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Downloaded copy of Ottawa Citizen article, Saturday 18 April 1998 FRONT PAGE A1, A4.
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Ottawa Citizen, Saturday 18 April 1998 FRONT PAGE A1, A4.

"Put cod on endangered list"

Scientist says once-abundant fish faces extinction, and DFO won't admit it.

Pauline Comeau reports.

Pauline Comeau
The Ottawa Citizen
Picture of Cod fish.

Atlantic cod stocks, far from rebounding significantly since the 1992 fishing moratorium, are so weak that they should be added to Canada's endangered species list, a respected biologist says.

Either all cod populations must be declared at risk, or the majority of subpopulations must be, fish ecologist Kim Bell says in a 104-page report for the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife, the body of government representatives and environmental groups that develops Canada's list of species at risk.

Rob Cross, The Ottawa Citizen / Map of Cod stock according to Mr.Bell

This finding suggests federal policies aimed at restoring the cod stocks -- once one of the largest sources of food supply on the planet and considered immune to human plundering -- are working slowly if at all.

After four years of study, Mr. Bell, formerly of Memorial University in Newfoundland and now on fellowship in South Africa, has found:

- If East Coast cod management areas are considered individually, some stocks are approaching vulnerability -- but most are clearly endangered;

- If cod is considered as a single population, the overall designation must be "endangered";

- Many cod populations are continuing to decline in spite of the moratorium on fishing;

- The decline of the cod stock was principally caused by overfishing;

- Evidence does not support arguments the Department of Fisheries and Oceans has made in an effort to mitigate charges of poor management, pointing to environmental issues such as unusually low ocean temperatures and predation by seals;

- Cod stocks are not behaving in accord with any model used by Fisheries.

The department's director general of fisheries and ocean science, William Doubleday, dismisses Mr. Bell's report as "not scientifically credible." Mr. Doubleday adds: "To declare a species endangered when there are hundreds of millions of them is ludicrous."

To this argument, Mr. Bell replies: "Why should the last 30 per cent of the fish be less likely to disappear than the first 70 per cent that have disappeared?"

Stock assessment reports released over the last month indicate that the numbers of offshore northern cod stand at just one to two per cent of the levels measured in the 1980s and are declining.

To say that Mr. Bell's recommendations are unpopular with the federal government would be an understatement. From the first draft submitted to the wildlife committee for comment almost three years ago, to the final report submitted last winter, Fisheries officials have declared Mr. Bell's conclusions "ludicrous," mocked his credentials, and challenged his interpretation of the facts as well as his scientific methodology.

Says Mr. Bell of the experience: "It was like draining a swamp while being up to your ass in alligators."

And last week, in the latest twist in the saga, Mr. Bell fired off a scathing note to the members of the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife chastising the organization for editing his report without notifying him. Mr. Bell, who says he has come to expect almost anything from Fisheries bureaucrats, was taken aback by a a wildlife committee letter informing him that "politically sensitive comments" had been excised from his final report before being mailed to members for consideration. Mr. Bell was so incensed by the changes that he has now released his version of the document to COSEWIC members.

COSEWIC's fish and marine mammals subcommittee chair, Bob Campbell, a former DFO employee, was responsible for editing the report. He wrote to Mr. Bell after the revision, assuring him that "The changes have not been substantial and do not alter the content of the report."

Nonsense, says Mr. Bell. On top of the removal of a 17-page section outlining DFO's false arguments, political interference and delaying tactics, more than 6,000 words were cut and the meaning of several statements completely altered or significantly weakened. For example, a comment by Mr. Bell that there were "few indications of improvement" in one area was changed to read there "are indications of improvement." Or, where Mr. Bell concluded that "there is virtually no doubt that overfishing IS the sufficient and major cause of these declines" was changed to: "overfishing APPEARS to be a sufficient and major cause..."

And it was only after Mr. Bell complained, that Mr. Campbell informed wildlife committee members that the section existed and would be available, on a confidential basis, to members who asked for it. However, no mention was made of the other edits.

Overall, says Mr. Bell, the report now leaves a more optimistic impression of what his research showed about the state of cod stocks. He says he finds it "difficult to rule out DFO influence in these edits."

"This will make it easier for the committee to be swayed by unsound arguments," says a frustrated Mr. Bell.

