In this Dec. 2010 photo provided by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, a North Atlantic right whale is seen entangled in rope off the coast of Daytona Beach, Fla. Researchers succeeded on Jan. 15. 2011 in using sedatives fired from a dart gun to calm down and free an endangered North Atlantic right whale tangled in fishing line.(AP Photo/Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission)

Canada has long failed to protect marine mammals from the threats posed by marine vessels and commercial fishing — and is only now starting to act, as some species teeter on the brink of extinction.

That’s the federal environment commissioner’s finding in a new report on protecting marine mammals, tabled Tuesday in the House of Commons, which looked at the hazards posed by traffic and fishing, including oil spills and chronic underwater noise and disturbance in waters under Canadian jurisdiction.

The audit was conducted from Jan. 1, 2012, to June 1, 2018.

Commissioner Julie Gelfand found that while existing policies and tools proactively manage the threats of entanglements, bycatch (the unwanted fish and other marine creatures caught during commercial fishing for a different species), depletion of food sources, noise and disturbance, oil spills, and collisions with marine vessels, four departments — Fisheries and Oceans Canada, Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC), Parks Canada, and Transport Canada — had not fully applied them.

For more than a decade, she said, the government did not use the tools available to enact fishing and shipping regulations that would have afforded orcas, right whales and other animals the support and protection they need to survive.

“We found most of these tools were not used until the situation became severe,” she told reporters in Ottawa.

It took the death of 12 North Atlantic right whales in the Gulf of St. Lawrence in the summer of 2017 due to entanglements in fishing gear and ship strikes —representing three per cent of the world’s population of the endangered whale — for the government to be shamed into action.

READ MORE: Doing right by wronged whales

For the 2018 fishing season, Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) and Transport Canada implemented mandatory slowdowns in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, as well as dynamic fisheries closures (which require that gear be removed from a fishing zone to prevent entanglement as whales migrate through the area). Reporting on interactions between commercial fishing vessels and marine mammals was also mandated.

At the end of the report’s audit period, DFO had also begun implementing harvest reductions and area closures to support the recovery of the southern resident killer whale, as well as the scarce Chinook salmon.

While the tide might have begun turning, Gelfand called those measures reactive and limited. They’re aimed only at three species of whales, when Canada has more than 40 species of marine mammals.

“The government needs to take sustained action for all marine mammals, not just the three that are at a crisis point,” she said. “That’s what the government is supposed to do.”

That means using everything at its disposal, which to date it hasn’t.

For instance, while the Species at Risk Act lists 14 marine mammal populations as endangered or threatened — 11 of which have been listed for over a decade — DFO could only show it had taken specific management measures to reduce the threats posed by commercial fishing and marine vessels for three of them.

While some recovery action has been taken for three endangered whales — North Atlantic right whales, southern resident killer whales and the belugas of the St. Lawrence Estuary — the commissioner also found the department had not met most deadlines for finalizing required recovery strategies and action plans.

It’s not that government officials wake up every morning and decide how to harm marine mammals that day, Gelfand noted, but the reality is that species have languished on the endangered list for more than 10 years.

“No action was taken to protect those species until we found 12 of them dead in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.”

In reviews it conducted itself in 2017, DFO found that few management measures had been implemented — and concluded that those weren’t enough.

“The absence of these measures can impede the recovery of marine mammals or drive them more rapidly to extinction,” the commissioner noted in her report.

While marine protected areas (MPAs) are widely recognized as a way to protect marine mammals for feeding, wintering, breeding, or resting, as well as migratory routes, in Canada, that’s not the case. Here they’re only offering limited protection from threats posed by commercial fishing and marine traffic. As in most of the areas designated to date, neither of these activities is prohibited.

MPAs make up about three per cent of Canada’s total marine area. Commercial fishing is off-limits in just 17 per cent of them, while commercial traffic is banned in just 10 per cent.

The commissioner noted that marine mammals were not consistently considered when MPAs were being established.

Gelfand found they aren’t on the radar for managing fish stocks, either — at least, not up to, and including, the 2017 fishing season.

Marine mammals can get tangled in fishing gear and aquaculture pens, or become bycatch. In many cases, fisheries are after the same species that marine mammals eat, which depletes their food sources.

The report noted that the risk posed by underwater noise and disturbance from vessels (a steadily intensifying threat as the economy grows), collisions, and oil spills could impede the recovery or speed the decline of marine mammal populations. While amendments to the Marine Mammal Regulations, proposed in 2012, would have protected marine mammals from noise and disturbance, it took until July 2018 for those to come into effect.

The amendments include a definition of disturbance, and establish safe distances between aerial craft, marine vessels, and marine mammals.

When it comes to helping whales in distress, Gelfand found DFO lacked the resources and national guidance to effectively support the partners working to respond to those whales (primarily due to entanglements in gear), but noted that, since earlier this year, improvements to the program were underway.

She called for DFO to: develop a national approach for responding to distressed marine mammals; clarify roles and responsibilities; review the current response capacity and training needs in each region; and develop a consistent reporting mechanism.

More proactively, she called on the department to implement the recovery measures identified in its action plans within the established timeframes for endangered and threatened marine mammals in order to reduce the threats posed by commercial fishing and marine traffic.

The department should also implement the Policy on Managing Bycatch, and ensure that integrated fisheries-management plans include descriptions of potential interactions with all marine mammals — entanglements, as well as bycatch and reduced prey availability. They should also include specific measures to reduce those interactions, including measures to be applied as part of fishing licences.

The department notes that money was spent on implementing Sustainable Fisheries Framework policies in Budget 2017. It said implementation started this year — and that work is ongoing.

To reduce the risks posed by marine traffic, Gelfand called for DFO to work with Transport Canada and ECCC to implement measures to reduce the threats posed by marine vessels, and to evaluate the effectiveness of those measures.

In a statement, Environment Minister Catherine McKenna and Fisheries Minister Jonathan Wilkinson said they accept all the recommendations.

“We take these findings very seriously and are taking appropriate actions to ensure they are addressed,” they said. “As the report noted, the government of Canada is making progress in protecting marine mammals, but there is still more work to do.”

They point to the $1.5 billion that’s been spent on Canada’s Oceans Protection Plan since 2016, and $167 million on the newly launched Whales Initiative.

“In the past year, several measures have been put in place to protect the southern resident killer whales, such as the reduction of Chinook fisheries to increase prey availability and a new, mandatory requirement that vessels maintain a safe distance (200 m) at all times,” they said.

“We are pleased that other new measures, including speed restrictions for vessels in the western Gulf of St. Lawrence, have been successful in preserving the endangered North Atlantic right whale population. Many of the new measures now in place directly address recommendations found in the report.”

Gelfand told reporters it’s “a bit of bright light” that the government is considering the environment when making decisions, but said more big-picture thinking is needed, as her report “illustrates what can happen when a driver of decision-making, such as economic considerations, is not in balance with other drivers, such as environmental or social considerations.”

Given that Canada has the longest coastline in the world, and many livelihoods depend on the fishery and efficient marine transportation, trade-offs and difficult decisions will always be necessary.

“But finding ways to balance these decisions in the best way possible for all is critical to ensure that species, livelihoods, and critical industries are not lost. Not proactively balancing economic imperatives with environmental concerns (has) had a negative effect on marine mammals,” she said.

“The key issues we face as a country, and as a planet, require long-term solutions that transcend our current elected officials and even our lifetimes.”

As for the right whales, orca and belugas teetering on the brink, she’s encouraged by the response to them, but also hopes it’s not “too little, too late.”

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