Author: bdarbyfish

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Mackerel and Herring submission to FOPO, April 22nd and 24th, 2026

bdarbyfish

Barry appeared as a witness before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Fisheries on April 22nd 2026 and followed up with a written brief on April 24th 2026. Both follow:

Opening Statement for FOPO Committee

Good evening and thank you for this opportunity. I’m Barry Darby, a former harvester and retired college educator formally from the fishing community of Burin, Newfoundland. For years my main focus has been doing research and advocacy on fishery management policy with my partner Helen Forsey.

Our policy initiative “Changing Course” recommends a shift to Input-Based Management for our fisheries which is directly relevant to the subject of your current study. I want to address primarily the science and analysis of our mackerel and herring stocks, and current management and rebuilding efforts.

In our view, three major factors severely limit the science, management and rebuilding plans for these stocks:

First – There are huge inherent uncertainties in attempts to measure stock biomass, to regulate removals and to predict their effects. Those interlocking uncertainties render largely invalid the calculations and resulting operational decisions based on them, such as Spawning Stock Biomass, Total Allowable Catches, Limit Reference Points, rebuilding plans, etc.

The Second factor is confusing fishing with catching. Catches and biomass are quantities that can be measured or estimated in kilotonnes; fishing, on the other hand, is an activity involving many different variations and units of measurement. Trying to measure fishing or “overfishing” in kilotonnes is unscientific and gravely misleading, and diverts our focus from managing the fishing itself.

The third factor is the false assumption that humans can rebuild fish stocks. Restoring ecosystem balance is done by nature, not by humans.    We can only help with the rebuilding and stop hindering it. To do so we must understand the complexities of the ecosystem and our role as apex predators in it.

So how can we help rebuild and maintain Atlantic mackerel and herring stocks and harvest them optimally?

As we said in our Changing Course brief to this committee in 2022, DFO should stop focussing on how much fish we harvest (that is, TACs and quotas) and start focussing on how we go about harvesting it.

Instead of relying on output controls – trying to predict the unpredictable using highly uncertain data and error-prone computer modelling – DFO should shift to a system of input controls. Input-Based Management – IBM – regulates the inputs involved in the actual fishing activity – that is, what fishing gear is allowed, how much of it can be used, by whom, and when, and where.

To put into practice this “slow fishing”  IBM approach, DFO would mandate selective harvesting of mackerel and herring, using low-impact gear like hook and line or gillnets. Specifications (limits) would cover numbers, size and depth of gear, and its use only by qualified commercial harvesters, in designated areas, and during specified times. This seemingly “less efficient” way of fishing would catch mainly mid-size and mid-aged fish, leaving the younger recruits to grow and the largest spawners to continue replenishing the stock. It would also result in higher quality product, and would, in many cases, permit continuous fishing across a range of species year-round,  benefitting harvesters, processors and communities.

Under IBM, built-in feedback loops make the system largely self-adjusting, thus preventing overfishing. For example, it mackerel were scarce, the regulations for gear and other inputs would make “overcatching” impossible; if the fish were plentiful, harvests would be correspondingly large.  Proper monitoring and assessment would of course indicate successes and problems in real time, informing the specific changes to be made for the following year.

And the proof is in the pudding. Newfoundland and Labrador’s quota-less lobster fishery has been using Input-Based Management with great success for almost a century now, and many successful invertebrate fisheries in the United States also use it.

In closing, I’d like to suggest that we also urge our American neighbours to apply Input-Based Management to “their” mackerel and herring stocks as well.

Thank you again for this opportunity, and I look forward to your comments and questions.

Brief to FOPO – Mackerel and Herring Fisheries

Barry Darby

April 24, 2026

    This brief is being sumbitted to complement and reinforce my Opening Statement presented at FOPO Meeting 33 on April 22, 2026. That meeting as originally planned would have allowed for questions, clarifications and answers — a dynamic give-and-take that cannot be fully replaced by written words. However, we are taking this opportunity to point to several more aspects of our Changing Course message as it applies to the mackerel and herring fisheries, as well as more broadly.  

    We want first to express our appreciation of the excellent evidence given by the other witnesses at Meeting 33 and previous meetings, including their expert and first-hand accounts of the serious and persistent problems, and of the negative economic, social and ecological impacts that have resulted. Our research and analysis confirms the validity of these submissions, and reinforces the need for these witnesses to be not just heard, but heeded. 

    Our submission differs from the others in that we not only identify the problems with the current science and management of these fisheries and others, but put forward a comprehensive proposal for resolving them. Incorporated below is our 2022 brief to this committee on the mackerel closure, in which we urged a shift to a better way of addressing both the scientific process and the harvest management system.

Brief to the Commons Fisheries Committee on the Mackerel Fishery Closure

Barry Darby and Helen Forsey,

Changing Course, St. John’s, NL

November 17, 2022

The current problem with Atlantic mackerel presents a challenge to DFO’s overall management approach. The Committee has already heard a great deal of testimony showing that simply changing mackerel quotas is not the best way to respond to what is really going on with these important fish.

The current situation is a case of management failure, and mackerel are only one example. The experience of recent decades has shown that Canada’s current fishery management system is simply not capable of properly identifying the problems, and thus of coming up with adequate solutions. Because TACs, quotas and harvest decision rules are based on models using past data with high levels of uncertainty, this approach provides no way of knowing what the reality is right now in the ocean itself, and responding accordingly.

Harvesters tell us the mackerel are out there, but DFO has not been able to find them. So is the stock really in steep decline, or are we not looking in the right places? And if mackerel actually are scarce, is it because we’ve been catching too much, or is it that other factors are affecting the distribution and behaviour of the fish? The answers to these questions would tell us the nature of the problem and what we should do in response. But DFO doesn’t have the answers.

Total mortality is much more than just fishing mortality. Reducing harvest quotas to zero is not guaranteed to have the beneficial effect that is intended. But it certainly does make a significant difference – a very negative one – to the people who fish for mackerel or use them for bait. Harvesters and coastal communities should not have to pay the price for the failure of DFO’s management system to properly diagnose the problem.

Now is the time to try a better way. Instead of trying to manage a complex ecosystem by slashing how much mackerel we’re allowed to catch, let’s manage how we harvest them. This means controlling the inputs – what gear and how much can be used by whom, when and where. The use of low-impact gear in designated areas for specified times would ensure that little or no damage is done to the stock or its habitat.

The Committee has heard a good deal about this kind of approach in your recent meetings on the mackerel closure, with witness after witness pointing to the harm done by purse seines. They have gone on to describe their success in harvesting mackerel more sustainably using hook and line or gillnets instead of seines.

Input-based management policy would foster this approach by regulating inputs rather than outputs – fishing effort rather than quotas. This would ensure that harmful gear like purse seines are replaced by sustainable methods. This approach would be largely self-adjusting – harvesters would catch more mackerel if the fish were plentiful, but would be unable to catch many if they were scarce.

Moreover, a properly implemented input-based system of harvest management would also gather essential real-time information from the harvesting itself. Catch rates, age and size ratios and other data would indicate the relative scarcity or abundance of the stock, as well as observations on its condition. But at present, with a fishery closure and no harvesting happening, these types of vital information are simply unavailable.

The current mackerel crisis actually presents an opportunity to seriously consider a better way to manage our fisheries. Let’s try managing mackerel through effort regulations instead of quotas, respecting the precautionary principle and moving towards sustainability for the fish stocks, the ocean ecosystem, and the fishery itself.

The points we made and the reasons we gave at that time are even more compelling now. Developments over the past three years, not only in mackerel but in our other quota-managed fisheries, have provided further evidence that the current approach is fundamentally flawed, and that it is high time to change course. 

Respectfully submitted,

Barry Darby

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That’d Make Sense

bdarbyfish

This commentary in the March 2026 issue of the Navigator Magazine shortlist some of the evidence of DFO mismanagement, then concludes that “it’d make sense” to switch to an input-based management approach instead.

That’d Make Sense

By Barry Darby

Talking with a harvester from Fogo Island a while back, I outlined a proposal for input-based management of the fishery, and then asked him “What do you think?”

“DFO’ll never go along with it,” he said. “Why not?” I asked. “That’d make sense,” he said.

Most harvesters, we agreed, just shake their heads whenever they’re presented with a new DFO directive or policy. Even when the Department does something right they generally manage to mess it up.

Having been a harvester during the 1950’s and 1960’s and a keen observer of the fishing industry ever since, I’ve frequently identified practices and decisions that are at odds with common sense. In response, my partner and I have developed the alternative policy framework that I asked the Fogo harvester about.

But first, let’s start with a quick sampling of the kind of persistent mismanagement he was referring to. Readers are invited to add their own examples to the list.

During the 1970’s, Canadian bottom trawlers fished the Hamilton Inlet Banks during the winter when the cod aggregate there to spawn. That essentially destroyed the stock and wiped out the inshore Labrador fishery in just a few years. This past winter, with the moratorium lifted, an OCI trawler was permitted to drag that same bank, although the regular season was closed. The fish were so plentiful the vessel reported that she only needed two tows per day to fill her freezers.

That makes no sense.

3Ps cod is deep in the critical zone and the total quota is a tiny fraction of past harvests. Yet DFO allows corporate entities using otter trawls to plunder those banks.