Committee chair Erich Haber--a taxonomist who described Mr. Bell's report last year as one of the best he had ever seen--insists the edits were made simply to ensure the report conformed to COSEWIC style. Rebuttals of criticisms are not allowed, says Mr. Haber. Reports are to focus on science and not politics.

But the "politically sensitive" comments, says Mr. Bell, were responses to written critiques of Mr. Bell's work submitted by DFO during the past three years. If the comments are political, then DFO is responsible, says Mr. Bell. "The very idea of the suppression of statements based on the notion of 'politically sensitive' is anathema to the principles of full discussion of a scientific issue," says Mr. Bell in his letter.

DFO attacks are especially ironic considering that the original assignment was offered to Mr. Bell based on a recommendation from DFO. Mr. Bell was first approached in early 1995 to do the report by his Ph.D. supervisor at Memorial University who had been asked for a recommendation by a COSEWIC member. "My reaction was, 'Why would they pick me? I work with tropical gobies.' " Mr. Bell suggested a couple of other scientists who had already done some cod work. He was then informed "they wanted someone not currently publishing on cod."

Gary Blundell, then of the World Wildlife Fund, says he and others were behind the move to encourage COSEWIC to take a look at commercially viable fish species. Cod seemed a natural and Mr. Blundell convinced WWF to fund the work. It was understood that to avoid trouble, says Mr. Blundell, DFO would have to approve of the author. DFO was asked for a recommendation and Mr. Bell's name was offered.

When Mr. Bell began his study, the East Coast fishery had been shut down for about a year in what the federal government was predicting would be a two-year closure. "Although some people were aware that the recovery was not coming along terribly fast, most of us naturally figured that the facts and projections were probably true," says Bell, who has spent most of his 45 years in Newfoundland.

No one warned him to expect trouble. "One or two colleagues might have suggested cod was political, and while I knew this, I didn't know HOW political it was." One colleague at DFO, however, told Mr. Bell not to put too much work into the report, because it was not worth it. "I wasn't sure what he meant. At the time I thought DFO was a great organization," he says.

"I thought it would be a case of figuring out the basics, filling in the blanks on the guide that COSEWIC provides, and giving a bland report that would give no recommendation for a risk listing."

The first hint that something was amiss came when he began examining federal government "stock reports" which serve as the basis for making cod management decisions. "I found lots of blank entries in tables that were part of the format for the stock reports," says Mr. Bell. "I became aware of how much information was not known."

After studying all the data he could get his hands on, including DFO's own stock surveys and other DFO documents, as well as independent studies, the evidence of poor reproduction and survival rates, the continuing decline in spite of the moratorium on fishing, and the history of cod management, he changed his mind about cod and DFO.

"I realized that DFO's supervision was not a guarantee of staying on the best path toward a recovery of these fish stocks, or avoiding extinction," says Mr. Bell.

If he had any lingering doubts that there were serious problems with DFO's spin on the cod information, they were erased by the critiques.

First came Mr. Doubleday's declaration that no species of which hundreds of millions of members are alive could be considered endangered -- irrespective of how large a proportion of the stock had disappeared. Mr. Doubleday's remark that Mr. Bell was "new to the field" was another parting shot.

On top of that, argued DFO, COSEWIC had no mandate to study a commercial species and Mr. Bell had used international criteria to reach his conclusions, which DFO said could not be applied to cod.

 

DFO repeatedly downplayed overfishing and any notion of poor management as the primary causes for cod's decline. Cited instead, despite Mr. Bell's painstaking outline of the lack of evidence to support such claims, were environmental factors such as colder than average waters and changes to habitat, the under-reported dumping of undersized cod, and seals eating cod.

And now, despite a year in which DFO has faced unprecedented criticism for their cod management practices--including a Commons report last month that blamed the federal government for the collapsed fishery--DFO officials have in recent interviews indicated they will level the same arguments against the Bell report this year. "No stocks are at risk of extinction in the near, middle or long term," states the latest DFO response. "Not at risk is the only possible conclusion for Atlantic cod at this time."

