
point here or there as to
23:57
why it's a good decision.
24:01
And I think that's interesting because
24:01
that's not like what is represent always
24:04
representative of what's happening in the
24:06
ocean when you start taking a couple of
24:07
data points and making a decision based
24:09
off that big
24:10
decisions like we're talking.
24:12
We're setting quote quote us for like you
24:14
said, anywhere between 1000 and 11,000
24:16
tons of fish. That's that's a big
24:19
difference. And like you said, even
24:20
though they're, they're, they're short
24:23
lived their life cycles are short lived.
24:27
And that's that's making it really fast if you take too much, you know you're
24:30
getting rid of like schools of fish, you
24:32
know that that could get rid of certain
24:34
populations, genetic populations and
24:36
decreasing those and that could be, that
24:39
could be detrimental to
24:40
them going, going further.
24:44
Sorry, yeah, you have some.
24:45
Well, just on that, with Forgefish, we're
24:49
excited because they
24:49
have a real potential
24:50
to rebuild.
24:52
But not every stock can rebuild after
24:55
it's been severely depleted.
24:56
We have one stock in the Southern Gulf of
24:58
St. Lawrence, a herring stock.
25:00
It has been so depleted.
25:02
I talked to government scientists and
25:03
managers who say, "10 years
25:05
ago, we should have stopped
25:06
fishing the stock.
25:07
Now it's under moratorium."
25:09
There is no timeline for it to rebuild.
25:13
There is no future in which
25:15
we see these fish returning.
25:18
And so it's not only a concern of, "Oh,
25:21
Shannon says we should rebuild these fish
25:22
now, so let's do it."
25:24
We need to rebuild these
25:25
fish before they cannot rebuild.
25:27
I'm not saying that these stocks will
25:29
become extirpated or go extinct.
25:33
But when they're so depleted, when
25:35
they're at such a small level, it's hard
25:37
for them to get back to the abundance
25:39
pools that we once saw.
25:40
So I just like to just add that in
25:43
because we're telling this great story.
25:45
These fish can be rebuilt.
25:48
But every species has its limit.
25:51
And some forage fish,
25:52
unfortunately, are at their limit.
25:53
We don't want to see any more of them
25:55
have to have to be in that position.
25:58
Gotcha. Now, talking to fishers in this
26:01
report, they fish for forage fish.
26:06
And there are a lot of people who fish
26:07
for forage fish, obviously.
26:09
What are they using it for?
26:11
Yeah, so when it comes to Atlantic
26:14
mackerel, when it comes to some herring,
26:17
they're using it for bait.
26:19
So right now we're in this really
26:21
horrible trade war with the United States
26:23
where we can't get mackerel caught there.
26:28
We can't get other
26:29
forage fish caught there.
26:31
When it comes to alternatives, the
26:33
alternatives for forage fish in terms of
26:35
to be using lobster pots aren't great.
26:38
People have tried to use green crab,
26:40
which is an invasive species.
26:41
The fish just don't want it.
26:43
They love a forage fish.
26:44
Forage fish is so fatty,
26:46
so oily, really wonderful.
26:48
So mackerel is primarily used for bait.
26:51
When it comes to capelin and
26:53
herring, it's another story.
26:55
It's a bit darker there when it comes to
26:57
capelin and new fill in particular.
26:59
You know, we're
26:59
targeting row bearing females.
27:02
So it's essentially
27:03
pregnant females carrying eggs.
27:05
That's intended for the overseas market
27:07
to essentially use their
27:09
eggs as sushi decorations.
27:11
They used to in the past, it was very
27:14
well reported that the
27:15
fishermen would dump male capelins.
27:18
So let's say you're trying
27:19
to catch a school of fish.
27:21
Let's say you catch a school and 90
27:22
percent are males, so they have no eggs.
27:25
They would just dump them.
27:26
That is illegal now.
27:28
And so the solution to that is we're
27:30
going to sell them to zoos
27:31
in America to feed penguins.
27:33
It's very similar
27:34
when it comes to herring.
27:35
We're targeting their
27:36
eggs to go overseas.
27:38
And then when we're using the bodies,
27:39
it's to go feed aquaculture in Europe or
27:42
to feed aquaculture here.
27:44
So when we think about these fish, if you
27:46
go to anywhere else in the world, people
27:47
really value these fish for
27:49
the food that they can provide.
27:51
In Newfoundland, people love capelin for
27:53
the food that it provides them.
27:55
Same with mackerel here
27:56
and the Halifax waterfront.
27:57
People actually fish it to eat.
27:59
And so it's a very bizarre thing that not
28:02
only are we overfishing these fish, but
28:04
we're overfishing it to not even eat, to
28:07
not even provide a source
28:08
of protein for human beings.
28:10
And so when you kind of zoom out, this
28:13
problem kind of compounds.
28:15
Like no matter which way you look at it,
28:16
it kind of gets worse.
28:18
And that's why we really, you know, we
28:20
focus on the science, we focus on how
28:22
much should be taken.
28:23
But you can't ignore the end use either
28:25
because it really can be
28:26
frustrating when you get into it.
28:29
No doubt, no doubt.
28:31
So as you know, as you're talking to
28:33
fishers and they're fishing for this,
28:35
they know it's an overfished stock, but
28:36
they keep fishing for it.
28:38
So, you know, obviously the onus is on
28:40
the government to make sure that they're
28:41
setting the right quotas.
