Fisheries committee  Offhand, on the relationship of pinnipeds and mackerel, I'll first say that I don't have clear science on that—mackerel swim relatively fast—but I do know that there are more grey seals in the gulf. There's a massive population of seals off the northeast coast of Newfoundland and Labrador, and obviously they are feeding very heavily.

Fisheries committee  I absolutely recognize that, and I think everyone should probably review Dr. Carruthers' article that's available online on our union forum in more detail so we can send more information. The idea is to expand the surveys and the science we're doing. I believe that we can look at the biomass with acoustic surveys, but we're certainly willing to sit down with harvesters and explore how we measure this stock accurately, because it has become clearer this year that there is a major disconnect.

Fisheries committee  Well, I'm not sure. We've offered a lot of suggestions, and so far I don't think we've been listened to very much. I think it is probably important to work with harvesters in the regions to get more information on what the makeup of the mackerel stock has been. DFO put out a call to get samples this year, and I think they were probably surprised by just how many samples they did get—they were very easy to catch, obviously—and they just ran out of freezer space to collect those samples.

Fisheries committee  Oh, absolutely they are, and that's how they catch them. They're not going out on the water and setting nets based on random thoughts. They can actually judge on biomass, and part of the work that fishermen have done, that FFAW has done this year, is to do that and demonstrate that.

Fisheries committee  I would not be surprised. I mean, the combination of things.... I think the observations show that there is a significant amount of mackerel. I don't know if they'll see it in the U.S. or it's more north, but I wouldn't be surprised if they took advantage of the lack of harvest here.

Fisheries committee  There are two real concerns and irritants. It is a transboundary stock. They are catching the same stock of mackerel in the U.S. and in Canada. Canada has traditionally harvested and depended upon this stock much more, I'd say. More of the stock resides in the area, but now, because of Canadian management, harvesters in the U.S. are building up a history of catching more, I think, just from a long-term perspective.

Fisheries committee  People are, for all kinds of reasons, interested in looking at different bait options, but I don't think they are widely used. I think people generally like traditional baits that they can trust and source themselves, but I think there are opportunities for having less impact on some of our fish stocks, so I think it's good to explore.

Fisheries committee  Yes, it's absolutely a concern, and we've seen in the past when they went out to do that survey. As we all know, the date on the calendar doesn't tell mackerel when to spawn; it's the environmental conditions, and those can change. I understand that it's difficult to manage, but there have been concerns expressed that they're not surveying when the mackerel are most likely to be spawning, and that's been highlighted.

Fisheries committee  Dr. Erin Carruthers is the scientist with the FFAW who works very closely with harvesters. I think the quote was very accurate. I don't know if I could have found a better way to say it myself, so I think that's very clear and well put. I think that the science is incomplete, not necessarily wrong.

Fisheries committee  Was that question put out to others?

Fisheries committee  It's for me. Okay. Thank you. We see that quite a bit. People have to be able to plan for their seasons and invest and have some level of certainty. It's far too often. We've talked about it with a lot of our fisheries. For instance, for crab, it was right on the eve. That's a big fishery for a lot of people.

Fisheries committee  Well, it's hard to be black and white about it, but it's been frustrating, and it's not just this year. As I said, we've been a decade pointing out the big disconnect, that things are not matching up with the observations, but so far there has not been a lot done. There was one study done far north off White Bay and Green Bay, but the water was probably too cold, and I think Dr.

Fisheries committee  Obviously that is hundreds of miles away. It's quite the distance from where you'd expect them to be spawning. The thing about it is we're seeing more of them. This was an example of a bycatch in a fishery where you wouldn't see mackerel, where you're hauling nets for larger groundfish species.

Fisheries committee  The number of mackerel observations that have been confirmed has been really overwhelming. You know, people have been fishing for 40 or 50 years and have never seen anything like it. I'll kind of preface this with people who are not mackerel harvesters themselves, so it's not self-fulfilling or self-promoting; it's just that we've never seen mackerel before like this.

Fisheries committee  Well, you know, I don't claim to be a mackerel scientist or involved in that too much, but the point is that that mackerel wouldn't have been born in the gulf, for example. It's coming from the northeast coast. It wouldn't swim very far, a mackerel of that size. We're seeing more and more of that, massive amounts of what you call “pencil mackerel”, which were born somewhere in Newfoundland waters off the east coast somewhere and not in the southern gulf.