Fisheries committee  That's exactly as mentioned earlier. The best time to combat an invasive species is when you first detect it, so you have to have a rapid response. Without that, the game is lost.

Fisheries committee  Many illegal introductions are not done intentionally. We just heard from Mr. Arnold that a family may take some perch home or whatever and release them, and then all of a sudden we have a problem. There are, however, people who are doing it deliberately and doing it with impunity.

Fisheries committee  Yes.

Fisheries committee  I don't have to speculate because there are lots of examples of where smallmouth bass move into salmon rivers. Once they're there, they never leave. They do impact. As they get bigger, they will predate on young salmon, but they will also take the habitat that young salmon require to grow.

Fisheries committee  The chain pickerel, yes.

Fisheries committee  About the other species in the lake, before an application of rotenone is implemented, you capture all the native species and hold native species off site while the application is administered, which takes a day. It will be effective for about a week or so afterwards. After that, the level drops and those species can be put back in.

Fisheries committee  Thanks for inviting me here again. I'd like to talk about a specific example of invasive species, small mouth bass in Miramichi Lake in the province of New Brunswick. We've been working on this file for 10 years. I should say, first of all, that the Miramichi historically has the highest run of Atlantic salmon in North America.

Fisheries committee  I worked with Fisheries and Oceans for 18 years. While I was in Prince Edward Island, I used to meet with every local community fish and game club about once a week for at least a phone call. Today, now, I sit on the other side of the table. We have a recreational fisheries coordinator in the gulf region of Moncton, and maybe once every few months we might get a phone call.

Fisheries committee  We recognize that we get some warm summers, and it's been well demonstrated that water temperatures get to lethal temperatures for salmon. During that period of time, salmon have to find cold water sources or they'll die. They move to the springs and the colder brooks that are coming in to the Miramichi.

Fisheries committee  When the population was lower, all of the striped bass spawned on the northwest Miramichi, or that was what the evidence was. However, historically, they had spawned in other rivers and there was evidence that they did. Last year, between our watershed committee and the MSA, we did a survey and found successful spawning on the southwest Miramichi.

Fisheries committee  You need to track whether there are larvae and young there, so we're doing it again this summer and expanding. Now I find out DFO's doing it. So I don't know exactly who's going to be doing what. But anyway, we need to find out if they're spawning in other places, because under the the COSEWIC, one spawning location still keeps a species a special concern.

Fisheries committee  DFO commissioned a report and if the smallmouth bass establish themselves in the southwest Miramichi, we're going to see a dramatic reduction in parr production because they both like the same habitats and they will be a ferocious predator of the Atlantic salmon. Will they get up into some of these very cold water tributaries?

Fisheries committee  That's right, with the salmon in-between.

Fisheries committee  Back when the numbers were very low, we fully supported all of the measures that were being contemplated at the time. We had to get this population rebuilt. There were a lot of unknowns at the time. Stopping the commercial fishery—would that do it? It really did, but we brought it back without closing angling for any species in that spawning area.

Fisheries committee  Thank you very much for allowing us to make a presentation here today. I'm not going to take very long because I agree with every word that Bill Taylor and Chief Ginnish said. We absolutely concur with the recommendations that Mr. Taylor suggested. The Miramichi Salmon Association is a river organization.