Oceana Canada’s 8th annual fishery audit shows a lack of progress in increasing the number of healthy fish stocks.

The audit shows that only three per cent of wild fish stocks are considered healthy, while 17 per cent are critically depleted, with “numerous key species” on the “brink of further decline.”

A marine scientist with Oceana Canada, Jack Daly, says in Newfoundland and Labrador only 13 per cent of local stocks are considered to be healthy, while 20 per cent are categorized as “critical,” with the remainder’s status uncertain.

Daly says northern cod and capelin are still in the cautious zone. However, they’re being fished as if they are healthy stocks.

That, says Daly, is a concern, and Ottawa appears to be dragging its heels when it comes to formally recognizing the protection of stocks under a modernized Fisheries Act introduced five years ago.

“Only about 30 stocks out of the almost 200 that we monitor have been legally protected under the act,” says Daly. “We find the stocks that have that legal protection to be managed much better.”