That makes no sense.

The bluefin tuna stock has recently increased dramatically worldwide. Tuna are now so plentiful in Canadian inshore waters that we lost two lures this summer when tuna stole the codfish we’d brought up by handline. The TAC for the Western Atlantic has been increased by 13% over last year, and in Europe, Norway recently obtained a 25% share of the Eastern Atlantic catch. However, Canada has not indicated any corresponding change in what it demands from NAFO.

That makes no sense.

Massive amounts of grades B and C cod was discarded at sea this past year as harvesters tried to ensure maximum earnings by bringing in only Grade A fish to fill their quota.

That makes no sense.

Historical and contemporary data show that 20% to 40% of a cod stock can be sustainably harvested every year. Yet over the past 8 years DFO has set harvest rates for 2J3KL at less than 3%, except for 7% in 2025. Despite this underfishing, the stock has not grown, and is expected to decrease due to factors like food scarcity.

That makes no sense.

Even when a stock rebuilds, DFO mismanages it. In 2019, Gulf redfish had reached harvestable size and a biomass of approximately 4300 kilotonnes, a whole order of magnitude above its Limit Reference Point. Yet for four more years, DFO kept the fishery closed. By 2024 when some harvesting was finally allowed, the redfish stock had declined to less than 3000 kilotonnes, and individual fish had failed to grow appreciably. Having eaten through the shrimp, seriously impacting that stock, they were either starving to death or experiencing near-zero growth.

That makes no sense.

Provincial government policies in NL are similarly senseless. Provincial law requires that the harvester and processor organizations negotiate to set the price of fish, regardless of the world market price. In November, 2025, for the first time in history, the price of whole cod in Norway reached a record 100 NOK ($13.60 CAN). The equivalent price for head-on-gutted cod would be $9.50 CAN. However, the price in NL, set as specified under provincial law, is $1.18 per pound.

That makes no sense.

The province also limits who can build a fish plant. A few years ago the provincial minister received two applications for new plants; instead of granting both, he rejected the one in the Bay Roberts area and approved only the one in St. Mary’s Bay. This was despite the fact that the one he approved would require over 100 temporary foreign works to operate at capacity, with much of the money earned being sent out of the country rather than benefiting the NL economy.

That makes no sense.

So what would make sense?

What’s needed is a paradigm shift, switching from management based on the catching to management based on the fishing. In other words, it’s not the number of kilograms caught that matters for sustainability, it’s whether the fishing itself is done in sustainable ways that provide economic and social benefits for people and communities. That’s what we propose with input-based management.

If the way DFO is doing it now makes no sense, let’s push them to do it right. For details, check the website under my name.

Barry Darby

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The Trouble with the LRP

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Barry Darby and Helen Forsey

(for The Navigator, September 2025)

            The most consequential number in DFO’s current fishery management planning is almost certainly the Limit Reference Point (LRP). In the system of “zones” used to classify the health of a given stock, the LRP marks the dividing line between the “Critical” and “Cautious” zones, providing the basis for the key management decisions on Total Allowable Catches and quotas.

            The trouble is, every Limit Reference Point is inherently and necessarily wrong. Our research and analysis, summarized in this article, show why this is so, and why basing decisions on the LRP therefore constitutes serious mismanagement of the fishery. We then offer suggestions for fixing this built-in problem.

            DFO scientists gather data to estimate the size of a fish stock in kilotonnes of spawning biomass, an estimate which, understandably, is always subject to a high degree of uncertainty. They assume that estimated biomass to be a measure of the stock’s health, though that is not necessarily the case. They designate a theoretical ideal total biomass, then calculate the LRP based on that ideal and finally use it to set TACs and quotas. The LRP is treated as crucial because if the estimated biomass falls below it, the stock is seen to be in the critical zone, with removals severely restricted as a result. (An upper reference point between healthy and cautious zones, is usually considered to be approximately twice the LRP, but it is seldom calculated or used in fishery management.)

            The case of Northern Cod is only one example of the deeply flawed management approach that relies so heavily on an LRP, but this critique applies across the board to whatever species is being considered.

            In 2010, the LRP for the Northern Cod stock in NAFO area 2J3KL was set at 850 kt, (approximately 1.9 billion pounds.) A couple of years ago, DFO scientists realized that the number was incorrect, and in October of 2023 they announced that the LRP was actually 315 kt. The old figure was more than two and a half times the newly “corrected” one – a whopping 270% error.

            This was an absolutely earth-shaking admission of error by DFO, not only scientifically but in the starkest practical terms, since they had been using the 850-kt LRP as the very basis for setting quotas for over a decade. The general response, though somewhat muted, was delight that the cod stock was now suddenly no longer in a “critical” state. But if the old 850-kt figure was so wrong, why should anyone assume the new 315 figure was right?

            We had long been wary of the LRP as a management tool, and now it was officially admitted that the LRP could be wrong. In fact, not only could the new LRP be wrong, it is wrong,just as the old one was. The reasons why are extremely important: they call into question not only the revised 315-kt figure for 2J3KL cod, but the whole notion of the LRP itself.

            Our research points to four reasons why the LRP is bound to be wrong.

            First, statistical uncertainty. 315 kt is a mathematical quantity, resulting from a mathematical calculation using statistical data on stock size and other relevant factors. Those data typically embody large uncertainties in the 30-50% range. This means that the 315-kt figure for 2J3KL cod could actually be anywhere in the range of as little as 160 to as much as 470 kt.

            Second. Historical changes. The data used to calculate the 315-kt LRP came from data collected over the past seventy years. Given the effects that climate change, pollution, biodiversity loss and other factors have had on our planet, the calculation of an LRP based on this past data cannot simply be applied for the present. As a 2020 scholarly review of fisheries science concluded, “Efforts to rebuild marine life cannot aim to return the ocean to any particular past reference point.”

            Third. The LRP, and DFO’s “critical,” “cautious” and “healthy” zones, purport to represent the health of the stock. But what is actually being estimated and measured is the collective weight of the population, with the kilotonne as the unit of measure. But the idea that an 80 kt population of skinny starving fish is “healthier” than a 50-kt stock of fat fecund fish and juveniles is as ridiculous as claiming that an 8,000-lb busload of starving people is healthier than a 5,000-pound busload of average Canadians. Kilotonnes measure weight, but they simply cannot measure stock health.

            Fourth. The LRP is also wrong because it changes over time. A reference point is a fixed point, unchanging, like the zero on the Celsius temperature scale, which, as the freezing point of H2O at sea level, can never change. As the scientific research shows, the LRP can vary over both time and space, due to factors such as the age distribution of the stock, changes in climate and habitat conditions, etc. The LRP is a variable, and variables cannot be fixed points.


            Clearly, this analysis has major implications for DFO science and management, not only for cod but across all species. It means that LRPs are inherently dysfunctional and can no longer be accepted as the basis for harvest decision rules, TACs and quotas. But as we have argued before, in the Navigator and elsewhere, that focus on the catch is itself a fundamental problem with DFO’s current system. The task must be to manage the fishing, not the catching – the inputs to the fishery rather than the outputs. For that, we need to shift the focus of science and management to respond to the realities on and in the water.

            Stock health is one of those realities, and assessing it is a necessity for proper fishery management. But using kilotonnes to designate “zones” and LRPs just doesn’t cut it. We need better metrics and better logic.

            Modern science has created new metrics to help address important complex realities, such as the Gini Coefficient for income disparities, and the Gallagher Index for electoral proportionality. The same could be done for fisheries.

            Here is our suggestion for DFO scientists. Consider a new metric using a hypothetical “stock health index”, with indicators on a scale from 0 to 100. A score between 60 and 100 would mean a healthy stock, 30 to 60 would put it in a “cautious” range, and 30 or lower would indicate a critical state. The score would be derived from the following measurable indicators:

First, weight-at-age: Unlike most land animals, codfish grow continuously over their lifetime, with that growth varying enormously depending on food supply and habitat. If the fish are large for their age, that is an indicator of stock health.

Second, weight-at-length: Are the fish fat or skinny? This is related to filleting yields, which are important economically as well, and can vary from 33-43 % for cod. Fish in a healthy stock have a relatively high weight-to-length ratio.

Third, liver mass to total mass: Healthy fish have large livers, and this ratio would be another good indicator of fish health.

            The new metric for assessing stock health would function regardless of stock size. The same process could be used to assess 2J3KL cod, (300 – 800 kt), 3Ps cod, (50 – 100 kt) or the golden cod in Gilbert Bay (a few kt) and the results could be compared. As well, the cost in time, energy and money would be considerably less than with the current system, since much of the data could be provided by harvesters, who could rapidly collect larger and more random samples, giving faster and more accurate results.

            Back to the trouble with the LRP. The recognition that LRPs are not only wrong but impossible to fix opens up the opportunity for a genuine and positive shift in DFO’s management approach. Let’s stop using LRPs, TACs and quotas as the way to manage our fisheries, and replace those failed tools with metrics and methods that will provide a better way forward. That paradigm shift will bring greatly increased benefits to the people of our coastal regions, and enhance the sustainability of both our fisheries and our oceans.

