Oceana Audit Says Little Progress in Canada’s Fisheries Management in the Past Five Years | The Canadian News

A new report says Canadian fisheries management has “fallen short” in the past five years, with nearly one in five fish stocks still “critically depleted.”

More than 80 percent of critically depleted stocks lack rebuilding plans to restore them to healthy levels, says the fifth annual audit report released Tuesday by Oceana Canada, an independent charity dedicated to ocean conservation.

Robert Rangeley, chief scientific officer for the advocacy group, called that percentage “extraordinarily high.”

“We have a challenge in our oceans where we are not managing them effectively,” Rangeley said in a recent interview. “There is no sense of urgency and we are not meeting our commitments.”

Oceana Canada’s audit investigated 194 Canadian fish stocks and listed 33 as critical and 71 as uncertain.

The report said the health status of a third of the stocks remains uncertain due to insufficient data, leaving the federal Fisheries Department operating “mostly in the dark” as it makes critical decisions about fishing quotas.

Rangeley said there is another pressing issue that needs to be addressed: a changing climate. “We have this increasing pressure from climate change and we don’t know what the vulnerability of many of these populations is to (that),” he said.

Forage fish facing ‘serious threats’

The report noted that the status of about two dozen populations changes each year. And while species like the deep-sea redfish in the Gulf of St. Lawrence have steadily improved, others, such as the razor clams off the north shore of Haida Gwaii, have steadily declined. Some species, such as the snow crab on Scotland’s western shelf, improve one year only to decline the next.

The audit also sounded the alarm about declining numbers of forage fish, a development that it said puts entire ecosystems at risk.

Forage species include bony fish, such as sardines, anchovies, mackerel, herring, and capelin, as well as invertebrates such as krill and shrimp.

“These essential contributors to Canada’s ocean ecosystems and ocean economy face serious threats,” the report said. “Of the forage fish that are caught commercially in Canada, there are few healthy populations, and none in Atlantic Canada.”

The audit cited the critically depleted Atlantic mackerel, a forage species that provides food for other fish, marine mammals, and seabirds. It also serves as bait in lucrative lobster fisheries.

The report says there are currently no monitoring or reporting requirements for the Atlantic mackerel population, adding that only recently have bait collectors in some areas been required to submit records of landings, defined as the part of the catch that it is grounded. Those deficiencies, according to the audit, limit the federal government’s ability to establish meaningful timetables and reconstruction targets.

Rangeley said overfishing of forage species, which he called the “hubs of the marine ecosystem,” must be stopped, adding that more fish need to be left in the water.

“Those stocks will go up and down naturally,” he said. “The problem that has been seen in other parts of the world is when you keep fishing them hard and then stocks drop and you are still fishing them; the depletion goes down and stays longer.”

The problem is compounded by over-reliance on four groups of commercial species: lobster, shrimp, snow crab, and scallops account for 77 percent of Canadian fisheries revenue.

Oceana said the Department of Fisheries has yet to release most of its promised rebuilding plans, and those that have been released do not meet global standards.

Furthermore, the corresponding regulations have not been created two years after the Fisheries Law became law. Rangeley said that has led to a management performance gap that needs to be addressed immediately to rebuild faltering stocks.

“Some of those stocks will benefit in the short term, while others are so exhausted that it will take a long time,” he said.

The report says the Fisheries Department has released new rebuilding plans this year for two critically depleted stocks: Atlantic mackerel and northern cod. But Oceana said the plans lack adequate timelines and targets to help fish populations recover to healthy levels.

Meanwhile, no reconstruction plans have been developed for 26 of the 33 Oceana towns listed in the critical zone.

Oceana, however, said it sees some progress regarding greater transparency, substantial new investments in science, new national standards for monitoring stocks, and a modernized Fisheries Law.

But the group says Canada needs to “accelerate” the implementation of modern and proven fisheries management measures.

“The urgency is before us now,” Rangeley said.

This Canadian Press report was first published on November 16, 2021.