After two years of advocacy and 70,000 letters sent, conservation organizations across Canada are celebrating the federal government’s decision to prohibit all oil and gas activities in marine protected areas.

“The public played a really big role in this change,” said Stephanie Hewson, staff lawyer at West Coast Environmental Law, in an interview with The Narwhal.

Marine protected areas — known as MPAs — are effectively national parks of the oceans, establishing strict guidelines about what kind of activities can occur in the ecologically sensitive regions. In 2010, Canada signed onto the Aichi Convention to protect biodiversity and the world’s ecosystems, committing to protect 10 per cent of coastal and marine areas by 2020.

The new rules will apply to all marine protected areas in Canada, including marine conservation and marine national wildlife areas, but the greatest effect will be felt in Marine Protected Areas managed under the Department of Fisheries and Oceans — most especially in the Laurentian Channel.

Proposed regulations published in June 2017 for the Laurentian Channel MPA — located between Nova Scotia and Newfoundland — allowed for extensive oil and gas exploration and production.

An access to information request filed by The Narwhal revealed that a close relationship between the oil industry and federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans may have contributed to that proposal.

But on Tuesday, Minister of Fisheries and Oceans Jonathan Wilkinson announced that four industrial activities — oil and gas, mining, waste dumping and bottom trawling — would be banned in all new marine protected areas, starting with the Laurentian Channel.

This fulfilled recommendations made by a national advisory panel that filed its final report in September 2018.

“I’m just greatly relieved that this trial balloon came down with a crash and the oil industry saw that they had pushed too far — and we’re actually going to have real marine protected areas,” Gretchen Fitzgerald, director of the Atlantic Canada chapter of the Sierra Club Canada Foundation, told The Narwhal.

“That’s wonderful news.”

The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP) declined comment for this article.

Canada’s current and proposed Marine Protected Areas. Source: Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada. Map: Carol Linnitt / The Narwhal

Series of offshore near-misses raised alarm

The federal Liberals pledged in their last election platform to increase the amount of Canada’s oceans that are protected to 10 per cent in 2020, up from a mere 1.3 per cent in 2015.

Thursday’s announcement increases the amount of existing protection to 8.2 per cent.

Prior to the federal announcement, it was unclear what protection even meant.

The proposed permitting of activities such as seismic testing for oil and gas, which can have devastating impacts on nearby marine species that rely on sound to communicate, was viewed by many conservationists and wildlife experts as a serious compromise to the government’s vision for ocean protections.

Concerns only increased since 2017 with repeated offshore incidents. A BP Canada drilling unit off the coast of Nova Scotia spilled 136,000 litres of drilling mud in June 2018. Only five months later, an estimated 250,000 litres of oil spilled into the ocean from a Husky drilling platform, making it the largest spill in Newfoundland and Labrador’s history.

Those followed arguably the most dangerous recent near-miss, in 2016 when a heavy pipe from a Shell Canada rig landed within 12 metres of an exploration well — which could have caused a blowout if contacted.

“It’s sheer madness in our opinion that they’re drilling off our shores where they are,” Marilyn Keddy of the Campaign to Protect Offshore Nova Scotia, said.

“But particularly in marine protected areas? My goodness.”

Existing oil and gas licences won’t be cancelled

While the new regulations will prohibit industrial activities in new marine protected areas, including the Laurentian Channel, they won’t result in the immediate cancellation of oil and gas discovery licences in two protected areas where they have already been granted: the Tarium Niryutait MPA in the Mackenzie River Delta and Gully MPA near Nova Scotia.

There is currently no active exploration efforts in the regions, and Wilkinson said the licences will be reviewed again in the future.

The new regulations also don’t prohibit industrial activities in the more common “marine refuge,” which will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis via the impact assessment process. However, marine refuges that do allow such activities won’t be counted towards the 10 per cent commitment.

Nevertheless, representatives of environmental organizations view Thursday’s announcement as a strong and necessary first step.

“There’s a lot of research that’s very well documented that having this type of strongly protected area is essential for restoring ocean health,” Hewson said.