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A Better Course for the Good Ship DFO

bdarbyfish

Barry Darby and Helen Forsey

(for The Navigator, August 2025)

The good ship DFO (home port Ottawa, Ontario) has a new captain at the helm. Joanne Thompson, MP for St. John’s East, has been named to take on the daunting task of guiding that unwieldy vessel through the perennially choppy waters of Canada’s Fisheries and Oceans.

Those waters are teeming with problems, both recent and of longstanding: the ongoing issues with Atlantic cod and Pacific salmon, the overcapitalization and economic inequities of industrialized fishing, the marginalization of small-scale community-based harvesting, the debates over forage fish, the questionable closures of mackerel and herring fisheries – the list goes on. Most recently, we see the spectacular disappearance of a few million tonnes of redfish in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, where a major harvest should have begun five years ago when the huge stock peaked. Instead, the redfish exhausted their available food supply and depleted the area’s shrimp stock in a vain attempt to stave off mass starvation.

This litany of problems makes it clear that if she stays on her present course, the good ship DFO will continue sailing away from sustainability and prosperity.

However, those same persistent problems also present Skipper Thompson and her crew with an unprecedented opportunity to change course and navigate towards fishery success and ocean health. The key will be to focus on fishing, not catching.

Fishing and catching are not at all the same thing. As any harvester or angler will testify, too often you can fish and fish and still catch little or nothing. But if fish are plentiful and you use the right gear and timing, you can catch a lot, and do it without damaging the stock or the habitat. Fishery policy needs to make that distinction, and manage the fishing, not the catch.

DFO’s current course – its so-called “Precautionary Approach Framework” – narrows the problem down to a simplistic question of “How Much?” The assumption is that predicting Total Allowable Catches and using quotas will lead to sustainability. But our study of the science, and the ongoing history of miserable results, show that assumption to be just plain wrong.

What to do? Those at the helm of DFO could direct our fishery science and management towards controlling inputs rather than outputs – managing the fishing effort, the “Who, What, How, When and Where” of fishing, rather than the number of tonnes to be caught. This is the way Newfoundland’s lobster fishery has been managed for the past 98 years, and that fishery has continued to be both economically profitable and ecologically sustainable. With the right change of course, DFO could make that success happen for the rest of our fisheries as well.

Let’s explain what this alternative course would look like. Under Input-Based Management (IBM), the Department’s scientists and managers would focus on the “Who, What, How, When and Where” – the inputs to the fishery. For the “Who”, only certified harvesters, both skippers and crew, would have the exclusive right to fish commercially, and certification would be based on experience, training and registration as in the case of other professions and trades.

The “What” would involve a more ecosystem-based approach rather than dealing with each stock in an isolated silo. Assessments and harvest planning would look broadly at effects, taking full account of relationships between the target species and the rest of the ecological web. Focussing on “what” would also help resolve the tangly economic and environmental issues of “bycatch” by ensuring that all animals caught would be either utilized or released live. The “When” and “Where” would be addressed with a refined system of seasons and zones, responsive to harvester input, marine spatial planning and data collected in real time.

The “How” is the biggie, and the aspect least represented in DFO’s current quota-based system. Input-based management implements what science has identified as the most sustainable way to fish – selective harvesting, using gear that targets the smaller and middle-sized fish. The “positive inefficiencies” involved often make economic sense as well, and help ensure future harvests by allowing the largest, most reproductive fish, and the juveniles, to survive. This approach also reflects the principles of the “Honourable Harvest,” developed and practised sustainably over generations in traditional Indigenous cultures.

Under Input-Based Management, regulations would foster selective fishing by specifying the kind, size, and amount of fishing gear per certified harvester that could be used in each season and zone. For example, hook-and-line harvesters might be permitted to use 1200 baited hooks per person per day; for mid-water trawling, a given number of harvesters would use a certain size of trawl for a certain period of time. Other limits would include the length and depth of a net or line, soak times, mesh size, the number of traps and pots, etc.

On a severity index, the most sustainable gear types are handlines, longlines, pots and traps, all of which harvest selectively and enable people to make a decent livelihood. Midwater trawls (eg. for redfish) and gillnets can be moderately sustainable. However, bottom gillnets are problematic, since they wrongly target the larger fish, result in poorer quality, and create quantities of dead catch. Otter trawls are even worse, indiscriminately catching everything in their path, damaging the seabed and negatively impacting other fisheries such as crab. Bottom trawling is also over-capitalized, wasteful, high-emitting, inefficient and inequitable, and there is no real need for it in our fisheries.

And yet DFO’s current system fails to prioritize gear sustainability and other aspects of the “how,” because quota-based management is ultimately defined and constrained by “how much.” The underlying assumption is that regardless of how the fishing is done, you can calculate a finite permissible harvest tonnage for a given stock. But that is both unscientific and false. Managing a fishery on that basis fosters unsustainable fishing and results in the problems we see today.

Importantly, the huge statistical uncertainties inevitable in the setting of TACs and quotas often lead to serious mismanagement. This includes underfishing – unnecessary fishery closures and foregone harvests, causing annual losses of millions of dollars in harvester income. An example is 2J2KL cod, underharvested since 2017 when estimated stock numbers stabilized. This problem continues with DFO’s June decision to raise the 2025 TAC to 38,000 tonnes, which still falls well short of the 15-25% annual removal rate that has proven sustainable here and in other jurisdictions. Worse, the decision gives the green light to the dragger fleets to continue using their destructive bottom trawls. This all flies in the face of the principles of economic and ecological sustainability that form the foundation of Input-Based Management.

Despite the evidence and the contradictions, the course being followed by the good ship DFO remains the same. Up on the bridge, the navigational system seems permanently set in TAC and quota mode. There is much activity – back and forth among officers, study of charts and formulas, constant fiddling around with reference points and fleet allocations – all of it originating in and reinforcing the fundamentally flawed quota system at the base of the fishery’s perennial problems. Yet no one seems to notice that this course can never take us where we need to go.

Now, with the recent call for new ideas and new approaches to governing, Captain Thompson and her crew have a unique opportunity to change that course and steer a better way forward. The navigational aids of Input-Based Management are all there, ready for DFO to use, refine and adopt. Doing so would bring greatly increased economic and social benefits for coastal communities and for Canada as a whole, and the environmental benefits to the marine ecosystem would make our fisheries themselves sustainable.

Surely the goal of a healthy ocean with prosperous fisheries and sustainable coastal communities is worth a try.

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Thinking Outside the Box- The Crab Price Dilemma

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Barry Darby, February 5, 2025

I’d like to offer some comments on the recent news of the joint press conference by the ASP and the FFAW. Besides asking DFO to open the crab season two weeks early this year, both organizations are acknowledging that the threat of US tariffs creates significant challenges around developing a price-setting formula and setting wharf prices. The tariffs pose a risk that the harvest and processing might be severely disrupted, with serious impacts on all involved.

I have been studying and observing this price-setting problem for decades and I would like to suggest a potential solution. This is an extremely unusual year and we need to think “outside the box” to deal with it, at least for this season.

The goal must be to ensure that harvesting and processing will in fact occur, and that all participants will be working.

My suggestion is this:

Harvesters and processors would agree that for the 2025 season:

1. No fixed crab price should be set. Instead, a competitive market – i.e. competition among buyers/processors – would determine the price a harvester would receive in a given case. 

2. Processors would individually choose what price they would offer the harvester.

3. Harvesters would agree to go fishing. They would choose which buyer(s) they would sell their catch to.

4. Processors would guarantee their own employees a minimum of 40 hours per week for the duration of the season, provided, of course, that there is a supply. 

(There would be “i”s to be dotted and “t”s to be crossed for any actual agreement.)  

Both parties would be taking on a shared risk for the future. The harvesters  would risk perhaps receiving lower prices for their catch, and the processors would risk possible downward price trends in the markets they sell to. But the alternative would be much more risky for everyone – disruption of the harvest, lack of work for all involved, and potential loss of markets as a result of the uncertainty.

With this plan, the harvest would happen, providing work in both harvesting and processing, and there would be a continuation of dependable supply for the markets. Prices might even improve at some point.

Some observations:

Since the US tariff will be 25% of the wholesale price of crab as it crosses the border, the tariff-related percentage increase in the retail price to the American consumer will be significantly less than 25%.

Economists have suggested that the application of the tariffs will result in the weakening of the Canadian dollar. A change in the exchange rate from $1.34 Cdn for $1 US (2024) to $1.54 Cdn for $1 US (as projected under tariffs), would result in a 12 – 14 % increase in the dollar value that a Canadian processor would receive from a sale to the US. This would mitigate the damage of the 25% tariff by about half.

The above plan could be the basis for dealing with the looming threat of US tariffs, and the overall uncertainty of the present situation. It would offer a realistic way of ensuring that the harvesting, processing and marketing of crab will proceed with minimal disruption. I hope that the Union and the ASP will consider it, at least for the 2025 season.

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We’re not there yet

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Price-setting Review Report Understandably Lacking

By Barry Darby

In the fall of 2023, the Newfoundland and Labrador government set up a panel to review the price-setting system and make recommendations. The following letter was published in the February 2024 issue of The Navigator.

As a long-term observer and analyst of the fishery, my initial comment on the Price-setting Review report was “underwhelming.”

But that’s not surprising. The task the Strategic Review Team undertook was well-nigh impossible to start with.

