Q&A | Cod quota ‘pressure is enormous’ on fisheries minister
The government's decision to more than double the harvest of northern cod is an “unsafe way to proceed,” says Oceana Canada's Josh Laughren.
The cod stock hasn't grown much in the past decade, and its main food source is in trouble too. The best way the feds can help the cod to recover, said Laughren, is to follow their own policies and science.
“There's a difference between simple and easy, right? It's fairly simple. That doesn't mean it's politically easy,” said Laughren in a recent interview with The Hot Room podcast.
Ocean Canada is a branch of an international organization devoted to ocean conservation. Laughren has served as its executive director since 2015.
Last month, Fisheries Minister Joanne Thompson increased the quota for northern cod for this fishing season from 18,000 to 38,000 tonnes. It marked the second consecutive increase, after last year’s decision to “re-open” the cod fishery after a more-than 30 year moratorium, and increase the limit from 13,000 tonnes.
For any fisheries minister the “pressure is enormous” to broaden catch limits if there is any population growth, said Laughren.
“We're in an annual crisis where the minister has to just decide, year to year, how great the pressure is, and then what kind of pressure to relieve, and who to give the stock to. It's a ridiculous way to manage a globally important, nationally and regionally important fishery.”
The following interview has been edited for length, style, and clarity. Listen to that episode for the full interview.
We had a moratorium for more than 30 years in which only very limited fishing was allowed. Why didn't the cod populations bounce back?
“For a few reasons. No. 1, the further you drive a stock down to really, really low levels, the longer it takes to come back. And there's a lesson there. If you act quickly to reverse the decline, it'll recover fast if you drive the stock down, like Northern cod to like one per cent of its historical numbers, it takes longer to come back.
“And the second one is we didn't really stop fishing it. We were still catching deliberately quite a large amount through the ‘90s, and 2000s as “by catch.”
How does bycatch work?
“Well, you're allowed to keep it, which isn't a bad rule, you know, you don't want to just throw them back dead. But if you're allowed, five per cent cod as bycatch, and it's worth good money, because you're allowed to keep it if you're out fishing and you haven't hit your give per cent by catch, you're going to go where you know, you're going to get some cod, so you can maximize that by catch. That's just rational economic action. Over the years, there was the moratorium, but there was still a fair bit of cod coming out of the system.”
What do we know about the health of the food that the cod eat?
"That's the third reason you know cod is struggling to come back. Cod rely—as do many things in the Atlantic Ocean—on capelin, probably the most important little fish that nobody's ever heard of. Small little fish called a forage fish, because the cod eat it, seabirds eat it, whales eat it, people eat it. And they've traditionally been in large numbers off Newfoundland and Labrador they've been overfished. They've been collapsed for decades now, and they're at about 16 per cent of their previous levels. All the science shows the biggest constraint [for] cod coming back right now, is that there's not a healthy capelin population. And what are we doing? We're still fishing capelin. So we're not doing the things we need to do if we were serious about getting cod to come back.”
Now the first place that this issue has tended to interact with politics actually revolves around another animal: seals. How much of a factor are seals eating the cod?
“It's not a surprise that things in the ocean eat other things in the ocean. That's how it's supposed to work, and it's a sign of a kind of healthy ecosystem. All the science over decades has shown that seals, of course eat some cod. But that is not the constraint on cod recovery. It is capelin. I mean, that the cod are not in healthy shape. They're skinny, not as fat as they need to be. They're not getting the nutrients they need. Are [seals] the cause of the decline? Clearly not. Are they are the major constraint for recovery? No, it's the lack of food source in capelin.”
Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) has revised its assessments of the health of the cod stocks in recent years. Why?
“On the one hand, that's good. We should always be doing more science. We at Oceana are in favour of more government investment in ocean science to help inform decisions and help us make good decisions. And as the data change, our numbers should change. They haven't changed the amount of cod that they think are in the water that's been more or less stable. What's changed is how they determine when the stock is in good or bad shape.
“Fisheries management in Canada, all around the world use kind of two points: what's the number of fish in the water, the biomass under which you should never let it go. It's called the limit reference point. Don't the numbers of fish get that low, or bad things happen. And then there's a higher number: if they get up to that number of fish in the water, you've got a healthy stock. It's in good shape. That's the limit reference point, the upper reference point. Those are the two metrics.
“What DFO has done over the last few years, is really lower that limit reference point. In other words, they've said we can withstand the stock going much lower. So they said stock was in the that critical zone where they didn't want it. Now they say it's in the cautious zone, not because there's more fish in the water, but because they've lowered that metric below which it's not supposed to go. It's still a long way from what anyone would consider a healthy stock. But they've now said it's just above that limit reference point, and that means we can, you know, open it up and allow a commercial fishery from 12,000 tonnes a couple years ago to 38,000 to 42,000 tonnes now, which is a pretty rapid increase for a stock that has been stagnant at best since 2017.”
