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

Economic analyst warns of another fisheries collapse

They say current economic indicators don't offer protection

By Brian Flinn

Canada needs a better way of measuring sustainability in the fishery, or it risks repeating the collapse that crippled the Atlantic groundfishery a decade ago, says the author of a new report.

The 1980s boom in the Atlantic groundfishery looked like good news for the economy, but it was actually a sign the industry was killing itself with overfishing, says Saint Mary's University professor Tony Charles.

Charles, one of the authors of a GPI Atlantic report on measuring sustainable development in the fishery, compares '80s overfishing to a factory owner selling off pieces of machinery and counting it as profit.

By 1990, stocks had collapsed. Fishermen and plant workers lost jobs by the thousands.

Gross domestic product clearly isn't an adequate measure of the health of the fishery, Charles said.

The new report is part of GPI Atlantic's ongoing effort to redefine progress. In place of the bottom-line GDP number, it examines 38 indicators looking at ecological, social and institutional sides of the industry.

Charles said the fishery collapse in the early '90s might have been avoided if the new indicators were available.

The report raises concerns about the increasing concentration of fishing quota, particularly among draggers in the Scotia-Fundy region. More data is needed on the impact of dragging on the ocean bottom, it says.

But PCBs are declining There is good news, too, though. PCBs and other contaminants found in seabird eggs have declined steadily since 1972.

While the decline of the groundfishery has reduced Nova Scotia's fishery GDP by one-third over the past decade, it could have been worse. Income from shellfish has increased, and shrimp biomass has increased. Lobster biomass has remained steady.

Lobster has become increasingly important to coastal communities, but dependence on that fishery has reduced community resilience, the report says.

Also, less is known about lobster stocks than groundfish, where much of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans research is directed. The report notes that spending on science and enforcement declined in the 1980s while the industry was fishing itself almost out of existence.

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