28:43
But for the fishers, like what is their
28:44
position or stance on
28:46
fishing these forage fish?
28:48
Even though they know that they're being
28:50
overfished, are they actually going out
28:52
and fishing less on purpose to make sure
28:54
that the stock continues?
28:55
Or are they worried that that DFO is not
28:59
assessing them properly?
29:00
Like what is their their view on the
29:02
overfishing of these fish?
29:04
Well, you know, Mackerel, I'll just go
29:07
back to that because it's a really
29:08
interesting population where it's
29:10
actually fished by the by Canadians, by
29:12
us as well as Americans.
29:14
And so, you know, our stock is under a
29:17
commercial moratorium.
29:18
We are still taking out 500
29:20
tons of it to use as bait.
29:22
So it's not insignificant.
29:24
I sometimes think people forget how much
29:26
a ton of fishes, how many school buses,
29:29
you know, are 500 tons.
29:31
It's quite a lot. Yeah.
29:34
And, you know, so before when the
29:36
Americans also weren't fishing it, the
29:39
discussion was more so about how, well,
29:42
we see a lot of
29:43
mackerels, so we should fish it.
29:44
Now that the Americans are fishing it,
29:47
the story here is, well,
29:48
they're fishing it, so why not us?
29:50
So that's a really interesting example
29:53
of, you know, kind of international
29:55
politics complicating the issue.
29:57
I was actually speaking with some members
29:59
of our federal bureaucracy a couple of
30:01
weeks ago when I was in Ottawa and they
30:03
basically put this to me.
30:05
Why shouldn't we fish
30:06
mackerel if they are?
30:08
And, you know, it's really kind of a
30:11
shocking question because I'm not sure in
30:13
what case in Canada we're saying, well,
30:16
if the Americans are
30:16
doing it, then why aren't we?
30:18
I think that we're a bit better than
30:20
that. We're a bit more proud than that.
30:22
We're saying when they do
30:22
something wrong, we will not.
30:25
We know we're saying that when they tear
30:26
up the Paris
30:27
agreement, we will double down.
30:29
And so that's a great example of where
30:32
the the the politics is impacting it.
30:36
Now, I will say I do.
30:38
You know, I've had the benefit of talking
30:40
to some mackerel fishers from Quebec who,
30:42
again, rely greatly on mackerel.
30:44
They fish it. But what they don't like to
30:47
see is, you know, big
30:48
purse sainers coming in.
30:49
So huge nets coming into
30:51
scoop up schools of mackerel.
30:53
And so these, you know, I
30:55
attend a lot of these meetings.
30:56
It's always very complicated.
30:58
You know, people fish these fish using
31:00
different years, different regions,
31:01
different times of year.
31:03
There's there's a lot to get into there
31:05
instead of getting into all those little
31:07
fights here and there.
31:09
I'm just one person working on these
31:11
fish, you know, on 16 stocks.
31:12
And my main message is always we just
31:15
need to rebuild them.
31:17
Sometimes I find my work in Atlanta,
31:19
Canada, can be frustrating because
31:20
there's almost this view
31:21
that this is as good as it gets.
31:24
So you can tell fishermen that we can
31:26
rebuild these stocks.
31:26
Things will get better.
31:28
Well, they've been
31:28
hearing that for 30 years.
31:30
You know, they they heard
31:31
that after the cod collapse.
31:32
They heard that after
31:33
it's not as quick collapses.
31:35
And it's hard not to, you know, to to
31:38
feel them, to to hear
31:39
their to hear their side.
31:42
But the most important thing we can do is
31:44
actually protect these to
31:45
rebuild cod, not a forage fish.
31:48
But it's a great example of a stock that
31:49
was under moratorium for 30 years.
31:52
Yet we fished like
31:53
10,000 tons every year.
31:55
And we wondered why it took so long to
31:57
get to a slightly healthier state.
32:00
You know, sometimes it's about making
32:02
short term hard decisions instead of
32:05
prolonging this kind of this this crisis
32:07
management we find ourselves in.
32:09
And I apologize. I know I say crisis a
32:11
lot, but it really feels that way when it
32:13
comes to fisheries in this country in the
32:14
way that we manage them.
32:17
And I feel as as a Canadian, I feel as
32:20
though a lot of most Canadians don't
32:22
really pay attention to the
32:24
numbers and how low they are.
32:26
And like you said, it is a crisis.
32:28
Like we are at a point like the results
32:31
that have come out of this report have
32:33
shown really that we're in
32:34
really dire straits here.
32:35
You know, one out of 16 stock being well
32:39
managed or considered
32:40
healthy is not a good percentage.
32:43
You know, and there are a lot of people
32:45
who depend on it from a fishery
32:46
standpoint, you know, as well from the
32:48
whole supply chain of the processors and
32:51
the restaurants or
32:52
whatever that might be.
32:55
And it's a it's a difficult situation.
32:57
Like you said, it's very complex because
32:58
people, their livelihoods depend on it.
33:02
And so they want to continue to fish.
33:04
If we're at a point right now where we
33:05
can't fish like we were with the
33:06
moratorium on on cod.
33:08
And like you said, for the mackerel in
33:10
Canada, there's a moratorium on that.
33:12
The idea is is is the
33:14
patience to be patient.
33:15
But when you watch a neighbor be able to
33:18
fish it and you can't I could see I can
33:20
feel that frustration come out of
33:22
people's like, well, hold on a second.
