Audit shows just one in three Canadian fisheries is healthy

Canada must pick up the pace of protecting and rebuilding vulnerable fish populations, especially as the climate crisis continues superheating oceans, a new fisheries audit shows. 

Only 35 per cent of Canada’s 195 fish stocks are considered healthy, while 17 per cent are critically depleted and more than a third aren’t even assessed, according to the annual fishery audit by Oceana, an environmental group. 

Rebecca Schijns, fishery scientist at Oceana Canada, says Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) needs to redouble efforts to make good on its own policies and laws. Canada strengthened conservation measures under the Fisheries Act five years ago, but 88 per cent of the 33 fish stocks in the critical “red zone” still don’t have mandated recovery plans in place. 

“The pace of rolling these [plans] out is unacceptably slow and it's putting the future of numerous stocks in serious jeopardy,” Schijns said. 

“What we've seen over eight years [of audits] is a lot of stagnation, despite strong legislative and policy and science tools being at the ready,” Schijns said. 

DFO has made some progress to rebuild stocks but it’s not enough to meet the urgent threats to marine ecosystems, biodiversity and coastal communities dependent on fishing, she added.  

Two key blueprints to rebuild southern Newfoundland cod and Atlantic mackerel were recently released by DFO, and new plans for some groundfish and salmon populations are expected in the near future, Schijns said.

Additionally, DFO and the Haida Nation also collaborated to develop a strong rebuilding plan for herring stocks in northern B.C. waters, which is a good case study in the use of place-based Indigenous knowledge, she added.  

“On the other hand, we've seen a number of short-sighted decisions that have really risked the long-term health of stocks, such as the reopening of the northern cod fishery and the continued overfishing of its key prey, capelin,” Schijns said. 

DFO’s own modelling indicated increased fishing pressure will send both those stocks into the critical zone within a couple of years, she stressed.

If Canada accelerated efforts, it could have recovery plans in place for the most vulnerable stocks by 2025, including critical stocks like the Scotia-Fundy herring. However, at the current pace Schijns said it will take DFO 16 years to get the job done. 

Recovery plans also need to be climate-informed and assess how key species, such as herring or capelin, will weather increasingly hot, acidic and oxygen-deprived oceans as the climate crisis advances, the Oceana audit stressed. 

As a result, fish are shifting migration routes, the fishing industry faces reduced catches and 87 per cent of marine species worldwide are at risk from warming oceans, research indicates. 

Half of DFO’s fisheries management plans at least mention or recognize the effects of climate change, an increase of 11 per cent over last year, the audit noted — however, that still leaves half of Canada’s fisheries increasingly vulnerable to warming oceans.

Some fish stocks may benefit from climate change while others will struggle, Schijns noted. 

However, climate change and overfishing continue to put Indigenous and coastal communities’ food security and economic wellbeing at risk, the audit said. 

“Increased pressures at this moment can make a drastic difference on the trajectory of a [fishery] stock,” Schijns said. 

DFO wasn’t able to provide comment by the publication deadline.

Rochelle Baker / Local Journalism Initiative / Canada's National Observer