“Sometimes it’s talked about as an insurance policy for the oceans. Oceans are fluid and there aren’t real boundaries besides those drawn on the map but it’s still really important to have those types of protections established in concrete areas.”

Advocates call for stricter rules on offshore activities

Environmental advocates remain concerned about other aspects of ocean protection.

Fitzgerald of Sierra Club Canada said that recent Senate committee hearings concerning the new environmental impact assessment legislation (Bill C-69) demonstrates that it is “very clear that the offshore boards and oil-friendly people in provincial governments are trying to get deregulation in the rest of the ocean.”

An ongoing call for bids near Sable Island, a national park reserve, adds to her fears that the oil industry still holds disproportionate power in the region.

Members of the fishing industry have repeatedly expressed concerns about the potential impacts of a Deepwater Horizon-like oil spill on their livelihoods.

“We will always have to be vigilante,” Fitzgerald said.

Similarly, Keddy of the Campaign to Protect Offshore Nova Scotia said that her organization is actively calling for a full independent inquiry into offshore oil and gas development.

“Our feeling is that decisions have been made by the industry based on their so-called science and we think that there has to be a be a much, much fuller investigation of this,” she said.

“And communities have to have a say. We’re not letting up until they stop.”

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Canada has made significant progress in the last year toward meeting its international commitment to protect 10 per cent of its oceans by 2020 — at least on paper. 

The government now claims to have set aside 7.75 per cent of Canada’s oceans for protection, up from under one per cent in 2016.

But a closer look at the numbers that make up the total shows that, far from establishing sprawling new protected areas, new accounting is responsible for much of the growth — and whether all of the areas will ultimately be eligible to count toward Canada’s international target is still up in the air.

“How well those will stand the test of time … against the agreed-upon guidelines remains to be seen,” says Stephen Woodley, vice-chair for science biodiversity for the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s commission on protected areas.

The catch with Canada’s “protected” areas is that, well, they aren’t necessarily completely protected.

Full Marine Protected Areas — such as those in Hecate Strait on the central coast of B.C., which protect extremely rare and delicate glass sponge reefs, or Basin Head in PEI, which protects an estuary and dune system — guard against “any activity that disturbs, damages, destroys or removes any living marine organism or any part of its habitat.” There are exceptions allowed in most of the MPAs, including commercial fishing in many instances, but by default they set a high bar for protection.

However, right now, the government might simply close one fishery, such as lobster or scallops, and count an area as “protected.”

But a fisheries closure isn’t necessarily permanent and often doesn’t provide protection for all the biodiversity of an area.

Canada counting fisheries closures as ‘protected’ areas

Fisheries closures currently make up more than half of the area Canada is touting as “protected.”

This could bring the Canadian government into conflict with the international standard.

The international standard for a marine protected area varies, spanning from a strictly-enforced no-take zone to an area with much more lax regulations. The final guidelines are still being decided.

“It’s not that those areas are unprotected, by any means,” says Karen Wristen, executive director of the Living Oceans Society. “You’ve got to go back to whether your closures are protecting biodiversity and bioregions that need to be represented in the whole network. The fisheries closures may mimic that, but they weren’t, certainly, designed for that purpose.”

The Living Oceans Society published a report in the journal Coastal Management in 2015, which found that even the formal Marine Protected Areas on the Pacific coast were often very small, and many did not include no-take zones (areas that exclude all fishing).

“Canada has in our view misrepresented a lot of the protected areas as being a lot more rigorous than they actually are,” Wristen said.

Fisheries and Oceans says it carefully selected just a handful of its 1,000 “existing measures” to be considered as meeting the international standard. Those decisions were based on criteria such as being long-term, protecting clearly-defined species or habitats, and being geographically defined.

“[S]cience-based marine criteria were used as the framework to determine which ones count towards Canada’s marine conservation targets,” DFO’s oceans and fisheries policy department wrote in an email in response to questions from DeSmog Canada.

The final guidelines that decide what will be internationally recognized as a marine protected area (and therefore what will count towards the 10 per cent target) are due to be confirmed at a Convention on Biological Diversity conference in Egypt later this year.