The Minister asked the Team “to assist with the development of a formula-based framework for fish price-setting and other potential mechanisms.” The Team concluded that the current process (including final offer selection and the Fish Price-Setting Panel) is “flawed”, that fish prices are “beyond any reasonable measure to predict with accuracy”, and that the fact-finding and reporting leading up to negotiation in the existing model are deficient.

Few people with knowledge of the past two years would disagree with that assessment. Yet the Team was asked to devise a price-setting formula that could be used to set fish prices, presumably using this same Panel to carry out the process.

The Team has duly recommended that the government adopt formula-based pricing for all species, giving a working example for one species, crab, as “an option to the parties for their consideration”. They propose this work be started immediately and completed by January 31, 2024. Given the six week extension the Team needed to finish its own report, it seems incongruous that they would impose such a tight timeline. Yet the formula would have to be operational before the start of the crab fishery, which must not be delayed again.

Crucially, though, whatever mechanism is adopted, the result will apply only to the price paid to the harvester for the fresh product here in our province. No mechanism devised by governments, corporations or unions can ever “set” the price of any commodity on the international market. To talk about “setting the price”, without acknowledging that fact, leads nowhere. This is one of the striking lessons that all parties should have learned from the 2022 and 2023 crab disasters.

What can – and must – be worked out is a method or formula to ensure that the price the processor pays to the harvester is related in a fair and reliable way to the price the processor receives from the wider marketplace.

The report’s Recommendation #3 calls for changes in “the legislation, regulations and rules of the Panel”. It is simply not reasonable to suppose that any government or bureaucracy could achieve such changes within a few short months.

Recommendations 4 and 5 seem to assume a level of authority for the Fish Price Setting Panel that does not exist. The Panel is a creation of the Newfoundland and Labrador government, to whom it must report. It does not report to “the parties”, and it cannot give any authority to either ASP or FFAW or to any of their members. The management authority for fish harvesting and processing lies with the federal and provincial Departments of Fisheries, and giving more authority to the Panel would require extensive and lengthy legislative processes.

Recommendation #9 re co-management is troublesome. The idea of federal-provincial co-management of our fishery was widely discussed prior to and following Vardy and Dunne’s 2003 report, but was essentially abandoned as unworkable. Although the broader concept of co-management has evolved since then and some models put into practice, the constitutional and operational problems around federal-provincial fishery co-management remain unsolved. The Review Team’s recommendation on this is misguided.

Finally, a few key points that the Team’s report did not address.

The elephant in the room in our province’s fishery is, of course, the Federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans. DFO sets the TACs, quotas, harvesting rules, and other factors that affect the buying and selling of fish. As one example, in 2022, DFO opened the entire crab fishery on the same day and allowed so many traps in the water that the catch greatly exceeded the capacity of the plants to handle it. The resulting glut caused a predictable drop in prices of historic proportions. The report fails to mention any of those effects.

Issues of corporate concentration are not brought up, though they continue to arise and were part of Vardy and Dunne’s report 20 years ago. Vardy’s 1998 report also offered a detailed suggestion of an auction system such as those that exist in other jurisdictions, but the Team fails to even mention that option. Nor does the Team’s report mention controlling agreements and the role they may play in negatively distorting prices for some harvesters.

Dame Moya Green’s 2021 report “The Big Reset” noted that the current collective bargaining structure “is anti-competitive by nature and requires an exemption in the federal Competition Act.” The FFAW has long called for greater competition, and removing this waiver might increase the role of market forces in achieving higher fish prices.

In conclusion, it seems clear that neither the unrestricted application of market forces nor the current system for setting prices can solve the inherent problems of inequities and unsustainability in our fisheries. For that, more fundamental change is needed.

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A Tale of Two Fisheries – and a Solution for Northern Cod

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Barry Darby and Helen Forsey

July 2024

In the midst of the current crucial debate over DFO’s misguided declaration of an “end of the cod moratorium,” the humble lobster can throw some fresh light on what really needs to be done.

Lobster has been one of the bright spots in the Newfoundland fishery so far this year. While the price has not been particularly high, increased landings have more than compensated. With the same rules and the same number of pots, as specified by their licenses, harvesters have been getting more lobster.

Among the various fisheries managed by DFO, the lobster fishery is unique. It is not controlled by a TAC or quota; there is no limit on the catch. Instead, harvesters are entitled to catch as much as they are able under rules that specify who can fish, how many traps they can use, what size and sex they can keep, and the designated season. Those rules are known months in advance, enabling harvesters and their buyers to anticipate and plan their activities. The result, for almost a century now, has been a successful and sustainable fishery, since no undersized lobster are killed or captured and most large females are released.

Contrast this with the recent DFO decision to reopen the commercial cod fishery in 2J3KL, using quotas to control the catch. That’s the management system that was in place after the 1970s establishment of the 200-mile limit, up until the moratorium in 1992. So the plan now is to go right back to that? Hmmm.

If that had been the way this year’s lobster fishery had been managed – by quotas – harvesters and processors would have had less product and earned less income. The limit on the catch would have meant that the season would have ended earlier, and abruptly, as soon as the quota was reached. Moreover, leaving large numbers of harvestable animals in the water would have actually damaged the existing stock, since the limited food supply would have inhibited the growth and expansion of existing undersized lobster.

Our cod fishery was managed without TACs or quotas for 450 years. While the limits were imposed not by government edict but by geography, custom and nature, this quota-less approach was successful and sustainable. But starting around 1950 we began adding power and technology, and then tried to control the amounts caught rather than the fishing effort used. It was only then that we humans in a few short decades destroyed the greatest cod stock in the world!

For 2025, we have the opportunity to recreate a successful scenario for this fishery. Here is what it might look like.

Who can fish:

·        Only trained, certified and registered harvesters would be able to fish commercially, whether as skipper or crew. That number in Newfoundland and Labrador now is only in the 7000 – 9000 range, which is only 20-30% of historical averages.

·        Effective in 2025, new entrants would have to successfully complete an introductory training program before stepping into a boat and having the right to fish. (The two-semester pre-employment courses in the national Red Seal program for the skilled trades would be an excellent model.)

·        Local fishers would have exclusive access to inshore waters near their home port; while offshore (beyond 50 km?) all fishers could fish.

How can they fish?

Most fishing gear types would have specific areas and zones. Handlining, with or without powered haulers, would be allowed year round in most areas. Other gear types would have more specific limits.

Some examples:

·        Gillnet – 200 m of gillnet per harvester from July 1 to Aug 15 in waters less than 60 m.

·        Longlining – 1000 hooks per harvester inshore from Aug 1 to Feb 28; 1500 hooks per harvester beyond 50 km.

·        Cod trap – one traditional Newfoundland cod trap per four harvesters during June, July and August, with specified limits on circumference and depth.

·        Cod pots – the number per harvester, size, seasons and zones to be determined.

·        No otter trawls would be permitted, at least initially, because of their damaging and destructive nature. If they were eventually permitted, there would be strict specifications as to the size of the trawl, what areas could be trawled, the length of the season and the number of harvesters per trawl.

These kinds of restrictions on fishing – controlling the inputs, the fishing effort – are the way we can mimic the natural limits that existed for centuries. Input-based management would ensure that we would never again destroy a species, and the ocean ecosystem would replenish itself annually, enabling our continued use.

A key point with input-based management is that when nature provides more, as with lobster in 2024, we can immediately and automatically take advantage of it without damaging the stock or the ecosystem. Historically, both in Newfoundland and in other jurisdictions, access to a 400 thousand tonne stock (the approximate current size of the 2J3KL stock) would enable a sustainable annual harvest of 15-30%, or 60 to 120 thousand tonnes. But currently, under the quota-based management system, we are massively underfishing this stock.

Leaving such a high proportion of the stock in the water means not only foregone harvests but also unnecessary natural mortality from starvation, as too many fish are competing for limited food supply. This is a major reason for the stagnation of stock growth. As long as DFO continues to manage Northern cod by outputs – TACs and quotas – that will continue, along with the conflicts and disagreements we have witnessed recently.

Regulating the fishing effort – particularly the gear type, size and number used – allows harvesters to ply their trade and allows DFO to optimize the value of the harvest while enabling the stock and the ecosystem to remain healthy and sustainable. Instead of repeating the same old, same old – which brought us the moratorium – let’s take this unique opportunity to start using input-based management for a successful cod fishery in 2J3KL.

Changing Course

Dissappearing RedFish and DFO Math

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Barry Darby

DFO’s announcement in late January with respect to redfish puts a glaring spotlight on the numbers problem in the Department’s science and management.

Its new research purports to show that the biomass of redfish in Area 1, despite there having been essentially no fishery, has declined since 2019 from 4.3 million tonnes to 2.8 million tonnes after growing exponentially for a decade.

This follows news in December, 2023, that the estimated number of seals in our Atlantic waters is now 4.8 million rather that the nearly 8 million a few years ago. As with so much in DFO, it is uncertain whether this reflects an actual change in the number of animals or statistical errors in DFOs computing system; most likely it is a real decline, complicated by errors. In any case, it’s a serious problem.