33:23
They're going to what if they deplete it
33:25
and then we'll never be able to fish it
33:26
to the levels that we were
33:27
able to fish at one point.
33:29
And you guys are promising us that.
33:30
So that cross border cooperation, which
33:34
has been traditionally pretty good in the
33:36
East Coast, like from a fishery
33:38
standpoint, obviously now maybe a little
33:40
it's and you may know more a little bit
33:42
more than I do just because you're in
33:43
those fisheries relations.
33:44
The tariff wars, the relationship between
33:47
the U.S. and Canada is not as great.
33:49
That may be a bearing on it, too.
33:51
We know down south their environmental
33:53
policies are a lot different than ours as
33:55
they are now compared to even a year and
33:57
a half ago or two years ago.
33:59
And so it all kind of puts into this like
34:03
into the blender and it makes these
34:05
cumulative impacts
34:06
even harder to to manage.
34:08
So I guess, you know, we're like when we
34:12
look at at the level of fortress, we're
34:16
talking about fisheries and how much fish
34:18
we can actually catch.
34:19
How is this affecting or could affect the
34:23
ecosystem in general?
34:24
So, you know, we know whales, seabirds,
34:27
cod, salmon, sharks, and even any kind of
34:29
coastal tourism, they all
34:30
depend on forage fish, right?
34:32
So it's not just people. It's it's it's
34:34
the environment as well.
34:35
The ocean species as well.
34:36
How could this affect them as we start to
34:38
see these levels or these levels or
34:40
seeing these levels of of forage fish
34:42
where they are right now?
34:44
Well, you know, one one great person
34:46
that's profiled in our
34:47
report is is Shelly Lonerpin.
34:49
So she works at a whale watching company.
34:55
She is that she is actually
34:56
a scientist, a researcher.
34:58
But, you know, she's she's been with that
35:00
organization for for at
35:02
least 30 years, I believe.
35:03
And, you know, it's kind of frustrating
35:06
to talk to somebody who's who's been
35:08
around the block a bit more because you
35:09
kind of realize that this
35:11
is this problem isn't new.
35:13
She's been someone who's been sounding
35:15
the alarm on this for decades.
35:17
And unfortunately, you know, a voice like
35:19
hers, a voice of someone who is
35:21
contributing to the local economy, who
35:23
lives in an extremely rural place, a
35:25
rural island in the Bay of Fundy, you
35:28
know, her voice is not a voice that's
35:30
heard at fishery advisory meetings.
35:33
When I think of another
35:33
person, I think of Jasmine Paul.
35:35
So a fish harvester in Newfoundland, a
35:37
Labrador, fishes, a lot of crab as her
35:39
kind of, you know, primary economic
35:42
fishery also fishes, a lot
35:43
of cod to feed her family.
35:45
She's also not allowed in
35:47
these advisory meetings.
35:48
And so I often think about, you know, who
35:50
who is actually at the table at these
35:53
meetings, the fishermen and the fishing
35:55
organizations and the seafood processors
35:57
often lament that there is one NGO person
36:00
sitting in the corner when, you know, the
36:03
reality is these these
36:05
should be huge meetings.
36:06
These meetings should not be scheduled a
36:08
week in advance on a Tuesday in, you
36:11
know, DFO and Dartmouth.
36:13
I have a friend in Newfoundland who works
36:15
a lot on conservation of cod there.
36:17
And she says, you know, that if if they
36:19
made the cod advisory public, you'd have
36:22
to fill the Mary Brown Center there.
36:24
People care so deeply
36:26
about fish in this country.
36:28
And so one of the main challenges is
36:30
actually getting
36:31
those voices in the room.
36:32
When you're in a room with the same guys
36:35
and it's largely men who have been around
36:37
when these stocks, you know, since these
36:39
stocks all collapse,
36:40
you're going to have different.
36:42
Kind of view that's
36:43
informing these decisions.
36:45
I always like to remind people because
36:46
these meetings can be a little tense is
36:48
that this is a public resource.
36:51
This is no one's individual resource.
36:54
And when it comes to the economics of
36:56
these stocks as well, it's even more
36:58
frustrating because they only represent
36:59
around 2 percent of
37:00
Canada's wild fisheries value.
37:03
That's not even including aquaculture,
37:05
which is a huge amount of
37:06
our of our fisheries economy.
37:09
So it's a very small amount of fish that
37:11
we're benefiting from.
37:13
But for some reason, we cannot we cannot
37:16
remove the stranglehold.
37:18
One one example I'd like to raise is
37:21
going back to Shelley in the Bay of Fundy
37:22
is the Bay of Fundy herring stock.
37:25
It is one of the most depleted stocks
37:28
forage for stocks in this country.
37:30
And yet it has the highest forage fish
37:32
quota in the country.
37:33
Twenty thousand tons.
37:35
And if we look as to why is that?
37:38
Well, you know, there are about maybe
37:39
three, four hundred people that fish
37:41
herring in the Bay of Fundy around, you
37:44
know, the vast majority
37:45
of them are weir fishers.
37:47
So it's a traditional gear type.
37:49
And they only fish like 300 guys.
37:51
They only fish 30 percent of the quota.
37:54
So you have 300 people sharing one third
37:57
of the quota and then you have nine
37:59
industrial boats
38:00
fishing the other 70 percent.
