Category: Uncategorized

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.