Another astounding revelation by DFO last October was that they were changing the Limit Reference Point for Northern cod in 2J3KL to 315 kt rather than 800 kt calculated a little over a decade ago. Under DFO’s current management framework, the LRP calculations determine the Total Allowable Catch, so this error prevented the harvest of millions of tonnes of cod during the time the old LRP was in place. This foregone harvest not only condemned large numbers of fish to death by starvation as their population outstripped food supply, it deprived the Newfoundland and Canadian economy of potentially more than a billion dollars.

A fourth example of this kind of major error is evident in DFO’s 2020 stock assessment for 3Ps cod, which raised the LRP enough to move the stock’s status from the cautious to the critical zone. (Three years earlier, the 2017 assessment had expressed various “concerns,” noting that the model used had “overestimated spawning stock biomass in recent years.”)

Surely it’s clear that so-called fixed reference points that are so subject to massive change do not constitute a good foundation on which to base harvest management policy.

Returning to the redfish puzzle, it would be a mistake to attribute the one and a half million tonne drop (from 4.3 million tonnes to 2.8 million tonnes) to “natural mortality.” In current fisheries discourse, “natural mortality” is a catchall phrase used to refer to all undetermined reasons why fish disappear – mainly predation, unrecorded harvest, disease, and starvation. But the cause of the recent dramatic decline in Gulf redfish is actually quite clear.

We can eliminate predation as a main cause because there has not been a massive increase in any predator species. Foreign over-fishing could be a factor if the fish were on the nose or tail of the Grand Banks or on the Flemish Cap, but not in the well protected Canadian waters of the Gulf. And there have been no reports of disease. Meanwhile, the area’s shrimp stock has been declining over this same time period, and shrimp constitute an important part of the diet of adult redfish. So although other unknown factors such as warming waters may also be involved, we are left to conclude that the disappearance of all those fish is largely due to starvation.

Since we’re talking numbers, it would also be incorrect to conclude that the loss of biomass between 2019 and 2023 was 1.5 million tonnes (4.3 minus 2.8) when it was actually more. Gulf redfish at their current size are still growing, though more slowly than in the cohort’s first decade. Positing a growth rate of 1 cm/yr in length, we calculate the growth in the weight of an individual redfish at about 10-12% per year, as compared with 25-40% for cod.

In a simplistic model with an assumption of zero mortality and omitting other variables, this would mean the stock biomass would have grown by over 50% from 2019 to the present – to 6.5 (4.3 plus 50%) million tonnes. Obviously that is unrealistic, but the conclusion remains that starvation has taken a huge toll on redfish in the past four years – perhaps as much as 3.5 million tonnes. With proper management and planning, much of that biomass could have been harvested. At a conservative price of 50 cents per pound, that much fish would theoretically be worth over 3 billion dollars. This kind of loss to the Canadian economy was one of the scenarios we predicted three years ago in our Navigator article, “Redfish: Bonanza or Boondoggle?“

So what now? At the 25-kilotonne annual rate of exploitation currently proposed, it would take just over one hundred years to catch all the redfish in today’s Gulf of St Lawrence stock, even if we assumed no fish growth (impossible) and no new recruitment (unlikely.) Of course, redfish are a long-lived species, but they won’t live that long. Still, the scenario demonstrates the absurdity of basing harvest plans on those kinds of calculations.

Perhaps we need to ask: Who’s doing the math in DFO?

Barry Darby is a retired fisherman and educator from Burin, NL, who has done extensive research on the economics and sustainability of the fish harvesting sector.Articles

Changing Course

Fishery Policy: A Better Way

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Brief to the Senate Fisheries & Oceans Committee. We presented this brief in person to the Ssenate Standing Committee on Fisheris & Oceans on May 2nd, 2024

In Changing Course, we research fishery policy and advocate for change. We focus on the federal level because it is federal government policies that underlie and regulate most of the activities involved in fish harvesting. Your Committee can help to get those policies right, looking at fishery management through a new window, studying the roots of the ongoing problems with the current system and considering an alternative basis for policy.

We propose an alternative framework for Canada’s fishery policies, one that will be more truly sustainable and benefit all involved. This represents a paradigm shift in policy direction that will dramatically change the system currently in place. And change is urgently needed, because Canada’s existing fishery management policies have not led to sustainable fisheries.

Our brief is organized as follows:

Rationale for the Change

Proposing a “Way to the Better”

Essential Principles

Tools for Fishery Management: Input and Output Controls

How Input-Based Management (IBM) would Work

Possibilities and Impossibilities

Benefits of Shifting to Input-Based Management

Recommendations

Conclusion

Rationale for the Change

A main goal of all fishery policy should be sustainability. That word has three essential aspects – environmental sustainability, social sustainability, and economic sustainability. And like a three-legged stool, sustainability needs all three legs and a good foundation in order to stand. If any leg is missing or weak, too short or too long, the whole thing will overbalance and collapse. And if the foundation is weak, it can’t support the stool.

Likewise, good fishery policy must rest on all three legs and a solid foundation. It must be firmly based in current scientific reality, and must optimize the ecological, social and economic benefits, present and future, for all involved – humans and “all our relations” in the natural ecosystem.

As we shall explain, our proposed alternative policy framework meets this high bar.

More than a century ago, the poet Thomas Hardy wrote: “If way to the Better there be, it exacts a full look at the Worst.” Hardy may not have realized that his maxim would apply so perfectly to fishery management. But it does. Canada needs a “way to the Better” for managing our fisheries – so first we have to look at the Worst.

The current fishery management system has not fostered sustainability. On the contrary. Evidence shows clearly that for the past many decades we’ve been getting fishery management wrong. Look at that evidence: the northern cod Moratorium – 30 years now and counting. The decline of salmon on all our coasts. The shrinking of herring, capelin, shrimp, and mackerel stocks. The continuing struggle of harvesters just to make a living on the water. The ongoing decimation of coastal communities. And overall, as Daniel Pauly has been telling us for decades, we’re fishing further and further down the food web, eroding the structure of the ocean’s ecosystems.

Why does the current system not foster sustainability? The federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans bases their management system on the quotas and allocations of a calculated “Total Allowable Catch” (TAC). In other words, their focus is on defining the tonnage of fish biomass they project can be safely caught. This quota-based system is DFO’s “Precautionary Approach Framework,” or “PA Framework.”

And it’s not working. Again, the evidence shows that DFO’s supposedly “precautionary” policy framework is not protecting the ecosystem, and it is not maximizing benefits for harvesters or coastal communities either. Based on our research, we think we know why, and we believe we can offer a better way.

Proposing a “Way to the Better”

What we present here is a new way of looking at the challenge – a paradigm shift in thinking, policy and practice. The task of fishery management is to prevent overfishing and foster ecosystem health, and we propose an alternative management framework – one based on regulating inputs rather than outputs. Instead of attempting to estimate and allocate in advancethe number of kilotonnes of fish to be caught, we should regulate the activities of the fishing itself so as to foster sustainability.

This is done by implementing Input-Based Management (IBM). The inputs – the fishing effort, the “who, how, what, where and when” of harvesting – are regulated on the basis of scientific evidence, traditional knowledge and continuous real-time feedback. By properly regulating the fishing effort, we can reduce the pressure on the stocks and on the ecosystem in ways that will actually build sustainability for both fish and fisheries.

This Input-Based Management (IBM) may seem a radical idea, but it works. The traditional Atlantic cod fishery had no quotas, and the stocks survived more than four centuries of harvesting until modern industrial methods and the indiscriminate use of high-power technology led to devastation in a few short decades in the last half of the 1900s.

A current example of Input-Based Management in operation is Newfoundland’s lobster fishery. It is one of our most successful and sustainable fisheries, and it has been managed by input controls – without quotas – for the past 97 years. Instead of setting quotas or limiting the landed biomass, lobster fishery rules specify the season, the type of gear and the number and design of traps, and prevent the harvest of egg-bearing females. This selective harvesting explicitly targets the middle segment of the harvestable biomass, leaving both the very young and the mature reproducers in the water to replenish the stock. It thus mimics the natural system of predation in the wild, something Chris Darimont of the University of Victoria recommends if we want to harvest sustainably. Moreover, it enables larger harvests when the animals are plentiful, and smaller, non-damaging harvests when they are scarce – a key characteristic of a sustainable management approach.

Input-Based Management also meshes with Indigenous understandings and traditional practices, grounded in the recognition that humans are part of the natural world, not separate from it. As Climate Change and Covid have shown us, we humans are simply not in charge. That realization is appropriately humbling, and opens the door to changing failed approaches.

A corollary is that fishery management does not and cannot manage the fish or the ocean. It manages the fishery – that is, our human activity as predators in the marine ecosystem. In trying to optimize that management system, we would do well to incorporate the Indigenous concept of the “Honourable Harvest” with its unwritten rules based, as Potawatomi scientist-poet Robin Wall Kimmerer explains, on respect and reciprocity with “all our relations.” Take only that which is given. Harvest in ways that minimize harm. Never take more than half. Never waste. Our society is slowly starting to pay attention to those profound understandings, but we’re still just taking baby steps.

Essential Principles

The following principles underlie our “Changing Course” proposal for a better way:

  • The ocean’s ecosystems are of inherent value and must be kept healthy, so harvesting must be done selectively in sustainable ways;
  • The ocean is a commons, and, as recommended by the FAO, harvesters have “use rights” to harvest that commons sustainably;
  • The fishery management system must provide optimum net economic returns to harvesters and coastal communities;
  • The system must be equitable, inclusive and participatory, with implementation and management kept as simple and effective as possible.
  • The system must be based on verifiable real-time information and feedback, avoiding reliance on inherently uncertain theoretical predictions, and implementing practical measures for sustainable fishing.

