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Fisheries Minister Insists Canada on Right Track in Protecting Marine Species

Posted on: Friday, 3 November 2006, 18:00 CST

By ALISON AULD

HALIFAX (CP) - Fisheries Minister Loyola Hearn insisted Friday that Canada is on the right track when it comes to protecting marine species, despite renewed criticism that Ottawa is moving far too slowly to ensure the future of vulnerable fish stocks.

Hearn made the assertion a day after an international team of scientists released an alarming study that predicted the collapse of virtually all fish stocks worldwide by 2048.

Hearn said the findings didn't surprise him, since he's long suspected species will be decimated if fishing practices aren't changed. He claims that belief has spurred his government to change the way the resource is managed.

"If we continue to do what we've done over the years - to blatantly ignore what's going on in the ocean and catch what we can and who cares what damage you do - I agree it won't be too long before there will be total destruction," he said in an interview.

"But we've been doing some aggressive things, not just progressive things, to try to counteract some of the mistakes of the past."

Hearn said he's trying to shift the government's approach to fisheries management to one that considers the whole ecosystem, rather than focusing on single species. That, he says, could help protect stocks that have been heavily fished and are in danger of collapse.

The minister said he and his international colleagues are also working to reform agencies that manage the fisheries in international waters, and are looking at alternate fishing technologies that do less damage to sensitive marine environments.

Still, ecologists say the federal Tories are not moving quickly enough to protect a slew of species that scientists fear could all but disappear if measures aren't taken to stop their decline.

"There are some good things going on, however there's a gap," said Bob Rangeley of World Wildlife Fund. "We have fine words, commitments, legal tools, all sorts of reports, but there's a gap between those words and action."

Rangeley accused the government of failing to act on pledges to develop several protected marine spaces that could help species recover, and not cracking down on countries that repeatedly violate fishing regulations.

He also condemned Hearn's decision not to support a UN moratorium on bottom trawling in international waters, an initiative that has gained support from Australia, New Zealand, Britain and the United States.

"It's really hard to understand the Canadian opposition to a moratorium in an unregulated area. I just don't get it," said Rangeley. "It defies logic."

Environmentalists have slammed the Fisheries Department for what they say is chronic inaction in the face of stock depletion, worsening water quality and overall bad management.

"Fisheries management has steamed along as a big old hulking, rusted-out tanker for decades and that thing has to be turned around and sent in another direction, but it has to happen," Rangeley said.

"This paper is a wake-up call. Let's step up the pace because the clock is ticking."

The ecologists and economists, whose research appeared in the journal Science, said overfishing and pollution have so severely stripped the world's oceans of their diversity that species will soon be lost while the water itself grows more contaminated.

Lead author Boris Worm of Dalhousie University in Halifax said 30 per cent of commercially fished species have already collapsed, and issued a call for new marine reserves, better management to prevent overfishing and tighter controls on pollution.

Tom Rideout, fisheries minister for Newfoundland and Labrador, said he was stunned by the news, but said it was too early to determine whether the study would influence how the fisheries are managed.

"To put it mildly, I would have to say that I was kind of taken aback and startled," he said in an interview.

"We obviously have to be extremely concerned in this province and Atlantic Canada in general, because the ocean and ocean management means so much to our livelihood and to our economy."

People in the industry downplayed the alarming findings in the study, saying projections made over 40 years rarely turn out to be accurate.

Robert Risley of Clearwater Seafood Ltd. said the study paints an unfairly bleak picture of the fishery as a whole, but provides important warnings about how the industry should be managed.

"We're very interested obviously in making sure we're around in 2048," said Risley, whose company is the world's largest scallop supplier and a major player in the shellfish industry.

"So these kinds of things vitally concern us."

Earle McCurdy of the Fish, Food and Allied Workers union in St. John's, N.L., said the report appeared "alarmist" and didn't take into account the fact that fishing practices have changed since 1992 when a moratorium was imposed on depleted cod stocks.

"It's not like everything's going to hell in a handbasket," he said. "We're not fishing in the same manner at all."

Source: Canadian Press

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