38:03
So that's a great example of where, you
38:05
know, number one, we're overfishing and
38:07
number two, the benefits of that are
38:10
going to a small group of people at the
38:12
expense of hundreds
38:14
that rely on these fish.
38:15
So what a lot of what I try to do is kind
38:18
of my side job is just, you know, make
38:20
this these things more public, make the
38:23
advisories more public, tell people I'm
38:25
happy to raise their
38:26
questions at advisories.
38:27
Because as of right now, we have a real
38:29
industry capture, which just limits the
38:32
efficacy of these advisory boards.
38:35
Yeah. And I mean, that's it's it's it's
38:37
really concerning when you like you said,
38:39
a small percentage benefit
38:41
from catching all those fish.
38:43
But there's like hundreds of people who
38:44
don't, you know, who rely on it.
38:47
But, you know, they're the ones who are
38:48
really going to be affected because these
38:50
businesses can turn and pivot and do and
38:52
catch other fish where these artisanal
38:54
fishers who depend on it were local.
38:57
They're the ones who pay for it.
39:00
When you talk to the like, when you talk
39:02
to those those smaller fishermen, like
39:05
smaller scale fishermen, what are their
39:07
views on it compared to some of the
39:09
others you say it can get kind of heated
39:11
at some of these some of these meetings?
39:14
Is it because of those small scale
39:15
fishers are battling the big industry?
39:20
Excuse my pause.
39:21
Fisheries are just so complicated.
39:23
Yeah, no problem.
39:25
And this part of the country where I
39:26
work, but, you know, one one.
39:30
So one example of why it's so hard.
39:32
So, you know, I've had colleagues that
39:34
have talked to dozens of fishermen in
39:36
Newfoundland and Labrador.
39:38
It's very hard to find a fisherman that
39:40
supports the capelin fishery.
39:41
A lot of people, they find it quite
39:43
egregious that we're fishing the food
39:45
source for cod, you
39:46
know, this iconic species.
39:48
It's hard to get anybody to say, you
39:51
know, one on one, they
39:52
support the capelin fishery.
39:53
But when it comes to being in public, you
39:56
know, they're they're members of a ten
39:58
thousand strong union.
40:00
They don't want to be someone that speaks
40:02
against their union members, particularly
40:04
when there are other people that are
40:06
benefiting greatly from even worse
40:08
environmental things.
40:10
When it comes to herring in the Bay of
40:12
Fundy, as I said, there are hundreds that
40:14
you should use traditional gear.
40:17
Why aren't they speaking out?
40:18
Well, they have to sell their catch to
40:20
the to the seafood processors.
40:22
And guess what?
40:23
Those seafood processors own
40:25
the nine per seining fleets.
40:27
So it's this really
40:28
uncomfortable situation.
40:30
And, you know, what I often try to tell
40:32
my my colleagues is that I don't want to
40:34
put anyone in a position where they are
40:36
uncomfortable, you know, having
40:38
highlighting these voices in our report.
40:42
It's not easy to do.
40:43
Getting people to
40:43
agree to this isn't easy.
40:45
And also ensuring that they 100 percent
40:48
know the risk that is
40:49
involved with speaking out.
40:50
You know, like we don't just try to get
40:52
somebody and have them
40:53
speak and say, OK, great.
40:54
See you later. We want to ensure that
40:56
they're you know, they're going to be OK,
40:58
that they're comfortable.
41:00
And so that is probably one of the more
41:02
frustrating parts of fisheries management
41:04
is getting people's voices out there
41:05
because, you know, people care.
41:07
I was just in Newfoundland and Labrador a
41:09
few weeks ago and I was talking to some
41:12
local people and they were like people
41:14
that have lived there for decades.
41:16
They couldn't believe that there was a
41:17
commercial fishery for Cape Lynn.
41:19
You know, a lot of this
41:20
stuff is just it's not public.
41:22
It's not it's not it's
41:24
not the headline news.
41:25
It's not a war in the Middle East or it's
41:27
not, you know, a major crisis
41:29
in our own in our own country.
41:31
But it's something that happens day after
41:33
day in the public view, you know, and
41:35
managed by our government.
41:38
DFO employs what 10000 people.
41:41
Why is that many people can't manage
41:43
fisheries sustainably?
41:44
So, again, you know, from the more
41:46
positive view, we're offering this as a
41:48
real solution since they clearly don't
41:50
know what they're doing.
41:51
So why not just try to rebuild, you know,
41:53
16 stocks instead of 200?
41:55
Because it's far easier to do.
41:57
Yeah, no, absolutely.
41:59
Now, we move towards like the like the
42:01
fisheries management policy for Canada.
42:04
There's some pretty strong fisheries
42:05
management policies, but it seems like
42:07
the implementation or the enforcement of
42:09
those policies is a little weak, you
42:11
know, in terms of like I've seen this
42:12
before, not only with with Forage Fish,
42:16
but we've seen it with with cod recently
42:18
in terms of like here's the science.
42:20
You know, the science should dictate what
42:22
we do in the policy.
42:23
I think with cod, it was like they're not
42:26
really growing and where there's a
42:27
concern that they're going to dip below
42:29
if we continue to fish.
42:31
So the science says we
42:32
shouldn't open up more quotas.
42:35
But then last year, I believe it was last
42:37
year where they, you know, DFO ended up
42:39
opening up more of course to offshore,
42:41
which hadn't been done in a long time.