Our overall policy direction should incentivize small scale fisheries where these principles can be reliably implemented, rather than encouraging and subsidizing large, corporate, industrialized fishing, where that is not the case.

Tools for Fishery Management – Input and Output Controls

We think of DFO’s fishery managers as having a toolbox with a set of tools. Fishery management involves choosing which tools to use and how to best combine them for the purposes of sustainability. The six main tools in the toolbox can be listed as six questions – the “Who,” the “What,” the “How,” the “When” the “Where,” and the “How Much” of harvesting.

The FAO’s Fishery Manager’s Guidebook describes the two main management approaches used in the fisheries of different countries: output controls and input controls. In both approaches, most of the same tools are used to some extent, but they are prioritized and employed very differently. This is because of the difference between the goals of the two systems – the main task that the tools are being used for in each case.

Output control systems focus on restricting the amount of fish biomass to be caught so that it will not exceed a calculated limit. They primarily regulate output, calculating in advance “How much” should get harvested, and relying heavily on advance estimates and calculations of Total Allowable Catches and resulting quota allocations. The “Who, What, How, When and Where” are partially addressed through licenses, seasons and zones, but the overriding and determining factor is the output – the “How much.” Output control is DFO’s current management system, their “PA Framework”, which we refer to as “Quota-Based Management.”

Input control systems focus on ensuring that the fishing activities themselves foster sustainability and do no harm. These systems regulate fishing effort, using the first five tools in combination – detailing the “Who, What, How, When, and Where” of harvesting. The sixth tool, the “How much,” is monitored and measured, but it is not estimated or set in advance, and it does not dominate the harvesting plan or determine the eventual catch. The input control system, in which harvesting is managed by regulating fishing effort, is the alternative framework we propose in Changing Course.

Let’s take a closer look at the six tools as questions for management in regard to commercial fish harvesting. Before outlining our proposed input-based approach, we want first to describe how DFO currently uses those tools to accomplish the task set by their quota-based management system.

The Task for DFO’s output-based system: to restrict the catch so that the amount of biomass removed will not exceed a pre-set limit.

1. “Who can fish?” Currently, harvesters may be owners/skippers or crew, based locally or elsewhere, trained and experienced or simply hired at the wharf. Other professionals such as registered nurses or people in the skilled trades need to meet specific qualification requirements in order to practise, but under the present system this is not so for harvesting crews. Nor do young people currently have any clear avenue to follow in order to become harvesters. Some work has already been done at provincial levels on certification and training, but it is still incomplete.

2. “What is being fished?” DFO’s quota-based system attempts to deal with each species in a separate theoretical silo. Since the ocean is not divided into silos, that fragmented approach is out of touch with the complex scientific reality of predators, prey, competition and other factors. The single-species approach also leads to serious problems of bycatch, where large quantities of non-target species are dumped unrecorded and unutilized. Although DFO is planning to move towards an ecosystem-based approach eventually, they are still managing mainly species-by-species, stock by stock, with all the attendant problems around bycatch, habitat and ecosystem balance.

3. “How is fishing being done?” This refers to harvesting methods and gear, which are of crucial importance to ecological and economic sustainability. But this factor is largely invisible in DFO’s current system, (beyond a misplaced and risky emphasis on the length of vessels.) Under the Department’s quota-based management, huge quantities of biomass are harvested by otter trawls, which fish indiscriminately, hauling in massive quantities of whatever life forms they can scoop from the sea floor and destroying the habitat in the process. Gillnets also harvest non-selectively, though they do less damage, and regulating mesh sizes and soak times can help. Hook and line fishing does little harm (except to the individual fish caught!) Despite these crucial distinctions, DFO’s management system fails to focus on the “how” of fishing, with the result that the bulk of the TAC (Total Allowable Catch) biomass of most stocks is harvested by large-scale non-selective industrial methods, mainly in the offshore.

4. “When can we fish?” Seasons are set – too often at the last minute – for each species in each area, based mainly on science and on observed patterns of fish reproduction, migration and behaviour. DFO sometimes also makes rules specifying times of day, frequency of hauling, etc, and there may be daily or weekly trip limits. In general, though, once a season opens, harvesters fish until they have caught their quota, which may or may not correspond to market factors, weather conditions, processing capacity, etc.

5. “Where can we fish?” Geographical fishing zones or areas for each target species are set by DFO within the larger zones defined by NAFO and other international agreements. DFO uses zones, together with seasons, primarily for administrative purposes.

Note: Beware of potential confusion between these actual geographical zones of the ocean (eg. 2J3KL), and DFO’s disconcerting use of the same word, “zone”, to refer to the presumed state or status of a stock (eg. “capelin is in the critical zone.”) Those non-geographical “zones” – “healthy,” “cautious” or “critical” – are defined by theoretical “reference points” calculated by mathematical models based on statistical estimates.

6. “How much canwe catch?” The main harvest management tool in DFO’s current quota-based system is the sixth one – “How Much.” It attempts to determine how many kilograms of biomass we should harvest from a given stock in a given year. Here’s how it’s done: DFO scientists use survey data – seldom up to date – to estimate the biomass of a given stock. These data, which have high margins of error and uncertainty, are then fed into computers, along with reference points calculated from historical data, all of which also involve a large range of variables, uncertainties and unknowns. The computers then model future scenarios as best they can, plotting projected biomass numbers and fishery removals on a graph. This eventually leads to the calculation of the TAC, the Total Allowable Catch, which is then allocated and distributed as marketable quotas of biomass.

This single output tool – “How much” – forms the fundamental basis for DFO’s harvest management planning. It largely drives what kind of science the Department undertakes and how that science is interpreted and applied. Some input tools are used as well, involving regulations for licensing, gear, seasons and zones, but input considerations are overridden by the top priority – setting TACs and quotas. “How much” is thus the final arbiter in determining harvest policies in DFO’s output-based system.

Note that the first five questions, which deal with inputs, all have answers that can be easily and accurately identified, measured, complied with and enforced in real time. They are “known knowns” – a necessity for effective management. In contrast, the current quota-based system deals with the projected output, relying heavily on the sixth question, and is thus full of unknowns and uncertainties, unmeasurable, and problematic to enforce. The answers to “How much” can only be roughly estimated at in advance, and any necessary corrections can only be made after the season is over, if at all.

How Input-Based Management (IBM) would Work

The Task for our proposed Input-Based Management system: to ensure that the fishing activities themselves foster sustainability and do no harm. There is not enough room here to cover all the details of implementation of our proposed IBM system, but a brief outline and a few examples will help explain the practicalities of our approach.

“Who” – This involves professional qualifications, training and safety, together with considerations of equity, inclusivity and participation. Under IBM, training and certification programs would be accessible to all, along with grandfathering for experienced harvesters. Commercial fishing would be the exclusive domain of certified professional harvesters – both owners and crew – who have registered their home port.

“What” – In fisheries circles internationally, there is now considerable agreement that fishery management should look at the whole marine ecosystem and work with it. With IBM, harvest policies and planning would take into account the multi-species nature of the ecosystem, predator-prey relationships, food supply and habitat. This would help minimize bycatch, and in any case all bycatch would be landed and recorded, with a system in place for utilizing it where possible.

“How” – This is a central element of Input-Based Management, a crucial one for preventing overfishing, maintaining ecosystem balance and healthy stocks. With IBM, fishery managers could regulate the choice, size and amount of gear, and set conditions for its use. For example:

  • Each harvester could use up to 1200 baited hooks or a specified number of traps;
  • Specific mesh sizes or escapement mechanisms for nets and traps could be set for each species to allow undersized juveniles to escape;
  • Other size limits could be used to restrict how much fish a particular gear could catch: eg. length of a longline, length and depth of a net;
  • Regulations could set maximum soak times for nets and longlines, number of tows per day for a trawl, etc.

Input-based systems foster selective fishing, specifying the types and amounts of gear being used in order to optimize the intended harvest, minimize bycatch and prevent damage to the habitat and ecosystem. Gear can be ranked according to a sustainability index, so that the most sustainable types (eg. handlines, pots and traps, and longlines) can be chosen wherever possible, and the most damaging (otter trawls, bottom gillnets and most seines) avoided. Using sustainable gear and harvesting selectively can actually increase the size of the harvest while simultaneously improving the state of the stock – a win-win proposition.

“When” and “Where” – Under IBM, seasons would be set well in advance for specific zones and areas, giving harvesters and processors time for advance planning and preparation. The “when” and “where” aspects of harvesting plans would take into account scientific and local knowledge of species distribution and migration, reproductive cycles, aggregation, feeding and other behaviour patterns. Decisions on seasons and zones would be guided by a massive increase in the use of Marine Spatial Planning, with many more zones and sub-zones than currently exist.

