Canada’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) comes in for a boatload of criticism. Its job is to conduct science to predict the potential impacts of possible management strategies in Canadian waters, and then, in collaboration with stakeholders determine which strategies should be implemented. All this conducted against the backdrop of Canada’s historic natural abundance and centuries-old headlong rush to exploit that natural for maximum financial gain.
The merits of how a succession of Canadian governments have gone about managing British Columbia’s (BC) waters over the years can be argued. Quickest to say that the approach has been in line with that taken regarding pretty-much all of the country’s natural resource treasures: Large portions of access have ended-up with a few industrial-scale players while the number of smaller independent operators that need to be dealt with have been all but eradicated. The focus– “how much can we extract and get away with it?”
For some who work within the system, there has long been recognition that things must change, and some are working on making change happen.
My conversation with Jaclyn Cleary, began with forage fish in BC but quickly coalesced into a radical and clear vision for a new way in which public will can be translated into effective policy. A principle that can be applied to your backyard or anywhere in the world.
One Species, All Species
Jaclyn, a stock assessment biologist with the Quantitative Assessment Methods section at the DFO’s Pacific Biological Station and Program Head for Herring Stock Assessment,is a scientist who likes a clear run at a complex problem.
Most of us have seen a food-web diagram– a chart that illustrates all of the major species in an ecosystem and details who eats whom. You might not be able to recall the detail of one having seen it, but you’ll recall the underlying principle – ecosystems are living networks with each organism and environmental feature playing its role. Some elements in the web are bit players, others take centre stage, all are vital.
The food web of West Coast Canada is no less complex than any other, with multiple pressure points and its share of charismatic species.
Orca, arguably the most apex of the apex predators in these waters are among that list. Pinnipeds–seals and sea lions–divide opinion. Salmon in all their variety have a special place in the hearts of coastal British Columbians, in part due to their heroic journey from river to ocean and back again, linking sea to river and forest in a way that symbolizes BC for many. When bears scoop salmon from BC’s rivers, they leave the remains on the forest floor, bringing nutrients to the terrestrial ecosystem.
Salmon populations have suffered massive fluctuations including a steady decline in the early 2000s and a near collapse in 2016–a disaster in its own right; The fight against open-pen pacific salmon aquaculture in the area; and the fact that salmon–particularly chinook, are the main source of food for the Southern Residents–a critically endangered group of orca that circulate in the ocean around South Vancouver Island and Northern Washington State.
These are all good reasons why much is being done, and much more should be done to understand and support salmon stocks.
But when you look at BC’s food web, and most others around the world, you’ll find that it’s not the larger fish-eating-fish such as salmon, but the smaller fish on the next trophic level down–herring, anchovy, smelt, etc.–the so-called forage fish that populate the centre of things.
Forage fish impact on a great many other creatures, plants, management issues and policy questions. It was this relative complexity, and the fact that herring is a relatively under-served research space in BC, that convinced Jaclyn to make them the focus of her work.
Most of us have seen a food-web diagram- a chart that illustrates all of the major species in an ecosystem and details who eats whom. You might not be able to recall the detail of one having seen it, but you’ll recall the underlying principle – ecosystems are living networks with each organism and environmental feature playing its role. Some elements in the web are bit players, others take centre stage, all are vital.
In Jaclyn’s words, “Herring is really neat because it has all the great science problems… there are big uncertainties with stock structure, big uncertainties with how recruitment drives population… [and] it involves First Nations and Commercial fishermen… so it’s a great program to use the skills that I went to school for.”
“[It has] all the policy and fisheries management complexities.”
Complexity from a human and non-human perspective.
Herring are important to the larger fish upon which some killer whales depend, and are a staple for the humpbacks that migrate up and down the coast to Mexico or between Alaska and Northern BC to Hawaii.Dolphins, porpoises and seabirdsdepend on herring. Grey whales don’t eat herring but they do eat the eggs, lying on their sides to scrape them from the ocean floor in the relatively shallow areas where they are found.
“[The herring are]the first species to move in in the calendar year and spawn… in March and April… it [the spawning] draws in so-much wildlife. If you don’t live close to a coastal community, you don’t appreciate how much energy [literally calories] herring bring into the area.”
