If you are a regular viewer of CBC television, or Mother Corp. as many of its employees call it, you are probably familiar with the popular, long-running show called Dragon’s Den.
For the uninitiated, the premise of the show is pretty simple: budding entrepreneurs pitch a potential money-making idea to a group of wealthy venture capitalists and hope to convince some of them to invest in their scheme.
In many cases, the show’s participants will present a problem or scenario that needs fixing, accompanied by conventional solutions that simply do not work. Once the presenters outline the problem, the four venture capitalists in the room, or Dragons as they are known, will usually exclaim, when faced with the perplexing scenario, “there must be a better way.” At this stage, the entrepreneur will outline their proposed solution to the problem — hoping for acceptance and eventually cash.
Let’s take a look at the Newfoundland and Labrador commercial cod fishery through the Dragon’s Den lens.
The majority of stakeholders and industry insiders are in agreement that groundfish stocks off Newfoundland, for the most part, are heading in the right direction — hopefully in a direction that will see a return to a controlled, yet viable, commercial fishery.
According to scientific stock assessments, conducted over the last few years by both federal and provincial government scientists, the cod numbers have improved and continue to move upward. But as any scientist will tell you, despite all th e claims the cod are back, more positive data will be needed before the green light is given to increase groundfish quotas. And there is nothing wrong with this cautious, conservative approach.
As the industry inches ever-closer to a return to a full-fledged commercial cod fishery, it is more important than ever for science to have the most accurate stock assessment data available — God knows lessons should have been learned from the past.
However, there is one elephant in the room when it comes to stock assessments, the annual recreational groundfish fishery.
While fisheries scientists in the country have a growing collection of cod stock data taken from controlled surveys and the logbooks of commercial fishermen, there is blank space on the page when it comes to the amount of fish taken each year by budding wannabe fishermen and weekend warriors.
In a nutshell, science currently has no way of accurately tracking or predicting how much fish is coming out of the water during the four weeks or so of this annual freezer-stogging event.
Just think of the response one would get on Dragon’s Den if you pitched a business plan based on an availability of a product with such a huge inventory gap — you would be immediately and possibly rudely, shown the door. No business would ever fly with such a data gap, but yet attempts are being made to plan a long-term, province-wide cod fishery without this key information.
It would be daunting enough to try and calculate the thousands of pounds of fish coming over the gunwales if every Tom, Dick and Harry abided by the rules of 15 fish per boat, per day. But as everyone knows, the so-called recreational fishermen that quickly hook their 15 fish, toss them up on the wharf and turn and burn for another trip that day, are far from being in the minority.
As DFO wrestles to calculate how much of an impact the food fishery has each year, pressure is mounting from the weekend warriors, retirees and tour boat operators to increase the duration of the season, ultimately seeing more unaccounted for fish coming out of the water.
These groups argue that by extending the season, the fishery will be safer for those participating in 12-foot aluminum boats and help grow the tourism industry.
Some lobbying on behalf of tour boat operators are proposing such ideas as starting the recreational fishery around the first of June and having it run until the end of September or early October, with a retention limit of two fish per tourist, per trip.
Proponents of an expanded tourist fishery have even gone as far as comparing the situation in Newfoundland and Labrador with that of the United States, citing statistics from the American Sportsfishing Association.
They have argued that in 2011, the economic impact of the U.S. recreational fishery was $70 billion. In comparison the seafood sector had an economic impact of $129 billion, but noting that the sports fishery only killed five per cent of the fish and produced 35 per cent of the economic impact.
Unless something has changed, the role of DFO, according to its mandate, is to “protect and conserve resources in support of a stable and sustainable fishing industry.” There is no mention of using valuable groundfish stocks to put smiles on the faces of mainland tourists.
DFO needs to ignore these outside distractions and concentrate on gathering and interpreting the most accurate scientific groundfish data possible — including formulating a better way to track cod taken during recreational fishery.
This assessment gap has to be addressed before any reasonable commercial fishery can be entertained. Every commercial fisherman will tell you that as many impacts to cod stocks need to be brought to light before quotas can or should be increased. The glaring question mark of how many tonnes of fish end up in basement freezers each year should never be a deterrent to a return to commercial fishing. A solution has to be found for counting recreational cod — there must be a better way.