What do you know about the evidence that the department relied on to make the decision that the cod could withstand a lower population?
“It's the old saying about counting fish is exactly like counting trees, except they're invisible and they move. It's hard work getting out there and sorting out what the numbers are. Their models are pretty good. Fisheries and Oceans does as good science as anyone out there. I think it's a bit dangerous to lower the reference points and use that as the excuse to, really up the quota, but I don't spend my time quibbling too much with the model. It's pretty robust.
“What I worry about is even under their own modeling now, they're saying that the quota they've announced means there's a 71 per cent chance of the stock declining over the next few years. So even accepting their numbers, accepting lowering that kind of no-go zone, they're saying that the quota they've announced this year means the stock has a 71 per cent chance of declining, which brings us back down towards that lowered limit that we're not supposed to reach. Even under their own numbers, this is an unsafe way to proceed, and puts at risk this really delicate, slow recovery that we've been seeing over the last decade or so. And means, I'm afraid, that we're going to be caught in this cycle of as soon as there's a little bit of growth, we skim it off and keep it at super low levels and find other things to blame. We are cheating ourselves out of an incredible resource that could provide economic stability and income to a lot of the communities in Newfoundland and Labrador, and providing a really important source of protein to a growing and hungry world.”
What kind of pressures is the government under? Who benefits from a raised quota?
“The pressure is enormous, as you can imagine. Cod is economically important, although less so than it used to be, obviously, with crab and lobster. But also it is culturally important. Everyone eats cod in Newfoundland, and it's just a big part of the culture and mythology there. And they're hungry to get back at it. And you couple that with the fact that nobody trusts institutions, nobody trusts DFO.That's kind of a phenomenon everywhere, but that is especially true in Newfoundland. And that means that there's, there's just a feeling in Newfoundland Labrador that ‘we got to get back at ‘er. Don't believe you. Don't believe the science. There's more fish out there than you're telling us, and we're going to go get it.’ So the pressure on the minister is—when there's any sign of growth in the stock—becomes enormous.”
If you were the fisheries minister, what is the best path forward for managing and improving the health of these cod stocks?
“There's a reason that fisheries minister is not the first choice for a lot of politicians. It's a difficult job, filled with bad decisions. But I think a couple of things. One is, remember that fish come back. Proof is all around the world and in Canada, when you make the right decisions, fish come back. So there is a positive agenda here. There is a success here for fish and for people. No. 2 is if you follow your own rules, if you follow the law and the policy, that's all you need to do. We have good laws now. We have good policies. All you need to do is set out the expectation to industry, to all the stakeholders: ‘we are going to follow the science advice, and we are going to prioritize getting stocks up to healthy levels, just as it says we need to do in law and policy. And we will put the money into the science to make sure we can measure it properly.’ And then see about helping fishers through any transition that's needed for a pause or a slowdown in the stock while we are growing that stock. There's a difference between simple and easy, right? It's fairly simple. That doesn't mean it's politically easy. But the simple thing is, follow your own laws and policies, invest in the science, and we will see dividends for the oceans and for people within a period of years.”
Has the government been doing that recently?
“I think it's been uneven. So the new Fisheries Act that was amended in 2019 created obligations for government to manage stocks sustainably and to rebuild them when depleted below that critical line. And we just released 12 new rebuilding plans within the last 12 months that are good. So I think there's definite improvements in how we're following the science. But for cod, as soon as cod were reassessed to be above that limit point—not because there's more fish in the water, because they lowered that threshold—they shelved the rebuilding plan. They'd been working on a plan to grow the stock, and what decisions they were going to make and under what conditions they'd expand the quota, and they spent years on it, including with stakeholders, because they need to if it's below that limit reference point. But as soon as it crawled above that reference point, they said, ‘Oh, good. We don't need that anymore. We're going to put that aside.’ Cod is a fairly slow growing fish. It's not going to rebound in a year. We know it's going to take 10 years. For heaven's sake. Let's get a longer term plan for cod. We had 30 years to do it. We didn't. We still don't know what we're trying to do with that fishery.
“The government hasn't said what we're trying to build it to, what healthy looks like, how we're going to prioritize reopening, what thresholds have to be met before we'll increase the quota. They haven't said a word. So we're in an annual crisis where the minister has to just decide, year to year, how great the pressure is, and then what kind of pressure to relieve and who to give the stock to. It's a ridiculous way to manage a globally important, nationally and regionally important fishery. And we know how to do better, and we should.”
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