Many animals deserve the moniker of keystone species, so many perhaps that use of the term becomes misleading. If any of the world’s ocean species deserve the title, it is Pacific herring.
Humans have found plenty of ways to integrate herring into their harvesting activities. Herring Roe is a prized export product in BC and traditional roe-on kelp harvesting (a specialty of local indigenous peoples,) providesa way of exploiting the herring population that impacts on stock growth without doubt but, depending on how it is done, can avoid harming the adult fish, allowing them to swim away to spawn again. Herring have also been exploited throughout history for a wide variety of other fish-based products.
Herring on the West Coast of Vancouver Island and in Haida Gwaii first collapsed in the early sixties, returned to the same low levels in the early to mid 2000s, and are taking a long time to recover despite fisheries closures in those areas.
Some connect this decline to the current plight of salmon in the area, including the chinook upon which the now critically endangered–that is to say, all but extirpated–Southern Residents depend.
All the experts we have spoken with on the subject are quick to point out that many things including the health and distribution of all of the species that chinook eat, as well as a multitude of other factors including pollution and ship noise have and are contributing to the plight of the whales.
All species and ecological factors are important. The reason why apex predators are such good indicators of the health of an ecosystem is because they are impacted someway, somehow by all of the other elements of the system.
You can’t save the whales by saving the herring alone, but it is fair to say that they are one species that has an impact.
A High Stakes Bet
At its most simplistic, fisheries policy comes down to three parameters: Where to fish, when to fish and how much to catch.
Jaclyn and her colleagues provide the DFO’s management wing with enough stock assessment data to form a picture of what the likely impact of a variety of management approaches would be, and then decisions are made on which areas may be fished, between what dates and how much fish may be brought ashore.
Stakeholders have a number of concerns: Commercial fishermen and processors want to secure returns on investments they have made in quota and equipment; First Nations focus on regaining access to what is rightfully theirs under the UN Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples; Recreational fishermen and those who work in the recreational fishing industry (a CA$420m business in BC) want access to enough fish to maintain what they see as their social and economic right; And conservationists aim for the restoration of populations of living species in the ocean.
In reality, distinctions between these groups are blurry in the extreme. Start a conversation with any person who lives on the BC coast at random and you could well find that they are all of the above.
Fisheries policy is born out of a desire to satisfy all parts of this Venn diagram. Policy, it must be said, that people often end-up hating. Unsurprising considering the goal to portion-out a limited resource that many people feel that they should have access to, and some feel should just be left alone.
There is a high percentage likelihood that no faction walks away completely happy. And as always, the most important faction of all can’t speak for itself, for as Professor Daniel Pauly pointed out for us “The fish don’t speak.”
Jaclyn and her colleagues provide the DFO’s management wing with enough stock assessment data to form a picture of what the likely impact of a variety of management approaches would be, and then decisions are made on which areas may be fished, between what dates and how much fish may be brought ashore.
The person who gets closest to speaking for the fish is Jaclyn or someone like her. But she is quick to stress that her main focus is the will of the people.
“You can have objectives [for example], forage fish objectives… about biomass that’s available to support the ecosystem”
“I see my role as articulating the trade-offs between different harvest strategies given these different objectives.”
At this point we need to pursue the story in more than one direction…
Improving the Science
Stock assessment modelling is pretty good these days. Supply sufficient quantities of the right data and a number of modelling tools can be used together to deliver results that can be considered reliable. It’s never a precise number–you get to see a range of potential outcomes that may occur within an estimated level of probability, but it’s fine for an effective decision-making process.
Look a bit closer though, and inadequacies are revealed.
The matterof what constitutes ‘sufficient quantities of the right data’ is more intricate than you might think. It depends very much on how complex you need your model to be, what factors you think are important, and whatquestion you are hoping to provide an answer to.
In the case of Pacific herringin BC, scientists find how much spawning is taking place via direct observation from light aircraft, from boats and using dive surveys, sometimes in person and sometimes relying on reports from locals and/or contractors. They then combine these data with reports of how many fish have been caught from the current population and extrapolate future population biomass estimates from that, acknowledging uncertainty in variables such as stock productivity and natural mortality.