Canada has made significant progress in the last year toward meeting its international commitment to protect 10 per cent of its oceans by 2020 — at least on paper. https://t.co/N94rp3Uklp

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) January 17, 2018

Accounting may be adjusted to meet international standards

The government told DeSmog Canada it will adjust the number of marine refuges it counts towards its international total if they don’t meet the final standard, though Sabine Jessen, national director of the oceans program for the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, says she also urges the government to push for a high bar in Egypt.

“We hope that Canada and DFO will take a lead role internationally in supporting and advocating for strong conservation measures,” Jessen wrote in an e-mail following an interview with DeSmog Canada.

“This is a great opportunity for Canada to demonstrate its commitment to ocean conservation.”

Jessen, who has been working in ocean conservation for 25 years, says the progress that has been made by the government in the last year is unprecedented.

“I haven’t seen the level of activity and interest and commitment to this, ever,” she says. She remains cautious, however, about Canada’s reluctance to establish no-take zones, even in Marine Protected Areas.

“We aren’t doing enough in terms of having enough no-takes,” she says. “We do need to make sure we’re fully protecting areas of the marine environment.”

The goal of protecting 10 per cent of Canada’s oceans is just one of the 20 so-called Aichi Biodiversity Targets. Woodley of the International Union for Conservation of Nature says the “ten per cent” marine protection goal — Target 11 — has taken up a lot of the attention while the other 19 remain relatively obscure.

“There’s lots of things that are important in those 20 Aichi targets,” he says. “Unfortunately there’s been way too much focus on Target 11.”

In August, DeSmog Canada reported that Canada is seriously behind the eight ball (and behind every other G7 country, for that matter) regarding another one of those targets, Number 1.

Woodley points out Target 3 — which recommends that harmful “incentives, including subsidies” be “eliminated, phased out or reformed” by 2020 — has been overlooked.

Progress on Target 3 would have huge consequences if it were pursued with as much enthusiasm as Target 11.

“Nobody has done a good job on that one,” Woodley says.

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The summer of 2017 was an extraordinarily deadly one for North Atlantic right whales, a species already hovering on the brink of extinction.

Investigations are ongoing into the cause of death of 15 right whales off the Atlantic Coast of Canada and the U.S., although it’s not too soon to point the finger at human activity, Megan Leslie, vice president of oceans for WWF-Canada, told DeSmog Canada.

“I’ve been frustrated by reports that we don’t know what’s killing these whales,” Leslie said.

“We do. We know it’s human activity. There haven’t been necropsies on all of the whales, but the ones where there have been it’s clearly been blunt force trauma from ship strikes and entanglement in fishing gear.”

As widely reported, a bizarre spat of ten whales were found dead in the Gulf of St. Lawrence in June and July. Since then another five whales have been found floating dead or washed ashore in Canada and the U.S.

There are an estimated 500 right whales, which can grow to be 50 feet long, left in the entire world.

That means the deaths represent three per cent of the global population killed in only one summer.

It’s completely unprecedented.

‘Immediate Measures’ Needed to Save Species

“It is hard to overstate how serious this problem is,” Leslie, who was the former federal NDP environment critic and MP for Halifax, said.

“People have been looking at how to rebuild this population and now with these deaths I’m quite worried that it’s no longer a discussion about how to rebuild the population, but even how to just save it.”

The federal government has introduced some new rules in response, including closing a snow crab fishery, continuing surveillance flights and implementing a temporary mandatory slow-down in the area by about one-third of average speeds.

On Aug. 30, Minister of Fisheries and Oceans Dominic LeBlanc announced the government is developing a new set of rules for commercial fishing gear and practices to help prevent deadly entanglements.

But conservationists fear it might not be enough.

ICYMI: Industry Sways Feds to Allow Offshore Drilling in Laurentian Channel Marine Protected Area

“These immediate measures are desperately needed,” said Alexandra Barron, an ocean conservation manager for the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, in an interview with DeSmog Canada.

“However, our position is we need to start managing these waters much more proactively and considering the needs of endangered whales.”

