Media Clipping — Friday, January 18, 2002, The Daily News, Halifax

DFO must change ways: report

By Richard Dooley

A leading fisheries expert says Ottawa needs to overhaul the way it measures the health of fish stocks to avoid another crisis like the collapse of the cod and groundfish industries.

Tony Charles, professor of commerce and environmental studies at Saint Mary’s University, specializes in the study of fisheries, aquaculture and coastal management. A report co-written by Charles for GPI Atlantic and released yesterday in Jeddore Oyster Pond, on the Eastern Shore, says the Department of Fisheries and Oceans should do more than count fish and dollars.

The report is critical of the government for not monitoring the social and ecological impacts fishery management decisions has on coastal communities.

The report, The Nova Scotia GPI Fisheries and Marine Environment Accounts, says the rosy picture painted by healthy cod catches in the late 1980s and early 1990s belied the fact the fishery was about to go belly-up.

“Our conventional measuring sticks, such as catches, exports and gross domestic product, did not warn of the impending disaster,” the report says.

Charles said 37 ecological, social and institutional indicators may provide a more accurate picture of the health of fish stocks and coastal communities.

The indicators — including such things as measuring how many commercially unacceptable fish are dumped overboard, measuring debt levels and bankruptcies among fishermen, and determining contamination levels in fish — should be weighed with estimates of the size of fish stocks to get a better picture of the health of the industry.

“It’s no longer enough to count fish landings and plant production,” said Charles.

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