A group focused on ocean ecology is warning that the model being used by DFO to assess northern cod stocks is overly optimistic.
Oceana Canada says despite DFO’s claim that cod stocks are in the ‘healthy’ zone, it doesn’t necessarily correlate with stocks rebuilding from the collapse seen decades ago.
Fisheries scientist with Oceana Canada, Rebecca Schijns (Sky’ ns) says some of the signals in the assessment are presented “very optimistically.”
She says for every year of data added, the lower reference point, and now the new reference point for the healthy zone, “are going to systematically go down. And the estimate for biomass in the water is going up. So there’s some uncertainties in the model that were a huge discussion in the assessment.”
“There’s a short-term fix that they use to….reduce some of that uncertainty. Overall, it’s like looking at the assessment with rose-coloured glasses, and the big picture remains that cod are still struggling to recover to abundant levels.”
