Rebuilding Fisheries in Canada: Capelin Biomass Falling Yet Fishing Stays Open

0:00 Oh my God. Look, how many times we have to go through this? When you don't manage fisheries properly, we get a collapse. And if you don't recover properly, you will get prone to another collapse. This is what's happening with capelin on the east coast of Canada. And we're going to talk about today why capelin's population is 16% of its pre-collapsed biomass. That is not good. We're going to talk about the health of cod, which is the major predator of capelin, and how the low biomass affects both capelin and northern cod population. We're going to talk about that on today's episode of the how to protect the ocean podcast. Let's start the show. Hey, everybody. Welcome back to another exciting episode of the how to protect the ocean podcast. I'm your host, Andrew Lewin. And this is the podcast where you find out what's happening with the ocean, how you can speak up for the ocean, what you can do to live for a better ocean by taking action.

0:49 And on today's episode, we're going to be talking about capelin, a small fish that is really driving the population up and down for northern cod. Now, northern cod, as you know, we talked a lot about actually we talked about capelin as well, you know, about a year ago, just in around a year ago. But we talked about both these populations and northern cod very famous for the 1992 collapse in the moratorium on fishing for cod. And there has been a 32 year moratorium on this species up until 2024 when DFO, Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada, actually opened up the fishery for cod, even though not only Oceania, but other organizations were saying, hey, you know what, maybe we should pause on this, especially the in-shore fishery group were saying, hey, we shouldn't open it up to the ocean.

1:35 The offshore fishery group and they were saying, hey, look, capelin, we're actually gonna open that too, because that's okay to fish, but they're not really doing very well. And we're going to talk about it today because it's something that we have to talk about. The goal of the mission really of Department of Fisheries and Oceans, DFO here in Canada is to protect fisheries, not only for the environment's sake, but also for the sake of the fishing industry. When the 1992 moratorium came in for northern cod, there was uproar on how it was affecting everybody's life. Not only in Newfoundland, but along the east coast of Canada and including down south. This was devastating. It changed the landscape, economic landscape of Newfoundland, which was normally a fishing province. It was known for its fishing communities. Now they had to switch and what they were going to do, whether they had to switch from northern cod to a different species like lobster, crab or shrimp, or they had to get out of the fishing business altogether after generations and generations of fishing.

2:30 So not only does it affect the environment, but it also affects all the fish. It affects all of the economy that's surrounding it. Now, of course, when you talk about the environmental impact, when fishing for cod was really starting to be known, there was rumors that you could just drop a bucket into the water and you would catch cod, like northern cod, instantly. Obviously, that's not the case anymore. We saw the dip. Politicians ignored the dip. Scientists were telling them, hey, you know what? There's a big loss of northern cod. There's a big loss of haddock. And when you get a loss of big, demersal fish, you get an abundance of small pelagic fish, which they eat. So there's a lot of stuff going on here from an environmental aspect and as well from an economic aspect. So we need to talk about what is happening. Oceana released a press release. I got it right in my email. I'm so glad it is. So thank you, Oceana Canada for doing that.

3:15 Capeland is at 16% of its pre-collapse biomass and it remains severely depleted. So northern cod is also stagnating in its recovery and cannot rebound without healthy capelin stocks. And now just to talk about what is happening with the population of cod. Cod were essentially recovering in 2017. They were at a big growth. They were, I think they were hovering around 300,000 and 600,000 tons and that was in 2017, but have stalled since then. So we're seeing obviously a stall of that population growth, a loss in the population of capelin. And capelin is the big prey species for northern cod. Northern cod are the ones that eat capelin all the time. So that's something that is really important. They're obviously related and their populations are really feeling it. Maybe there was a big jump in population of northern cod. So, you know, obviously in fishing industries like hey, we want to fish more fish. They didn't do it until 2024, but it could have just stagnated because capelin kept going down. Maybe it was because of an increase in the population of northern cod or it could be a lot of other factors like cumulative like climate change could be, you know, ocean pollution. It could be a variety overfishing. It could be a variety of things on the capelin side. So that's something that we have to worry about. Now, capelin showed signs of recovery in 2022 when fishing actually pause, but they resume the process of recovery. So they're going to be doing a lot of research on the fishing in 2023 and 2024 and put it back at risk. It just goes to show that the fishing pressure is what's causing capelin to go down. Now, cod has since stall, as I mentioned, 300 to 600,000 tons in 2017, one third of its 1960

4:47 level. So obviously 1960s is where we really started to pre started to see that decline usually in the 70s. So here are some of the recommendations that Oceania has. So there's a few of them. There's probably about six of them that I'm going to read out. So the first one is pause the commercial fishing of capelin fishery. Right? That's the first thing. So the first thing is pause the commercial fishing of capelin fishery. So that's the first thing to do. The population is going to be built when the protections are in place. Number two, reduce northern cod quota to support long term recovery. Number three, establish healthy thresholds and biomass targets aligned with the fisheries act. This fisheries act is a great act. It just got redone right before 2019. And it's about time and we strengthened it. But now we got to use it. We got to actually establish those healthy thresholds and align themselves with the fisheries act as well as biomass targets. Now biomass is the weight, of course, right?