42:44
With Forage Fish, we know that there's a
42:46
lot that's decreasing.
42:47
We know that there's only one healthy
42:49
population of Forage Fish.
42:51
But we're not
42:52
implementing these types of changes.
42:54
You mentioned earlier, it
42:55
could be due to politics.
42:57
Is it is that the only reason and how can
42:59
that be made better, essentially, like
43:03
how do we stop that from happening?
43:07
Yeah, well, number one is definitely due
43:09
to politics, you know, as I've kind of
43:12
alluded in this conversation, by no means
43:15
is America the example of what to do.
43:17
But in that country, there
43:19
is no fisheries minister.
43:20
You know, fisheries fall.
43:22
I think they're the 11th like portfolio
43:24
for the commerce secretary.
43:27
Whereas in this country, we have a
43:28
minister and that minister is, you know,
43:31
dealing with serious
43:32
political fights every day.
43:34
I've been in this job for, you know, just
43:36
four years with Oceana Canada.
43:39
In that time, I believe we've had four
43:40
fisheries ministers, you know, so there
43:43
there is no benefit to
43:45
doing the right thing.
43:47
There is no benefit to making a long term
43:48
decision because guess what?
43:50
You're not going to be there.
43:52
You know, so it is it is it is very
43:55
frustrating that we're in the situation
43:56
where we politicized our fisheries to
43:59
their own detriment.
44:01
One thing I would say as well is, you
44:03
know, we can often think about these
44:07
stocks in longer time timespans.
44:10
I'm often talking about them in the terms
44:12
of decades, which
44:12
really isn't that much time.
44:14
But management focuses
44:16
on year to year changes.
44:18
And so we can sometimes
44:19
lose what we used to have.
44:23
Kaplan is a great example where, you
44:25
know, I was having an interview two days
44:27
ago and they said, oh, but the Kaplan
44:29
stock is doing much better.
44:31
And, you know, because it's 20 percent of
44:33
what it was in the 90s.
44:34
And I said, in what instance
44:36
is a 20 out of 100 and a plus?
44:38
Like if your kids came home and got a 20
44:41
on a test or an exam, you one
44:44
wouldn't be happy with that.
44:46
That isn't it. But
44:46
that is by no means a win.
44:47
And so we just have to shift our
44:49
perspective a bit on, you know, what we
44:52
actually want out of this ocean.
44:55
Yeah, no, I completely agree.
44:58
When you mentioned, like, you know,
44:59
obviously that makes a difference when
45:01
you have four different ministers in the
45:03
same amount of years.
45:05
Do you know the reason
45:06
why they keep switching?
45:08
Has they hasn't been made public of like
45:10
why they keep switching?
45:11
I know it's usually a cabinet shuffle,
45:13
but it's got to be a
45:14
little bit more than that.
45:15
That the minister keeps switching is that
45:17
the ministers don't want to be in the
45:18
position for any longer.
45:20
Like, what is that?
45:22
Well, it's a really unforgiving position.
45:26
I don't you know, I may disagree with
45:28
fisheries ministers, but I by no means,
45:31
you know, do so in a personal matter.
45:35
One reason why it changes so much is
45:37
honestly because they lose seats.
45:39
So our previous fisheries minister, Dan
45:41
Lebutilier, she lost her seat.
45:45
The one before her, she
45:47
she she had just resigned.
45:49
But the one before her, so four ministers
45:50
ago, she also lost her seat.
45:52
So actually being a minister isn't isn't
45:55
a isn't a safe political option to make.
45:59
It's a great way to get in the cabinet.
46:01
You know, it's probably one of the lower
46:03
levels of a cabinet minister, but it's
46:06
it's a really hard position to be in.
46:08
It is so politicized.
46:10
It is so hard to just
46:11
have scientific discussions.
46:14
Yeah, you know, I'm often in meetings
46:15
where, you know, they'll be saying when I
46:18
say they, I mean, you know, the owners of
46:20
huge seafood processing plants or
46:22
leadership of fisheries unions, rarely
46:25
fishermen themselves say, well, what will
46:28
be out of business if
46:28
this keeps happening?
46:30
And unfortunately, they've
46:31
been saying that for 30 years.
46:33
You know, people are going to figure out
46:34
a way to keep, you know,
46:37
making money off of the ocean.
46:39
What we're positing is a way to actually
46:41
increase the amount of people that can
46:43
work on the water that can get a
46:44
livelihood from this world.
46:47
So the politics is frustrating, but the
46:49
science is probably what
46:51
I would just come back to.
46:52
It's the most clear thing that we have.
46:55
And fisheries is it's an unforgiving
46:58
political portfolio.
47:00
But why not try to rebuild the things
47:02
that have the least value in this
47:04
country, which again is forage fish.
47:07
There are very few fishers, if any, that
47:10
rely their entire
47:11
business on forage fish.
47:14
Many people that fish forage fish are
47:15
also fishing lobster.
47:17
They're also fishing cod.
47:18
They're fishing a lot
47:19
of different things.
47:20
So, you know, by by ratcheting down the
47:23
fishing is by no means
47:24
going to put people out of work.
47:26
It's just going to change the portfolios
47:28
of fishing that we have.
47:30
I also would be remiss if I didn't
47:33
mention that we're
47:33
actually not calling for closures.
47:35
We do call for a closure on Cape Lynn and
47:38
Newfoundland because that
47:39
is historically mismanaged.
