Good afternoon, everybody.

My name is Sean Brillant. I'm the senior conservation biologist at the Canadian Wildlife Federation for the marine programs. I have been working on right whales since 2007. I have the benefit of sitting on several national and international committees concerning the management and study of North Atlantic right whales: the Ropeless Consortium; the North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium; Transport Canada's technical advisory committees for vessel safety; and DFO committees such as the large whale disentanglement advisory committee, the right whale technical working group and the advisory committee for right whales.

I’m grateful for the invitation to appear before this committee. I hope I can bring you some additional information today.

CWF is a national wildlife conservation charity with over 200,000 supporters. We have been working on endangered species for 60 years and on the threats to right whales for coming up on 13 years.

I’m also really pleased to be the third set of witnesses to be speaking with you, because I won’t need to spend too much time giving you information. I recognize you all have a good understanding of the dire and urgent situation that is being faced by one of the most endangered large whales on the planet and by our fishing industry, particularly with respect to its access to the U.S. market.

I am going to get right to it. I have three recommendations for your consideration.

First, we need to reduce the risk to right whales by at least 90% to ensure it survives. If nothing changes, it will go extinct within our lifetime. We will all be around when the last one dies.

As you’ve already heard, my team and I did an investigation to determine how much risk has been reduced between snow crab fishing gear and right whales due to the static and dynamic closures that have been in place since 2018. This was approximately 60% to 65%; it's commendable. We need to get to 90% for all fisheries. This is not a time to tap the brakes or to cut corners. The job is not done.

You've also heard that there are probably fewer than 350 individuals remaining in this population. Research published just last week shows that at the beginning of 2018, there were only 72 reproductive females, and that was four years ago. As we all know, females are the most important part of a population for a variety of reasons, but most especially because they’re the only ones that can create new individuals. We talk about an endangered population with only 350 animals, but in reality, the situation isn't even that rosy.

Second, we have to continue to study and monitor this species and other whales.

Looking for whales isn’t easy. The only ways we can detect whales is by seeing them, which is hard because they live underwater, or by hearing them, which is hard because they don’t always make noise. Let me repeat that last point: They don’t always make noise. That means that when you hear a right whale, you know there's a right whale around; when you don’t hear a right whale, that doesn't mean there isn’t one around. That is why closed fishing grids can’t be reopened using acoustic detection, for example.

We also need better knowledge about the harm we cause them. More than 85% of the individuals of this population have scars indicating they’ve been entangled at least once in their lifetime, and some as many as seven times. Every year, a quarter of the population has new scars. A quarter of this population runs into ropes every year. Our ability to determine the origin of the entangling rope is very poor, because by the time we can investigate an entanglement, the gear is unidentifiable more often than not. Any fishery that is leaving rope in the water is part of the threat to entangle these animals and other animals. It is the rope that is the problem here.

Third, solving this problem is going to require leadership and change from the fishing industry, from Canadians and from our governments. We want to make sure we continue to benefit from using the ocean, but we have to do it in a way that doesn’t destroy other species. We can’t continue to fish the way that we have been for the last 400 years. This change is difficult, and it must be done collaboratively and be guided by the best available science.

For the last four years, CWF has collaborated with fishermen to study ropeless or on-demand fishing gear. Contrary to what you may have heard, this technology is not science fiction, it is not a science fair project and it is not a threat to the industry. It works. This is based on more than 600 trials of seven different ropeless systems we have been working with, and we tested this with 14 different snow crab and lobster fishermen throughout the maritime provinces.

This past summer, with support from DFO’s now sunsetting whalesafe gear adoption fund, we set up a gear lending program. We call it “CanFish”. It’s a fisherman assistance program, similar to a community tool library. We did this just in time. In early May, right whales showed up on the fishing grounds of snow crab fishermen out of Tignish, P.E.I. These grounds were closed to fishing and remained closed for the rest of the season. The fishermen contacted us in a bit of an understandable panic, and we were able to help them out. We provided 54 units of on-demand gear to 10 different fish harvesters. We taught them how to rig it, we taught them how to use it and we taught them how to fish with it on their vessels.

They fished for between four to six weeks in closed zones, using on-demand or ropeless gear. They did more than 150 hauls and landed more than 370,000 pounds of snow crab. This also eliminated 500 buoy lines from the area, making the entire gulf that much safer for right whales.

I'm very pleased by this. It was a real accomplishment that helped fish harvesters, and it helped whales. I'm confident that this is the way of the future.

Thanks for your attention. I look forward to your questions and discussion.

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