“How much” – Scientific monitoring, stock assessments, and measurement of catch rates, landed biomass, landed bycatch, and other outputs would of course continue under Input-Based Management, and would be improved and expanded with updated data collection and analytics technology, together with increased participation and feedback by harvesters and other citizen scientists. These data would be used for the regular stock assessments and in a wide range of scientific work to enhance understanding and improve management. However, in the quota-free system, the data would not be used for attempts to predict acceptable biomass removal or to set quotas. There might be some use of trip limits in certain circumstances, or a cap set on the total catch in a particularly vulnerable situation, as part of the ongoing process of adapting and fine-tuning the system in a rapidly changing world.

Possibilities and Impossibilities

With this overview of our proposed alternative sketched out, we now need to highlight some key points that differentiate the two systems. These points help explain why the output-based approach does not work, whereas IBM, the input-based alternative, will.

Fishing vs Catching: “Fishing” is not the same thing as “catching”, and using the two terms interchangeably is misleading. Fishing is what people do to try to harvest fish; catching is about the result they get (or hope for.) Sometimes we may fish all day, or all season, without catching very much; other times we catch a lot of fish in an hour, or get our whole quota in the first day or two of the season (which can also cause problems.) Moreover, some fishing methods are ecosystem-friendly whereas others are extremely harmful, regardless of the amount caught. Catching can be measured in kilograms of biomass; fishing cannot. Yet the quota-based system fails to take these crucial distinctions into account, making them invisible and thus unavailable for use in management.

Look at the term “overfishing.” Obviously, it is bad to remove more fish than biological reproduction can replace. But we see overfishing as fishing unsustainably, not just catching too much. For example, 20 industrial trawlers with otter trawls dragging the same area of seafloor for months constitutes overfishing, whether they catch a lot or a little.

This point is actually key to understanding one of the foundational flaws in DFO’s quota-based management system. Operationally, harvest managers under any system must set limits that will prevent overfishing. Our view is that we should place the limits mainly on the fishing itself, the effort, and continually monitor the results. This input-based approach, unlike a quota system, enables us to accurately establish, quantify, adhere to, monitor and enforce all the elements involved in harvesting our oceans. In this way, IBM proactively prevents both overfishing and overcatching.

TACs: An Impossible Task: Another fundamental problem with quota-based management is that it is impossible to calculate, with any degree of accuracy, a Total Allowable Catch, on which the whole quota system depends. To illustrate, take DFO’s stock assessments for 2J3KL cod over the past decade, which show estimated spawning stock biomass around 400 kilotonnes, with a margin of error of plus or minus 25%, i.e. 100 kt either way. (Estimates of other stocks are even more uncertain.)  In regard to the sustainable yield, historically as well as today, humans have consistently harvested 10% to 30% of this and similar cod stocks without depleting them.

Putting this information together as two scenarios at either end of the probability spectrum, we get:

Estimated Spawning Stock Biomass (SSB)                    300 kt   to   500 kt

Potential annual stock growth (sustainable yield)             10%      to   30%

            Multiply the above figures

Biomass that could be safely harvested (TAC)               30 kt     to  150 kt

As the example shows, trying to calculate a Total Allowable Catch based on those widely ranging estimated numbers results in a huge range of answers. If the initial biomass was actually at the lower end of the range, and the stock growth only 10%, the maximum sustainable harvest figure would be just 30 kt. However, if both higher figures were correct, the theoretically allowable catch might be as much as 150 kt. A TAC by definition has to be a specific number, and once chosen it is enforced by law. Yet any number chosen is simply an estimate – almost certainly wrong, quite likely seriously wrong. Sustainability requires getting things right. TACs are necessarily based on estimates, and that just doesn’t cut it.

Underfishing and Foregone Harvests: Since TACs are based on highly uncertain assumptions and calculations, the quota-based system often limits us to much smaller harvests than what could be caught sustainably, or even to full fishery closures, as with Pacific herring and Atlantic mackerel in recent years. This type of unnecessary loss, referred to as “foregone harvests,” represent major economic losses for harvesters, processors, communities and the Canadian economy as a whole. Catching too little can also be bad for the fish stock itself when it leaves too many fish in the water. If there are more hungry fish than the available food supply can support, those fish will be in poor condition and there will be starvation. In such cases, the arbitrary and highly uncertain output-based regulations limiting the harvest are actually counter-productive ecologically as well as economically and socially.

This may well be the situation now with redfish and shrimp in the Gulf and with cod and capelin in 2J3KL. Whereas the response by DFO and some other observers is too often a call to “Keep removals to a minimum,” that may only make matters worse. The real solution may be to manage the fishing effort by fishing selectively so as to catch a larger proportion of the hungry predator fish and leave more prey for the remaining ones to eat. Those remaining predator fish will then be in better condition and can grow, reproduce and more effectively replenish the stock. The simplistic mantra of “keeping removals to a minimum” can be appropriate in some circumstances, but in others it is exactly the wrong way to go.

Input-based management (IBM) prevents both over-fishing and under-fishing. It has built-in feedback loops, like poor condition of the fish or declining catch rates, which enable harvesting to be largely self-adjusting: if there are a lot of hungry fish around, more will be caught, whereas if there aren’t, harvesters will do less fishing. In both cases, the result is to reduce the pressure on fish stocks and the ecosystem – the most effective way to enable them to rebuild. That can even mean fishing less and catching more.

Positive Inefficiencies: With modern discoveries and technologies, humans now have the ability to fish out most species in a few years. We no longer need to “improve” gear efficiency; in fact, “slow fishing” is better for the ecosystem, for product quality, and often for the harvester’s net income as well. But with the current system, the focus on catching a quota creates conditions where harvesters use the gear and methods that appear to be the most efficient, in order to make a living. And quota-based management does little or nothing to regulate gear.

In contrast, IBM encourages a degree of in–efficiency in our gear, which helps to increase sustainability by ensuring that enough fish are left in the water to maintain the stock and the ecosystem balance for the coming years. Some gear has a natural degree of positive inefficiency. For example, baited hooks only remain effective for a few hours; traps catch mainly smaller fish; small seines can not encircle an entire school of fish. Other types of gear need to be adapted to a lesser degree of efficiency, usually by specifying mesh size or limiting overall length and depth so as to allow certain sizes and species of fish to avoid capture. All those aspects of gear can be accurately specified, measured and managed, and such “positive inefficiencies” constitute an important and practical element of an input-based system.

Biomass and BOFFFs – Big, Old, Fat, Fecund Females: Quota-based management relies heavily on biomass figures – estimates of the total weight of fish in a given stock. But a stock is not homogeneous, and when crucial policy decisions are based on an undifferentiated total, some key factors of scientific relevance to sustainability are missed.

For example, there’s the phenomenon of “reproductive hyperallometry.” That refers to the fact that in many fish species, the Big, Old, Fat, Fecund Females – “BOFFFs” – produce many more eggs and more surviving larvae than the equivalent weight of smaller individuals – perhaps as much as an order of magnitude more. But TACs are defined in terms of biomass – a kilo of fish is simply a kilo of fish, regardless of age, fecundity, or the condition of the fish making up the total. So the quota-based system is unable to properly take into account the multi-dimensional complexity of the scientific reality. Our proposed input-based management system is able to address this and other significant factors that are lacking in the current approach.

Benefits of shifting to Input-Based Management

Taking another look at both of the management approaches we’ve described here, we can summarize the benefits of shifting from the current quota-based system to one of input-based management (IBM.)

With the clear decline of major marine species over the past seven decades, respected fisheries scientists and advocates like Daniel Pauly have rightly called for a precautionary approach. DFO’s quota-based management system is an attempt to implement precaution, but it has failed and continues to fail. Our analysis shows that the flaws are in the approach itself, and trying harder or making piecemeal adjustments will not solve those inherent problems.

Basing fisheries management on quotas, as is currently done, actually works against sustainability. The quota-based system tacitly allows all fishing methods and gears. As long as you catch your quota, you can mostly use whatever gear you want, the main limit being the number of tonnes of fish you can catch. This means most harvesters will use gear that catches as much as possible as quickly as possible – which is also the gear that is least sustainable. Moreover, in our capitalist, market-driven economy, those with capital go big – larger boats, bigger trawls, etc.  Those large-scale gear types are often incompatible with the slower, more economical and less destructive gear. So small-scale fishers using hooks, pots or traps are effectively barred from the ocean or have only limited access. In practice, then, DFO’s quota-based policies and regulations favour large-scale, inefficient and destructive industrial fisheries, and this needs to be changed.

Among the other negatives associated with DFO’s quota-based PA framework are: High carbon emissions. Biodiversity loss. Habitat destruction. Plastic pollution. Low-quality products. Waste of protein. Exploitation of labour. Privatizing the ocean commons. Outmigration and flight of wealth from coastal communities … The list goes on. These problems can be resolved or significantly reduced by shifting to the input-based management policy framework that we are proposing.

Now let’s sum up the benefits of that solution.Input-based management works with Nature instead of making futile attempts to control it. IBM is designed to identify and respond to ever-changing ocean realities like natural predation, food supply, water temperature, disease and migration, all of which influence the sustainability of our fisheries. Its built-in feedback loops flag situations for our attention, and input controls enable us to respond in real time with selective harvesting methods. This inherent responsiveness allows us to catch more fish when fish are plentiful, and appropriately fewer when fish are scarce, helping to keep balance in the ecosystem. The use of more sustainable harvesting gear and methods means much less damage to the marine habitat and food chain, enhancing marine biodiversity. IBM also reduces bycatch, carbon emissions, and plastic pollution.