47:41
But out of these 16 stocks, we actually
47:43
have a lot of different
47:44
calls for what should happen.
47:46
So, you know, and some of that is
47:48
ratcheting down fishing pressure.
47:50
Some else of it is just doing more
47:51
research, doing better science.
47:54
So the answer here isn't it isn't simple,
47:56
but it's also not that dramatic.
47:58
It's not about shutting down fisheries.
47:59
It's about managing them to rebuild.
48:02
Gotcha. OK, very good to know.
48:05
Now, one of the strongest themes in the
48:06
report is the integration of indigenous
48:08
knowledge systems with
48:10
like Western science.
48:12
We're seeing that a lot
48:12
across Canada right now.
48:14
Obviously, fisheries is
48:15
really important in this.
48:17
Why is it so important to integrate these
48:19
two systems together?
48:22
Yes, so we have one person featured in
48:23
the report, Sierra Hall from
48:25
the Kitasu Heihe's territory.
48:27
And, you know, she she's a stewardship
48:30
worker and she talks about, you know, why
48:33
herring are so important,
48:34
both to her, to her
48:36
community, but also to her region.
48:39
So the herring stock that she cares about
48:41
deeply is what DFO would
48:42
call central coast herring.
48:45
That stock may not be critically
48:46
depleted, but her bay that she lives in
48:50
hasn't seen herring in
48:51
large numbers in many years.
48:54
And so one of the things that we can
48:56
learn by pairing Western science with
48:58
indigenous knowledge is by stop focusing
49:01
just on the amount of fish in the water,
49:04
but also focusing where they spawn, how
49:07
many of them there are, how
49:09
many age classes there are.
49:11
I think sometimes people can talk about
49:13
holistic ways of knowing or indigenous
49:15
knowledge as this thing that's a nice to
49:17
do, not a need to do.
49:19
Whereas we see it as actually really
49:21
practical steps to rebuilding
49:23
populations, to be within their
49:26
historical range, to be
49:28
fatter, to be healthier.
49:29
You know, I often say that
49:30
when talking about forage fish.
49:31
I just want them to be fat and healthy
49:33
and I want a lot of them.
49:36
Having the number of fish in the water
49:38
equal a certain amount isn't the win.
49:41
It's about actually
49:41
having them be healthy.
49:42
And that's one place where indigenous
49:44
knowledge systems and that whole world
49:46
view can really help compliment the great
49:49
advances that we have with
49:50
western science right now.
49:53
Got you.
49:54
And do you find in your experience, like
49:57
when you when we look at how fisheries
50:00
management happens, do
50:02
you find that it's ignored?
50:04
Like just in your in your discussions
50:06
with indigenous people, do you find that
50:09
it's that fisheries management in the
50:10
past has ignored what they want or what
50:13
they're going through?
50:14
And a lot of times in
50:15
these coastal communities.
50:17
Well, when it comes to the past, they've
50:20
definitely been ignored completely when
50:22
it comes to the present,
50:24
they still face many challenges.
50:27
You know, I sit on advisory committees
50:30
which feature members of First Nations
50:33
from the East Coast of this country.
50:35
And often when I speak to them about
50:37
these things, you know, there might be
50:39
one staff member for one nation sitting
50:41
on 10 different advisories.
50:44
They don't have the time to, you know, be
50:46
able to go through the science, go
50:48
through all of it and then have to debate
50:50
what is often a room of angry fishermen
50:53
or seafood processors
50:54
on what should be done.
50:57
That our kind of governance system
50:59
doesn't allow for long term thinking
51:01
doesn't allow for diversity of voices.
51:04
And so it can be really frustrating.
51:06
You know, there there there's one group
51:08
that I work with a lot.
51:09
It's a First Nations group and they put a
51:11
lot of their time on lobster, on salmon,
51:15
on eels, you know, things that are both
51:16
economically important, but also
51:18
extremely culturally important.
51:21
So if I'm the in the NGO, then going to
51:24
them and saying, hey, I think you should
51:25
add another four stocks
51:26
to your list of priorities.
51:28
It's really not fair.
51:29
You know, it's there.
51:30
They're people just, you
51:32
know, have their limits.
51:34
What I often say when I'm with these
51:36
advisories and, you know, fishermen are
51:38
angry that I'm there is I often say,
51:40
listen, I only sit on the most depleted
51:42
stocks in this country.
51:44
And guess what?
51:44
If they rebuild, I'll leave.
51:46
I don't want to be here.
51:48
It's often what I tell them when they're
51:50
growling at me or being angry or
51:51
following me in the bathroom.
51:53
I don't want to be here and I won't be if
51:56
we rebuild these stocks.
51:57
So, you know, I think that's one thing
51:59
that's often missed is how
52:00
much work has to go into this.
52:03
And so, you know, when we talk about
52:05
First Nations or we talk about other
52:06
groups involvement, you know, what why
52:09
would they want to if the system that
52:11
governs these stocks is so anathema to
52:14
any different view of the world.
52:16
So, sorry, that's kind of a long story
52:18
there, but that's perfect.
52:21
Yeah, yeah.
52:22
It definitely defines what we need to
52:24
look for in the future.
52:26
And speaking on that, you know, we look
52:30
at a DFO like in your opinion, what
52:35
should like the citizens of Canada do,
52:39
you know, to help this process along to
52:41
make sure that DFO is actually like
52:43
following the science and making the
52:45
decisions for the longer term recovery or
52:48
longer term sort of prognosis rather than
52:51
a year by year type of decision making.