North Atlantic right whale entangled in fishing ropes. Photo: NOAA News Archive 123110 via Flickr

Over 70 Per Cent of Right Whales Bear Scars from Fishing Entanglements

Right whales have been killed before in Canadian waters, but the average number of deaths was only 3.8 per year prior to 2017.

That means there’s been a potential tripling of whale casualties in a single year, a huge blow for a population that only recently rebounded from a dangerous low of under 300 whales in the 1990s.

A spokesperson for the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) wrote in an e-mail that it takes scientists between six and eight weeks to receive complete results on cause of death for the whales following the necropsies and samples.

Leslie said one of the whales had been caught in fishing gear for two weeks before it died.

More than 70 per cent of North Atlantic right whales actually bear scars from such encounters.

However, due to the tragic death of a member of the Campobello Whale Rescue Team in July 2017 during a disentanglement, the DFO has temporarily suspended all disentanglement operations.

The WWF notes that between 1970 and 2006, humans were responsible of 48 per cent of the deaths of right whales, mostly due to ship strikes or entanglements.

Many Critical Habitats Still Unexplored

However, it’s less known why the whales have moved from the Bay of Fundy or off the coast of Nova Scotia to the Gulf of St. Lawrence, where there’s considerably higher shipping traffic and more fishing gear.

There are some hypotheses around impacts of climate change and water temperatures, with the whales potentially following food sources. However, Barron said that right whales have been in the area and used the Gulf of St. Lawrence prior to this season. It’s difficult to draw any real conclusions without comprehensive coast-wide surveying, she said, in order to find out exactly where the whales might go.

Currently, Canada only has two designated areas of critical right whale habitat: the Grand Manan Basin and Roseway Basin. Barron said that by contrast, the U.S. has effectively designated their entire shelf waters throughout Maine and other northern states as critical habitat.

“We’re likely to see shifts in their movements in future years,” she said. “And we need to start mapping these areas of use and planning for that in the future.”

Between August 23 and 30, an expedition led by Oceana Canada used advanced exploration technology to survey much of the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

Robert Rangeley, director of science at Oceana Canada and key planner of the expedition, said in an interview with DeSmog Canada that much of the region is still fairly uncharted, pointing to the American Bank (located just off the Gaspé Peninsula in the Quebec portion of the Gulf of St. Lawrence).

“It’s got this official designation as an area of interest for a Marine Protected Area,” he said. “But it’s never been explored. None of these areas have been explored with cameras. We don’t really know what’s down there.”

Such a current lack of knowledge obviously impedes the ability for the federal government to craft appropriate regulations to ensure the survival of right whales and other marine mammals.

3% of World’s #Endangered #RightWhales Died This Summer, Mostly in Canada’s Unprotected Waters https://t.co/duH3p5vLHv #cdnpoli @DLeblancNB

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) September 1, 2017

Network of Marine Protected Areas Could Help Save Right Whales

And that’s where marine protected areas (MPAs) are supposed to come in.

As previously reported by DeSmog Canada, the federal government is aiming to protect 10 per cent of marine areas by 2020. However, proposed regulations for the Laurentian Channel MPA in the Gulf of St. Lawrence are under serious fire as they currently allow for potential offshore oil and gas exploration and drilling.

Conservationists suggest that a critical way to protect right whales is via the MPA network.

ICYMI: Canada Has Three Years to Increase Protected Areas by 60% And, Um, It’s Not Going to Be Easy

“These processes have been to this point very, very slow,” Barron said. “We need to start moving more quickly on these processes and identifying those potential areas where we may see whales: even if we’re not seeing them this year, that might be where they go next year, and we need to start making sure those sites are properly protected for the whales long into the future.”

Allowing oil and gas activities in the region would result in a series of catastrophic impacts, including increased marine traffic and chances of ship strikes, destruction of zooplankton and other food sources, contamination of food webs with toxic waste and a much higher chance of oil spills.

Unless the federal government protects such areas with strict regulations, there’s no real guarantee that this year’s death toll will be anomalous in the future.

“The deck is stacked against these whales,” Leslie concluded. “There’s so much coming at them, we’ve just got to figure out a way to help them survive.”