As input-based management becomes established, these ecological benefits will translate into economic and social benefits to coastal communities, and to the economy and society as a whole. Thanks to more sustainable fishing practices, fish will become more plentiful and enable larger harvests, benefitting both harvesting and processing sectors. Higher quality products and better prices, combined with lower expenses, will increase harvest efficiency, and result in increased net economic returns. The reduction in bycatch will reduce the associated waste and economic losses. With sustainable harvesting supported and the quota-related problem of “foregone harvests” resolved, economic activity will increase at both the local level and more broadly.

As people realize the benefits accruing from input-based management, harvesters will increasingly opt for the greater efficiency of smaller boats and “slow fishing” practices. This will lower the fishery’s carbon footprint, reduce the overcapitalization of the fleet, and make it easier for younger people to get into harvesting. The increased economic activity will strengthen local economies and help coastal communities survive and thrive.

Recommendation:

Our recommendation is a very inclusive one:

The Department of Fisheries and Oceans should expedite a fundamental policy shift for managing Canada’s fisheries, replacing the current output-based (quota) system with a comprehensive Input-Based Management (IBM) policy framework as described in this brief. That framework needs to include:

1) implementing Input-Based Management, controlling fishing effort instead of setting quotas;

2) making it a formal policy goal to optimize net economic benefits; 

3) certification and fishing rights for all qualified commercial harvesters;

4) requiring all dead bycatch to be landed and recorded;

5) improving and expanding the collection, analysis and use of data from a full range of sources;

6) harvester-processor independence, with regulated competition at the wharf’s edge;

7) increased involvement of harvesters, communities and citizens in decision-making at all levels;

8) reorienting DFO’s scientific work to support IBM and include other knowledge systems.

Conclusion:

In this brief, we have outlined our analysis of the ongoing failure of DFO’s current output-based fisheries management framework, and presented in broad terms our proposal for a paradigm shift in approach. The Input-Based Management system we are putting forward for the Committee’s consideration constitutes a very different and very promising alternative way of managing Canada’s commercial fisheries. We recognize that it will raise many questions and present many challenges, and we see this as a welcome opportunity to initiate, here in our Parliament’s Upper House, the necessary in-depth public discussion of this alternative.

We want to highlight a few key points about what we propose. First, Input-Based Management cannot be combined with DFO’s current quota-based approach, precisely because the two systems are built on different foundations. It’s fine to cherry-pick good ideas about sustainable gear or Marine Spatial Planning and insert them into the current system, but that would simply be putting bandaids on a broken leg. There are already some good ideas in DFO, but they are overridden by the finality – and impossibility – of TACs and quotas. That is why we call this a paradigm shift – what needs to change is the very basis of management policies and decisions.

Quota-based management has been in place for so long and is used so widely that a proposal to replace it will not be easily accepted. Because the fishery is now structured around this decades-old system, quotas are treated as a core element of the current regulatory, financial, institutional and physical structures governing our fisheries. Altering these established management practices will inevitably be challenging, and implementing the shift will require recognizing and mitigating temporary problems that may arise.

No system is perfect, of course, but some approaches to fishery management are better than others. This is the UN’s “Ocean Decade,” and the next few years will be a crucial time for our fisheries. We have the chance to replace the current year-to-year crisis management mode with a long-term approach that will benefit harvesters, coastal communities, and the nation in terms of both economics and sustainability.

Respectfully submitted,

Barry Darby and Helen Forsey

Changing Course

Redfish Re-opening – Getting it Wrong

bdarbyfish

This article was published in the St. John’s Telegram on February 18th, 2024 following a DFO re-opening decision that was several years late.

The recent announcement of the re-opening of the redfish fishery in the Gulf of St. Lawrence is of crucial importance on multiple levels – economic, ecological, and political. In order to take advantage of this opportunity that Nature is offering, we need to get it right.

Unfortunately, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and many informed commentators are getting it wrong.

Since the early evidence of a redfish population explosion five years ago, harvesters have been looking forward to the chance to build a renewed fishery on the basis of this long-lived and periodically abundant fish. In 2019 the stock was estimated at 4,300 kilotonnes, but recent estimates put the current size of the stock at about 2,500 kt – a whopping 42% decline, despite there having been no fishery. The loss of those 1.8 million tonnes of fish could be attributed to “natural mortality” – a misleading catch-all term used when nobody knows the explanation, covering everything from inadequate food supply to predation and from climate change to illegal fishing. The redfish stock that remains, however, is still huge – about six times the estimated current relatively stable biomass of cod in 2J3KL.

Now, despite all the unknowns, the Minister and her Redfish Advisory Committee are tasked with determining a Total Allowable Catch – itself a highly dubious basis for decision-making amid the complex realities of fishery management. And too often, the problem is being presented to the public as a contest between provinces for shares of whatever that Total Allowable Catch turns out to be.

Naturally, harvesters and processors from all five provinces involved are clamouring for a “fair share” of this natural bounty. But now confusion reigns. The day after the January 26th reopening announcement, DFO’s media department sent out a table depicting “Redfish fishery quota allocation (2024 estimated; 1993 historic; and 2024-1993) by province.” They note that the table’s projections are estimated and subject to change, but they nonetheless then proceed to compare apples and oranges – their estimated percentages for 2024 with the actual historical percentages from 1993 – and get even that wrong!

The DFO table puts a minus sign for Nova Scotia’s percentage-point difference from the 1993 share, when the actual difference needs a plus sign, same as the other provinces. According to the figures in the table:

Nova Scotia got 27.2% in 1993, and is expected to get 33% in 2024. That is 5.8 percentage points more.

Similarly, Newfoundland and Labrador got 17% in 1993, and expects 19% in 2024. That is 2 percentage points more.

Yet the DFO table shows a difference of “-5.8” (minus 5.8) for Nova Scotia and “+2.0” (plus 2.0) for NL!

This simple but highly significant arithmetical error leads to the mistaken conclusion that whereas all the other provinces gain share, Nova Scotia is losing. This is nonsense. The reverse would be nonsense as well. Yet the mistaken table has already been widely cited as authoritative, and is adding to the misplaced inter-provincial hostility.

Blaming Nova Scotia for getting the lion’s share of allocations, or blaming Newfoundland and Labrador for wanting more is just falling into the trap of “divide and conquer.” Harvesters and coastal people everywhere should be able to make a living and have a life without constant struggle. The dispute over the respective percentages of Total Allowable Catch allocated to different provinces is a red herring.

The fishery’s true inequities are between the people who try to make a living from the sea and the rapacious industrial entities that seek to maximize their profits; between the survival and well-being of marine ecosystems and coastal communities and the short-sighted selfish interests of corporations and governments. So the current DFO plan to continue allocating more than half the redfish harvest to the offshore sector with its big industrial factory-freezer trawlers – that plan is inequitable, unfair and unsustainable.

Meanwhile, back on shore in NL, neither the government nor the media appear to understand the unique biology of redfish – a long-lived and slow-growing species, living 50 to 75 years but only reaching a maximum length of 50 cm. Normal cycles for redfish stocks appear to be years of low recruitment, interrupted occasionally by one or more particularly large year classes, which in turn may grow to become a huge biomass. To speak of the redfish “collapse” in 1995, and refer to the subsequent rebuilding as a result of a moratorium, may well be inaccurate. Instead it could be largely a matter of understanding the natural cycles of this species, and then managing the fishing accordingly.

With proper management, good monitoring and sustainable gear, the current redfish stock could be harvested over many years. But we are off to a very late start, due to the lack of foresight and common sense by both federal and provincial governments.

DFO failed to reopen the redfish fishery soon after the stock reached its peak four years ago. Since then over one and a half million tonnes of redfish have apparently died, perhaps because of a shortage of food. A major part of the diet of full-grown redfish is shrimp, and this same four-year time period saw the recent decline in shrimp biomass in the Gulf. If we had had ecosystem-based management and had fished with appropriate gear, we might have harvested many of those redfish and at the same time helped to maintain the shrimp stock.

Provincial government policies have prevented NL’s processing sector from gearing up to process a massively increased redfish harvest for the benefit of our coastal communities. Markets could have been developed for whole fish of a smaller size, for which there is potential demand in many cultures. But the provincial decision-makers clung to the notion that only large fillets of redfish are marketable. The few redfish caught since 2018 in the experimental fishery – which was supposed to help develop markets – was mostly sold cheaply for lobster bait. Another opportunity wasted.

The real problem with the redfish fishery – and with most of our other fisheries as well – is the way the whole thing is envisaged and framed. The current quota-based system favours large-scale, capital-intensive industrial fishing, worsening the inequities, threatening sustainability, and increasing the damage to marine ecosystems, coastal communities and the planet itself. In order to enhance sustainability, we need to focus on how fishing is done and managed, not on how many tonnes of biomass we end up catching.

It’s high time for that paradigm shift.

            Changing Course is the fishery research and advocacy initiative of Barry Darby and Helen Forsey. Barry is a retired fisherman and educator from Burin, NL, who has done extensive research on the economics and sustainability of the fish harvesting sector. Helen is a writer with a background in agriculture, environment and public policy. Their website is www.barrydarby.com.