52:54
Well, you know, I think one thing that
52:58
the average person can do is, you know,
53:01
it's really frustrating.
53:02
This question reminds me, as I said, I
53:05
was in Ottawa last week and there was
53:06
somebody, you know, one member of
53:08
parliament who I thought was very well
53:11
informed on these issues and, you know,
53:13
talking to them learn very quickly that
53:15
they just have so
53:17
many things to deal with.
53:18
Not only are they focused on fisheries,
53:20
but they're also focused on, you know,
53:22
helping small businesses in their
53:23
communities. Their their portfolio that
53:26
they work on is so large.
53:28
And so when it came to when it came to
53:30
talking to fisheries, they just had very,
53:32
you know, kind of simple questions on,
53:34
wait, these stocks aren't that healthy?
53:36
Because what they're hearing from the
53:38
government, what they're hearing from the
53:39
bureaucracy is that things are fine, that
53:41
the status quo is working.
53:43
And so I always find it really
53:45
frustrating to, you know, for me as a
53:47
scientist who, you know, this is my full
53:49
time job and I really benefit from it.
53:51
But to then tell somebody who, you know,
53:53
has so many concerns with their day to
53:55
day lives that all you have to do is call
53:58
your member of parliament and demand that
53:59
they that they should read this, that
54:01
they should know better.
54:03
That, you know, that that's a lot to ask.
54:06
One thing I like about Oceana Canada is
54:08
that our ask and our recommendations are
54:10
actually pretty simple.
54:12
Right. Although many people that would
54:14
consider themselves opponents to me would
54:18
say that we're radicals or that we're,
54:20
you know, kind of crazy tree huggers.
54:23
Our recommendations are very simple. It's
54:25
just about following the law. It's about
54:27
protecting these types of stocks to
54:30
remove them from the political arena and
54:33
just focus on, you know, maybe not one
54:36
year, maybe not two years.
54:37
But how about even just a five year view
54:39
of the future? So what we really try to
54:42
do is to provide lawmakers to provide the
54:44
government the bureaucracy with really
54:46
simple things they can do.
54:48
And that's what's exciting about this
54:50
forage report. We have really simple
54:52
steps that they can follow. They can
54:54
protect these stocks
54:55
under the Fisheries Act.
54:56
They're having a really hard time
54:58
protecting the two hundred stocks that we
55:00
have. They've only protected 30 so far.
55:02
They've only protected three forage fish.
55:04
Why not in the next round, you batch all
55:07
the forward fish? Why not remove these
55:09
stocks from the uncertain zone and give
55:11
them rules to be managed by.
55:14
So we're offering really practical
55:15
solutions. And the one benefit of when I
55:19
was in Ottawa telling lawmakers this is
55:21
that even if they didn't agree with our
55:23
position, they had nothing to say to our
55:25
recommendations because
55:26
they're very straightforward.
55:28
Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's the thing.
55:30
It's not a difficult task, not a
55:32
difficult ask. You know, it's pretty just
55:34
follow the law. You've built the law. Why
55:37
can't we follow that law? And I think
55:38
that's a question that politicians need
55:40
to answer to, you know, and especially
55:42
like I think it's very troubling to look
55:44
at the lack of longevity of
55:47
ministers in that position.
55:48
It doesn't hold for accountability. It
55:51
doesn't hold for systems like, hey, this
55:53
is what the law says. It doesn't matter
55:54
what, you know, the fishing lobby says.
55:58
This is what the law says. So we have to
55:59
follow the law. It's for Canada. It's for
56:03
our fishers. We need to ensure that this
56:05
is working out. I don't get how people
56:08
can get away with not following the law.
56:11
It just doesn't make sense to me. But
56:13
regardless, it's a complicated system and
56:15
it's something we need to do. But the
56:17
biggest thing is the knowledge.
56:18
And this report definitely brings that
56:20
knowledge. So Jack, I appreciate the work
56:22
that you've done and your colleagues have
56:23
done, you know, to bring this together.
56:26
All the people who are in the report to
56:28
share their stories. I mean, that's not a
56:30
an easy thing to do. It's nice that
56:31
they're able to do that and share it with
56:33
us and be vulnerable to do that. I highly
56:36
recommend everybody goes get this report.
56:38
I'll put it in the show notes so people
56:39
can get access to that. But I want to
56:41
thank you, Jack, for coming on the
56:42
podcast. Love to invite you back on to
56:44
talk more about a forage fish and their
56:46
status. Hopefully next time we have you
56:47
on, we talk to you later.
56:48
I think we're going to have a little bit
56:48
more better on action that is being taken
56:51
by the government. Yeah, absolutely. And
56:54
if I could just say, you know, this
56:55
campaign is just launching. So this
56:57
campaign is, you know, we kind of drafted
57:00
our campaigns to be multi year. And also,
57:03
I would say on this report, what's
57:04
exciting about it is it's actually pretty
57:06
short. It's only around 60 pages. We
57:08
consciously made it short because, you
57:11
know, we're aiming for the politicians or
57:13
aiming for the people
57:14
that can make change.
57:15
And they're really busy. So we made this
57:17
poor accessible. We made this exciting
57:19
and, you know, just follow along Oceania
57:21
Canada because we'll have a lot of
57:23
different social socials over the next
57:25
few weeks that really pull out these
57:27
stories, these
57:28
narratives and these perspectives.