5:32 Abundance is the weight. Abundance is the number of individuals and number four, set annual harvest rules for predictable rebuilding focused fishing. That's the key. Number five, add capelin to the stock provisions of the fisheries act. This is to make sure that they are measured and they are tracked all the way through so that we can see if their population goes up or down on an annual basis. And then number six, implement modern monitoring protocols per DFOs Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada fishery monitoring policy. So all these go into place to make sure that they are measured. And then number seven, make sure that these stocks are healthy. We've had Jessica Shins from Oceana Canada on before we talked about their annual report just last year that was done in 2024 and done every year. And it talks about how a lot of these fish don't have monitoring plans. A lot of these fish don't have these rebuilding protocols.

6:18 That's gut wrenching, especially with the fact that they're lowering in the number in population. And that's something that we can have. So here's a thing without these monitoring programs, without these provisions, they're not tracking it after this collapse. So you got to make sure to monitor the species so that we can find out as a recovery. Maybe this had to do with a lot of the recovery of cod and not doing so well in his recovery because you would think if you had a moratorium on fishing in 1992, you would expect that there'd be a huge recovery, but that's not so. So something else is going on there. Maybe it's the prey species. The population has gone up and down since then. And they don't have the proper benchmarks for it.

7:17 And also recent quotas, especially in 2024 when there was a 38.5% rise for cod fishing do not align with scientific and recovery needs. It's not lining up. This is the frustrating part. DFO says all their decisions are based on science. This is not true. This is not based on science because the science is saying different. And this is what happened in the 1992 moratorium, like the collapse of the codfish, the northern cod fishery. We keep seeing this. Last concern and challenges is fisheries management risk long term economic failure and ecological damage. So if you're not doing it properly, you're going to have a problem. Rebuilding these stocks, the capelin and the cod stocks is essential for ocean health, tourism and local communities.

7:58 People come for the northern cod. People come for the capelin. They're very, very important to the east coast. It's entrenched in their culture. It's entrenched in their history. It's something that we need to protect. Northern cod could recover in 11 years predicted to do that supporting 16 times more jobs and $233 million in economic activity. Think about that. Think about the benefits of doing that and recover population in 11 years. That's what's predicted. If you do it properly, please do it properly. And of course, failing to act now means losing a rare opportunity to restore vibrant fishery and sustainable economy. So that's a big problem. Now, if you probably want to like Andrew, like this is what the science says. What are the people say? Now, according to ocean and according to April 2023 survey, 84% of Newfoundland and Labrador residents support a capelin fishery pause. That was in April 2023 survey and 82% believe in the federal government should do more to manage forage fish like capelin and ocean and Canada scientists stress the critical ecological, cultural and economic roles of capelin along the east coast of Canada. Look, it's really simple folks.

9:03 We need to protect the species. We need to make sure that we're putting the place the management policies that have been put into place by the fisheries act. We just need to actually implement them. We have to use them. That's all we need to do. Just have to follow them. It's really not that difficult, but there's always pressure politically from the fishing industry from outside factors and outside companies. A big companies that are there for the greed. They're there for the money. They don't really care about the cod fishery. They don't really care about the capelin fishery. All they care is about their money. I'm not talking about artisanal fishers. These are the big, big unions, the big companies that just want to fish and they don't believe in the science and I'm not saying this is everybody, right? I don't want to generalize here, but this is the concern what happens and then the minister gives in. They don't follow the science. They have to balance it and I just don't agree with the way they're doing it. They can't just balance all the time. It doesn't work. It does not work and shows just the numbers that I've provided here today. So that's something of concern. I want to bring it to your attention. I've covered this piece.

10:03 It's not really the science of these 2 fish, the relationship between these 2 fish for a number of years now and I haven't seen anything getting better. In fact, I'm seeing it getting worse. And so that's a concern. We want to see what would happen if we open up the fishery. This is what's happening. We're seeing lowered stocks. 16% of pre collapse level for capelin. Not a very good sign. And of course, the population of Northern Cod stalling since 2017 growth. So not good. I'd love to hear your thought about this. If you're watching this on the YouTube channel, just hit me up in the comments. Let me know what you think. And of course, if you wanted to talk to me. Directly you can do so by going to speak up for blue.com hitting me up on the contact page below the form and you can contact me directly in my personal email or you can go to Instagram at how to protect the ocean. That's Instagram at how to protect the ocean. I want to thank you so much for joining me on today's episode of the how to protect the ocean podcast. I'm your host Andrew Lewin from the true North strong and free. Have a great day. We'll talk to you next time and happy conservation.