DFO's arguments, says Mr. Bell, are filled with unsubstantiated claims, misleading arguments, and about-faces. Cases in point, he says, include the lack of evidence to support climate as a factor in the decline of cod, vague claims of improvement is some cod stocks that disappeared under closer scrutiny, and the debate about whether or not COSEWIC should consider cod a single species or several distinct populations.

 

   In response to an early draft, Mr. Doubleday chastised Mr. Bell for recommending that cod be given a single designation. "A serious flaw in the work is that it treats Cod in Atlantic Canada as one unit," wrote Mr. Doubleday. "The accumulated body of evidence, which indicates limited movement between various cod stocks in Atlantic Canada, is cavalierly ignored."

In subsequent drafts, Mr. Bell outlined the still growing body of evidence--including the conclusion of a 1997 DFO-sponsored workshop and other published reports--that cod are not a single species, but a collection of unique populations that can, and do, become extinct.

"There are local populations of cod that are extinct in Maine," says Ransom Myers, who holds the Killam Chair of Ocean Studies at Dalhousie University in Halifax. "This is well documented. And there are local populations in Nova Scotia that may have gone extinct. We just don't have the documentation yet."

 
Mr. Kim Bell says defensive Fisheries officials attacked both his report and his credentials like a pack of 'alligators'.

In his subsequent drafts, Mr. Bell made recommendations based on management areas in order to respond to the separate stock information. But at the COSEWIC meeting last year, Jake Rice of DFO suddenly argued against the multiple designation, leaving Mr. Bell bewildered. Mr. Bell and other observers assumed later that DFO was growing worried that COSEWIC scientists would be comfortable labelling some cod stocks endangered.

Bell's final un-edited report offers COSEWIC two possible avenues: list cod as endangered if a single designation is chosen in order to protect the most troubled stocks, or give ten separate designations based on the 10 management areas. He also offers this warning in his 104-page report: "Cod stocks are not behaving in accord with any model used by DFO."

While COSEWIC's listing carries no legal weight, species that have been labelled vulnerable, threatened or endangered are afforded a profile that often leads to public policy. While COSEWIC members include provincial and territorial appointees, federal representatives and members of WWF, the Canadian Nature Federation and the Canadian Wildlife Fund, all are expected to shed their affiliations when they gather, says Mr. Haber. Throughout the 20-year history of the body, decisions have, by and large, been made by consensus following extensive discussion and debate behind closed doors. Reports, edited according to the discussion, are then released to the public.

The process worked relatively well when a rare thistle or the peregrine falcon was under review. Then came cod. Apparently frustrated with Mr. Bell's refusal to bend to detailed criticisms of early drafts, DFO officials wrote to COSEWIC members and their superiors in advance of last year's COSEWIC meeting outlining the federal government's opposition to the recommendation to list cod. The unprecedented move contravened the gentlemen's non-partisan rules of the organization and was seen as an attempt to influence the jury before the evidence was in.

Despite such efforts, some COSEWIC members were prepared to recommend a listing of endangered. Others supported a vulnerable listing. However, DFO was granted its wish for a deferral for a year when some COSEWIC members asked for more time to study the report.

The timing of the deferral took on new significance when Ottawa announced just hours after the deferral was announced that there would be a limited re-opening of the cod fishery in the northern Gulf of St. Lawrence and west coast of Newfoundland, and along the southern Newfoundland coast. Ten days after that, a federal election was called.

Some observers think that the pending federal vote and hopes of improving the Liberal government's fortunes in Atlantic Canada spurred DFO's attempts to stop cod from being listed. But another factor may have entered into the equation. In the months before COSEWIC met, Parliament had debated a new endangered species act. If passed, species at risk would, for the first time, be afforded legally-binding protection. The assumption was that COSEWIC's list would become the blueprint for species covered by any new legislation. Listing cod could easily hamper DFO management practices and any political manipulation of cod policy.

While the act has not been reintroduced in Parliament this session, the pressure to keep cod off the list continues. In fact, if a decision is deferred this year as some are suggesting it will, DFO's worries may be over. A proposal is now making its way through the bureaucracy to give the decision-making power on listing species to a Canadian Endangered Species Conservation Council made up of federal, provincial and territorial wildlife ministers. Decision are to be reached by consensus by the new body, which could come into being as early as this summer. Observers say it is highly unlikely a minister from the Atlantic region will support any listing of cod.