57:30
I love it. I want to thank you so much,
57:32
Jack. It was really great having you on
57:33
the podcast. Yes, thanks so much, Andrew.
57:35
Have a good one. Thank you, Jack, for
57:37
joining me on today's episode of the how
57:38
to protect the ocean podcast. It was
57:39
great to have you on.
57:41
Love being able to talk to people from
57:42
Oceania Canada. They're so great and
57:44
they're so passionate about what they do.
57:45
They're not only advocates, but they're
57:47
scientists. They love the fact that we
57:50
can highlight where things are. We're
57:53
most vulnerable in terms of protecting
57:55
our fisheries so that we can fish
57:57
sustainably in the future. I think this
57:59
is a really great mission. I think it's
58:01
something that needs to be found out more
58:03
because without organizations like
58:04
Oceania Canada, a lot of this data
58:06
wouldn't have been found, right?
58:07
We wouldn't have noticed that there's
58:09
only one population of forage fish within
58:12
Canada that we have enough information to
58:14
assess whether they're healthy or not.
58:16
That's a big problem, right? When if we
58:19
don't know about this, we don't even know
58:21
what we don't have information on. How
58:22
can we protect fish that are so important
58:25
that we don't have information on? How
58:27
does that work? That just doesn't work.
58:29
And so without organizations like Oceania
58:31
Canada, people like Jack to be able to
58:33
follow up with this, to be able to take
58:34
that little unknown fish or these little
58:36
unknown fish and say, Hey, you know what?
58:38
We're going to do something about it.
58:40
It's really difficult to continue and be
58:42
able to produce these reports and to be
58:45
able to get better in our fisheries.
58:47
Imagine saying to somebody, Hey, we can't
58:50
do better on fisheries or we can't do
58:51
sustainable fishing because we just don't
58:52
have the information. When we have the
58:54
ability to get the information, we just
58:56
don't make it a priority.
58:58
Right? Because these fish are just not
58:59
known in the public is not asking for it
59:01
each and every day. So what I would say
59:03
if you are listening to this, whether
59:04
you're in Canada, whether you're in the
59:06
US, UK, Australia, India, Brazil,
59:09
wherever you are, we are listened to in
59:11
as like as many countries as there are. I
59:14
think we are in over 190 countries on a
59:17
yearly basis. So if you're listening to
59:18
this in your new country, talk to your
59:20
government representative. If you're in a
59:21
democratic society and you're able to do
59:23
so safely, talk to your your
59:25
representative, your government
59:26
representative. Say, Hey, I want to
59:27
know more about these forage fish. This
59:30
is something that is a problem and we
59:33
need to deal with it. Oceana Canada
59:34
already highlighted the problem. They're
59:35
willing to work with you to do it, but we
59:37
need to make sure that the government was
59:39
a mandate to make sure that forage fish
59:41
are protected and we just need to get
59:43
information to find out where these
59:44
forage fish lie. That is really
59:46
important. So that's the big call to
59:47
action today is to really say, Hey, you
59:50
know what? We need to do something about
59:52
these forage fish. So that's the end of
59:54
the episode. I want to thank Jack and
59:56
Oceana Canada for highlighting this.
59:57
Story for me. You know, it's really great
1:00:00
when you have people like Vishali who's
1:00:03
at Oceana Canada, their comms director to
1:00:05
be able to say, Hey, you know what? Like
1:00:07
we can really use your help and getting
1:00:10
this information out there. They've been
1:00:11
a huge friend of the podcast for me in
1:00:14
the past. You know, they're not a
1:00:17
sponsor, but they're just a great
1:00:18
organization that I like to highlight.
1:00:20
And I want to make sure that we are
1:00:21
getting the words out there and making
1:00:23
sure that we gain the information out
1:00:25
there as soon as possible. So I want to
1:00:27
thank you guys so much for joining us.
1:00:27
so much for being a part
1:00:29
of this podcast as well.
1:00:33
We're gonna be back next week.
1:00:35
We're gonna be
1:00:35
talking about the high seas.
1:00:37
It's gonna be really fun.
1:00:38
We're gonna be talking to the director
1:00:40
of the High Seas Alliance,
1:00:42
and we're gonna do all
1:00:43
podcasts on high seas next week,
1:00:45
Monday to Friday.
1:00:46
So stay tuned, follow
1:00:48
if you haven't followed,
1:00:49
and I just wanna thank
1:00:50
you so much for joining me
1:00:51
on today's episode of the How
1:00:52
to Protect the Ocean podcast.
1:00:54
You can follow me on, if
1:00:56
you go to the show notes,
1:00:56
I have all my socials there.
1:00:57
DM me, get in touch with me.
1:00:59
Whatever you like to do.
1:01:00
I'm on Instagram, TikTok,
1:01:02
Facebook, everywhere,
1:01:04
YouTube, wherever you wanna find me.
1:01:06
And that's where we're
1:01:07
gonna, that's where you find me.
1:01:08
So go to show notes,
1:01:08
click that link, DM me.
1:01:10
And I want, thank you
1:01:10
so much for joining me
1:01:11
on today's episode of the How
1:01:12
to Protect the Ocean podcast.
1:01:13
I'm your host, Andrew Lewin.
1:01:14
Have a great day.
1:01:15
We'll talk to you next
1:01:16
time and happy conservation.