Supply sufficient quantities of the right data and a number of modelling tools can be used together to deliver results that can be considered reliable. It’s never a precise number–you get to see a range of potential outcomes that may occur within an estimated level of probability, but it’s fine for an effective decision-making process.
The inclusion of the potential effects of climate change is an area of stock assessment that is still in it’s infancy.
Biomass predictions for a given area using this method work pretty well. Test the models by comparing outputs derived from historical data against what was known to have actually occurred–a technique called hind casting–and they prove reliable. Run models for the whole of the BC coast and you’ll find that total herring biomass has rebounded and is actually looking extremely healthy.
But It’s not the entire picture.
Work with local indigenous communities as Jaclyn has, the Nuchatlaht, Heiltsuk and Haida in her case, and a new picture appears, a picture taken not through just one lens, but many more tightly focused ones. Do this and you’ll learn how big the variances are in stock performance in different, distinct local areas.
The differences can be great. Some local stocks are performing very well, some are performing very poorly.
As a result, Jaclyn and her collaborators have concluded that harvest control rules specific to each stock area need to be crafted to support stock rebuilding.
As she puts it, “Being able to understand the spatial complexities more means that when we communicate the advice to Fisheries Management it’s not just an overall aggregate estimate. It’s like… here’s the aggregate estimate, and here’s where it’s at proportionately and here’s where it’s changed.”
For instance, while herring biomass in the Strait of Georgiais near historic highs, spawning activity there has changed shape dramatically and has become concentrated into the area north of Nanaimo and south of Comox for reasons that are not clear.
In Jaclyn’s words “We can look at the data and see that spawning has moved northward in the Strait of Georgia. And we don’t know why… From an ecosystem perspective that is concerning”
Work with First Nations in the Southern Strait of Georgia had only just begun at the time of our interview but is ramping-up.
The phrase ’sufficient quantities of the right data’ also begs the question of which data is currently not included. Ask and you’ll find that some important information is currently missing.
Factors impacting natural mortality–how many herring get eaten by predators or die for other reasons–are rough estimates only. Why don’t we have more accuracy in this area? Money.
“We struggle with funding the [core] herring survey program… and we don’t get additional resources.”
“How is natural mortality changing? What is changing in the environment that impacts natural mortality?”
It’s mystifying that a country as historically resource rich as Canada consistently fails to do what is necessary to properly understand what’s going on in its waters. Maybe that’s just it – abundance fuels complacency.
The good news is that our ability to model the environment continues to develop quickly.
Jaclyn is working with feedback simulation models to be able to measure the response of fish stocks to management decisions. The goal being to find the most robust strategies in terms of all kinds of impact.
Work is also being done in places such as UBC’s Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries to create predictive models for entire ecosystems, although itis unclear at this point how these kinds of large models work at the kind of smaller stock area scales that Jaclyn is focused on.
Biomass predictions for a given area using this method work pretty well. Test the models by comparing outputs derived from historical data against what was known to have actually occurred–a technique called hind casting–and they prove reliable.
The point is that when it comes tounderstanding the likely ramifications of a particular management decision, if you can frame the question in a clear way, and ifyou can afford to collect the data, goodmodelling tools do exist and are improving all the time.
The most important, the most influential data point of all remains unknown however. It is this:
What is it that the people want?
Beyond Consultation
The way that the DFO does it’s work has evolved in recent times, with respect to how it interacts with stakeholders, and even more particularly First Nations communities.
This work has been a big part of Jaclyn’s mandate and is a challenge she embraces.
“That’s what I get excited about… [the consultative process]. That’s my thing.”
“I work well with people, I understand numbers and I have some good modellers in my collaborative world.”
As a result of working with local First Nations on data reconnaissance, a communication cadence between DFO and these communities that used to be measured in years or months is now measured in weeks or days. Human stakeholders outside the DFO are involved on an almost continual basis at this point. This helps establish a level of trust that has genuine practical benefit for all and fosters a deeper ongoing dialog concerning objectives.