Mr. Bell could be forgiven for suffering a bout of deja vu as he prepares for this week's COSEWIC gathering. As he and others note, there is an eerie familiarity to recently released cod stock reports and government positioning.

Bleak is the only way to describe the 1998 cod numbers. "Stocks are not showing any significant movement in the direction of rebounding," says Jake Rice, co-ordinator of the Stock Assessment Secretariat. The numbers of offshore northern cod stand at just one to two per cent of the levels measured in the 1980s and are declining, according to stock assessment reports released in the past few weeks. The reports also state that northern stocks could continue to drop up to 20 per cent in some areas "even in the absence of any fishery."

Mr. Rice also admits that the 4,400 tonnes taken in the limited fishery in the northern Gulf of the St. Lawrence and western Newfoundland fishery last summer "was about the most the stock could sustain." A complete ban on fishing in the area is being advised for this year.

Despite the bad news, Mr. Rice repeatedly focused in a recent interview on what DFO says is a bright spot: St. Patrick Bank, off of southern Newfoundland. A moratorium was declared at the site on 1993 but lifted in last year's pre-election announcement. A 10,000 tonne quota was set. Based on the 9,000 tonnes caught, Mr. Rice says: "It seems that the stock was back to the size that supported a fishery from the 1960s to the 1980s. If we believe our assessment, not only are there enough fish for a fishery like we had last year, but it could be increased somewhat."

Mr. Rice's enthusiasm is striking in its contrast to the tone of the federal government's own report, which is peppered with numerous caveats, including: that the estimates given could be "reduced substantially"; that the birth rate "has been poor"; and that any fishing be delayed until after July or longer to improve the population's chance of reproducing.

While the stock is considered one of the most resilient, says Mr. Bell, the increase being cited is a measurement of individual fish growth and not the number of fish. Using such data to allow fishing could wipe out the stock. "DFO's optimism was how we got into this mess," he says.

When the re-opening was announced at the three sites last year, Mr. Bell called it "a big mistake." He and Dalhousie's Mr. Myers, whose work has also been dismissed by DFO, say there is no more evidence to support this year's planned re-opening in southern Newfoundland. "You might be able to support a small fishery there," Mr. Myers says. "But if you fish before the population has grown, you will always have a small fishery."

Despite everything, Mr. Bell's reputation remains unshaken amongst his peers. "I'm not sure there was anyone better," says biologist Chris Shank, former COSEWIC chair and now with the Alberta Department of Environmental Protection when asked about the choice of author for the report. But even that seems small consolation for Mr. Bell, who is now looking forward to leaving the cod report behind him.

And what might Mr. Bell's advice be to a scientist contacted in the future by COSEWIC? "If you don't have the time or the stomach for a lot of messing around, keep clear unless it's a species nobody cares about in a place nobody cares about and is overseen by a jurisdiction that has no embarrassing history with that species."

Canadian Animals at Risk

Asterisks (*) denote species that have been previously listed and whose status is being reviewed

American Black Bear

Woodland Vole

Common Tern

Nelson's Sharp-tailed Sparrow

Black Rat Snake

Five-line Skink

Great Basin Spadefoot Toad

Mountain Dusky Salamander

Coeur d'Alne Salamander

Lake Lamprey*

Redfin Pickerel

Bluntnose Minnow

Brindle Shiner

Weed Shiner

Sympatric Smelt (Dwarf & Normal)

Northern Madtom*

Central Stoneroller*

Eastern Mole*

Hotwater Physa

Atlantic Cod

White-beaked dolphin

Sage Grouse

Cougar *

Northern Leopard Frog

Fowler's Toad*

Peregrine Falcon Anatum*

Plains Pocket Gopher*

Swift Fox*

The Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife is the body that develops Canada's national list of species at risk.

Next week, the organization will meet in Ottawa to consider whether 51 species of animals and plants should be declared vulnerable, threatened, or endangered.

The committee is a 20-member organization comprised of appointees from provincial and territorial governments, federal representatives, and such nongovernmental groups as the World Wildlife Fund, the Canadian Nature Federation, and the Canadian Wildlife Fund.

The committee begins meeting on Monday at the Government Conference Centre. The results of its deliberations will be released next Friday afternoon.

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