November 6, 2023 — Canadian commercial fishermen are hopeful ropeless gear could be a solution to address concerns of right whale entanglements in snow crab fisheries, and recent trials are showing that innovative technology can work along the East Coast of Canada.
New ropeless gear that eliminates the vertical lines that can entangle right whales is one possibility, and fishermen have had positive experiences with it in trials along the East Coast of Canada.
October 24, 2023 — Native fishermen in the U.S. state of Maine claim officials with Canada’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans recently took unwarranted and unauthorized action against them.
According to Henry Bear – past general manager of the Maliseet Nation’s commercial fishing fleet on Grand Manan Island, and past Maliseet Tribal Representative to the Maine House of Representatives – the DFO took unwarranted action against Maine-based Passamaquoddy and Maliseet fishermen by confiscating lobster traps. The fishermen were lobstering in Canadian waters of the Saint Croix River and of Passamaquoddy Bay – which form part of the border between New Brunswick, Canada and Maine in the U.S. – when the DFO reportedly confiscated the traps.
October 17, 2023 — A joint operation between the U.S. and Canada recently completed a high seas patrol to detect illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing in the North Pacific, and discovered more than 3,000 illegally possessed or stored shark fins.
The joint operation, dubbed Operation North Pacific Guard, ran earlier this year. It was the first time that Canada took the lead in the mission, which has taken place each year since 2019.
October 5, 2023 — The head of one of Canada’s biggest seafood companies believes the fishing and aquaculture sectors need to work together to push back against unscientific claims made by environmental groups.
Speaking at the Responsible Seafood Summit in Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada, Cooke Inc. CEO Glenn Cooke said
“We’ve got to work together because we now have the same common enemy,” Cooke said. “These environmental groups now have turned very strongly against wild fishing, so now the same groups that are hitting the farming are hitting a lot of fishing. The sooner we can coalesce into a major, stronger force to take them on, the better in my mind.”
February 7, 2023 — After a two-year hiatus, members of the U.S. and Canadian lobster fisheries met in Portland over the weekend to discuss challenges facing their industry. Top of mind is how the industry will prepare before new federal regulations designed to protect endangered right whales begin in six years.
Fisheries in Maine had late last year expressed relief about the years-long delay in the rules change included in a federal spending bill, as it bought the industry more time to research and test new fishing techniques and other measures aimed at protecting North Atlantic right whales.
January 6, 2023 — Canada and the United States have, for the first time, failed to agree on a shared quota for the transboundary haddock stock on the Georges Bank fishing grounds off southern Nova Scotia.
The two countries have jointly managed the haddock fishery — and two other straddling stocks — since 2000, but were unable to reach a consensus for the 2023 haddock quota.
“While Canada and the U.S. tried to negotiate a shared haddock total allowable catch … our countries will be setting our own total allowable catch independently of the other,” wrote Kathy Cooper-MacDonald, senior advisor, Fisheries Management in Maritimes Region on Dec. 28.
The disagreement centred on the size of the quota cut.
“Everybody agreed that a large reduction was required, but the size of large is not defined,” said Alain d’Entremont, president of Scotia Harvest, operator of a groundfish fleet and processing plant in southwestern Nova Scotia.
He is a Canadian industry representative and co-chair of the Transboundary Management Guidance Committee, which helps negotiate quotas.
“I don’t think we’ve caused irreparable damage to the agreement.”
December 8, 2022 — Canada is lobbying the United States to add Atlantic mackerel to transboundary fish stocks jointly managed by the two countries on the East Coast — but so far has not landed an agreement.
The appeal comes after Canada imposed a total moratorium on all commercial mackerel fishing in 2022 to rebuild the depleted shared stock. The Americans kept fishing, albeit with a reduced quota.
“We don’t support the fact that we had closures because the stock was in critical condition and the United States were fishing essentially that same stock,” Canada’s Fisheries and Oceans Minister Joyce Murray told a parliamentary committee Friday.
Murray’s remarks are a more public stance on what has been a quiet effort by Canada to persuade the United States to jointly manage a species both countries say is in trouble.
Murray said she expressed her concerns in a virtual meeting earlier on Dec. 2 with her U.S. counterpart, Richard Spinrad, who leads the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration or NOAA.
Murray said Spinrad was sympathetic.
“He wants to invoke the precautionary principle, which in my view, wasn’t happening adequately. We agreed that we share our approach to this and in two months there will be meetings between NOAA and DFO to discuss our assessments and build a better approach to rebuilding mackerel.”
October 26, 2022 — Salmon farmers in British Columbia, Canada appear to no longer be facing the imminent end of net-pen farming in the entire region following several tours of the region by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and the Canadian Coast Guard (DFO) Minister Joyce Murray.
The tours were part of a long-term plan by the Canadian government and Murray to phase out salmon farming in the region. In late 2020, the Canadian government announced that some salmon farms in B.C., specially located in the Discovery Islands, would be phased out in just 18 months, a decision that communities and salmon farmers in the region said they were “blindsided” by.
October 7, 2022 — The federal government is challenging charges from U.S. environmentalists that it’s not doing enough to protect critically endangered north Atlantic right whales, claiming measures taken since 2018 have reduced the risk of entanglements in the critical Gulf of St. Lawrence snow crab fishery by 82 per cent.
The new statistic was unveiled by Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) at a parliamentary committee meeting held after the latest environmental condemnation — a red rating from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch — recommending consumers avoid buying Canadian snow crab and lobster because of the risk posed to right whales from entanglements in fishing rope.
“We disagree with it,” said Adam Burns, an acting assistant deputy minister.
Burns was repeatedly questioned about the red rating on Sept. 27, the first of six meetings planned on right whales by the DFO committee.
“Canada worked to ensure that [Seafood Watch] had the necessary information to make a fair and balanced assessment of Canada’s management regime. Unfortunately, we do not believe that they took all of that into consideration in their findings and did not recognize the differences in Canada’s regime from those in the U.S.,” Burns testified.
DFO is not disputing that north Atlantic right whales are imperilled.
August 19, 2022 — An increased effort by Canada and the United States to combat illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing isn’t being matched by a tightening of import controls that would prevent illegally sourced seafood from entering domestic markets, according to a letter sent from 26 seafood industry stakeholders to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.
The letter, which was signed by Buy-Low Foods, Sobey’s, and Ocean Brands, as well as seafood sustainability non-governmental organizations including Oceana, Ocean Wise, Sea Choice, and the David Suzuki Foundation, urged Canada’s federal government to commit to a timeline on mandating boat-to-plate traceability for seafood sold in the country.