And clearer objectives allow Jaclyn to provide more focused recommendations to her colleagues in Fisheries Management.
“My role is to do the best that I can to hear what people are saying and translate that into measurable objectives that can then be evaluated and provide advice on the trade-offs.”
All of this crystallizes into something called a Management Strategy Evaluation (MSE) process.
This is a big leap forward born of the herring stock failure of the mid 2000s and the massive historic injustice perpetrated against Canada’s First Nations. It has delivered multiple benefits including better data, more detailed insight and a more informed process.
But this big leap in relative terms is just a first step towards where we need to be. The next level of change comes from how we ensure that science informs policy so that the context for stakeholder discussions is less vague, more targeted. Quantitative. We can forecast all we want–It doesn’t help if there are no hard targets coming from government.
As Jaclyn puts it–“[Forecasting] is never going to become an easier task, and I think it’s the wrong question, I think that decisions about how fisheries should be managed, need to be based on what people want.”
“So, what are the objectives for this fishery? If conservation is first priority, what is the conservation objective?”
It’s important to be clear on this point. Jaclyn means that she and her colleagues need to know precisely, literally what the targets are. Precisely, quantitatively. In tonnes per hectare.
How abundant do we want the ocean to be? How many tonnes of herring do we want the ocean to contain?
Transparent Biomass Targets
The way Jaclyn describes it, the current policy making process is akin to pulling rabbits (or perhaps herring) out of a hat.
“[We produce studies that show], here’s what a 20% harvest rate would be, here’s what a 30% harvest rate would be, but those quota levels aren’t tied to anything… you have to ask a different question.”
“What do you want?…
“Do you want a certain biomasson average?” and “Over what duration?”
Literally how much? And by when?
“That’s what’s possible.”
Stock assessment and adaptive management have come a long way. At this point, the science and the management tools have developed to a stage where they are ready for detailed public policy input that goes beyond vague priorities to specify hard targets for biomass levels.
It’s as radical as it is straightforward.
Think about it. Specific, transparent biomass targets as a matter of public debate. Biomass targets featured in election manifestos.
Not just for herring, but for every speciesin the ocean. Perhaps even beyond that.
We have heard time and again how solutions exist if only they can be implemented, and we have heard from some who are well positioned to know that the real chasm that must be bridged is that between the facts at sea level and effective action.
Stock assessment and adaptive management have come a long way. At this point, the science and the management tools have developed to a stage where they are ready for detailed public policy input that goes beyond vague priorities to specify hard targets for biomass levels.
What Jaclyn has shown us is the form in which those facts can be expressed in public policy such that they reflect the will of the people and result in genuinely effective conservation management strategies. Quantitative policy targets get us better management outcomes.
This is great news. It should be welcomed by all who want a future that includes a world we can live in.
The Question Must be Asked
In a democracy when everything works as it should, public policy is nothing more than the will of the people, expressed through the instruments of government.
Who “the people” are when it comes to deciding how resources should be managed is always a contentious question. You might feel that you have a right to a say about what goes on in a national park of the country you are a citizen of, but if a government official showed up on your doorstep to tell you that you can’t grow carrots in your garden this year you might have a few choice words for them. Even worse if that official is from a government you don’t recognize as being yours.
This dichotomy tends to be even more pronounced when it comes to the sea.
I worry about the plight of ocean’s all over the world, and their health will surely have some kind of impact on me and those close to me in one way or another regardless of where they live, but does that mean I get a say in what goes on there?
For many, the right to an opinion is very closely allied to the concept of ownership, as are concepts like rights of access and traditional use. There are some who say that only those who actively use the resource understand it well enough to shape its governance. Others say that the health of the ocean in the South Pacific is just as much a concern for someone living in Barcelona as someone who lives in Papeete or Nuku’alofa.
So now these questions must be asked:
How do we determine who gets a say when it comes to what happens in our oceans? How do we determine what outcomes they want in quantitative terms? And how do we get the right information into the public domain so that questions regarding quantitative environmental targets–transparent biomass targets–are something that they can respond to in a meaningful way?
