Proceedings 2020/009

Proceedings of the National Peer Review for Science advice to the Fisheries Protection Program on the effectiveness of spawning habitat creation for substrate spawning temperate fish; January 22-24, 2019

Co-chairpersons: Amanda Winegardner and Karen Smokorowski

Editors: Karin Ponader and Emma Cooke

Summary

A Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) Canadian Science Advisory Secretariat (CSAS) National peer review process was held January 22nd – 24th, 2019 at the Libraries and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario. DFO’s Fish and Fish Habitat Protection Program (FFHPP) had requested the Canadian Science Advice Secretariat to conduct a science review and analysis of the effectiveness of the most commonly applied fish habitat restoration techniques for priority regional fisheries productivity zones of Canada. FFHPP was interested in a peer review of the effectiveness of spawning substrate restoration techniques at restoring or offsetting destroyed and degraded fish habitats and fish productivity losses in regions of varying productivity and across habitat types. FFHPP requested an analysis of the most effective restoration practices for these regions or zones. This meeting focused specifically on spawning habitat creation and used a systematic review of relevant literature. This particular science advisory process is expected to be the first in a series focusing on offset and restoration practices, with later processes focusing on other aspects of the original request for advice (e.g., restoration recommendations across regions of varying productivity and habitat types).

The meeting included discussion around how to best assess the effectiveness of intervention methods and whether or not these practices are effective at restoring or offsetting destroyed and degraded fish habitats. Based on evidence shown in the review, it was agreed that commonly applied spawning substrate restoration techniques can: attract substrate spawning fishes; result in spawning; and result in egg survival and produce age-0 fish. However, this review did not directly explore if these findings translate to population-level productivity improvements.

It was also agreed that long-term monitoring of restoration interventions is strongly encouraged and that there is a need for data collection (existing data and new) and a process for making this data available for research. It became clear from the results of the presented working papers that despite a large amount of restoration efforts in Canada over past decades, there is a lack of published and publically available data. This limited the evidence available to draw conclusions on for this CSAS process.

Participants in this meeting included DFO staff from various sectors as well as external experts. A Science Advisory Report (SAR) (2020/013) (DFO, 2020) was prepared following the meeting.

Proceedings 2020/009 (PDF, 867 KB)

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