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

The federal government recently created two marine protected areas in the Pacific region and has committed to increase ocean protection from one per cent to 10 by 2020. But will this be enough?

Canada has the longest coastline of any nation, but our country doesn’t end at its ocean shores. With a 200-nautical-mile economic zone and international obligations, Canada is responsible for almost three million square kilometres of ocean, an area roughly the size of British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba combined.

Although that’s a big area, thinking of the ocean in square kilometres is just skimming the surface. The ocean isn’t just a cold, wet seascape blanketed by howling winds. Below the surface, life thrives throughout the water column, top to bottom, warm or cold, winter or summer.

Northern aquatic food webs are rich with creatures of all shapes and sizes, from tiny plankton, urchins and sea stars to fish, orcas and sea lions. That the world’s largest living creature ever, the blue whale, feeds on some of the smallest, plankton, is astonishing in itself. Yet the plankton thread in the food web doesn’t end in the whale’s stomach; whale poop is also a critical part of the marine food web, cycling nutrients from the surface to creatures at the bottom.

The way otters keep kelp forests healthy by eating sea urchins is one of myriad interconnected relationships in Canadian coastal waters. Although barnacles and clams live in a single location, some whales and fish travel thousands of kilometres within a single season. Salmon don’t even have the ocean as a boundary, swimming far inland to spawn.

How can we understand and manage such complex systems? Natural cycles in Canada’s coastal waters include currents, tides, upwellings, migrations and seasons. Trying to predict how multiple factors like pollution, industrial fishing, climate change, ocean acidification, glass sponge reefs, ships, rights and title claims, kayakers, recreational fishing lodges and renewable energy sites will interact with these cycles is becoming increasingly more complicated, and important, than ever. With all these uncertainties and complexities, how can we know if marine protected areas are effective?

To understand how creating a refuge works, let’s go back to a simple 1936 study of an “ecosystem.” It was a test tube with two microscopic single cell species, prey and predator. In that oversimplified ecosystem, the predatory species ate the prey, and then died because, without prey, they could not survive.

Putting material in the test tube so the prey could hide and multiply changed everything, creating a variety of unpredictable outcomes. However, one pattern emerged: It was far more likely that both prey and predator would survive.

Canada Has the Longest Coastline in the World. Guess How Much is Protected? https://t.co/OfKiHFvPun #bcpoli #cdnpoli #bcelxn17 #YVR #YYJ

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) April 10, 2017

Expanding the concept to marine protected areas, this simple experiment bodes well for one top predator (humans) and prey (fish). Even though science can’t predict whether protected areas will help specific stocks increase, evidence suggests they show promise as “nurseries” for fish and other ocean wildlife and can provide a buffer against our lack of understanding.

Canada’s two new Pacific marine protected areas shield magnificent, fragile glass sponge reefs near Haida Gwaii and important seabird nesting sites on the Scott Islands. Safeguards are in place to protect the glass sponge reefs and the countless species that use them for refuge. However, current protections for the area surrounding the Scott Islands are too vague to reduce threats to the millions of seabirds that depend on the forage area to breed and feed.

The federal government deserves credit for beginning to develop a network of marine protected areas. They’re an essential part of keeping ocean ecosystems healthy, but they must have meaningful safeguards. Protected areas are just one aspect of keeping coastal ecosystems healthy. Responsible stewardship also requires effective fisheries management, strong penalties for polluters and a global carbon emissions reduction.

With pollution, climate change and increased shipping and development along Canada’s coast, it’s more important than ever to reduce the risks to ecosystems that provide us with the fish we eat, the air we breathe and the bounty of nature we love. Marine protected areas on their own won’t be enough to do all that, but with strong regulations and safeguards, they’re one piece of the intricate, multidimensional puzzle.

David Suzuki is a scientist, broadcaster, author and co-founder of the David Suzuki Foundation. Written with contributions from David Suzuki Foundation Communications Specialist Panos Grames.

Learn more at www.davidsuzuki.org.

Image: Murchison and Faraday Islands, Gwaii Hanaas National Park Reserve, British Columbia, Canada. Photo: by David Will/Island Conservation via Flickr

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.