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Did you catch this:
"“The department may remove only content that is duplicated at one or more libraries and, in rare instances, materials which fall outside the subject disciplines pertinent to the department’s mandate,” says the DFO website, describing the material discarded from its collection."

Departmental mandates are revised to suit the political flavour of the day as part of strategic planning activities (mission, vision, values, etc.) and it happens every couple of years. This allows for some really pernicious and creative manipulation of public institutions that exist to regulate and monitor shared resources. Here is the mandate for DFO. In real terms, a high level deputy minister might instruct his senior management staff that, "it is not in our mandate to keep records of X because it is not required by the legislation that defines our work." It's a very prescriptive and disingenuous approach, but it works with career bureaucrats because they lack the expertise to form a cohesive argument against it. You can be sure they're digging in their heels, but they have to pick their battles very carefully. Federal agencies have been eviscerated in the last few years and management is trying to weather the storm in the hopes that the political climate will change soon.

This is reminiscent of the de-funding of the Experimental Lakes Area in 2012, which also involved the DFO. It was a project area that had existed for 45 years and produced 745 peer-reviewed scientific articles, 126 graduate theses, 102 book chapters and synthesis papers, 185 data reports, and several books. With respect to the destruction of data, I'm sure one could argue, "Since the ELA is no longer part of the DFO's mandate, that data can be destroyed."

What's noteworthy about this article is that the DFO has impressive, far-reaching regulatory power and this cost saving measure is part of an attempt to make the department more "effective" in conducting its regulatory duties. Ultimately, the hope is that industry projects can be approved in a more timely manner. I don't think it's an evil plot to destroy the environment, rather it is a misguided attempt to make a Canadian governmental agency better able to do its day-to-day job. Ultimately, it will impede the agency's ability to adapt and respond to changing client needs. A lot of people of a certain political ideology don't value research because it is hard to describe its utility in financial terms. This is self-evidently foolish, as continuous research is essential to improving the health of the population, effectively managing resources, and developing new technologies and techniques. Unfortunately, this reasoning really appeals to the masses of Canadians who "don't want their tax dollars wasted."

95% of requests were over the Internet, rather than in person - no surprise there, it's more accessible. We have no idea how many of the documents were available to be accessed this way, though.

No wait, we do. FTFA:

In late December, as outrage over the library closings grew, her department posted answers to 19 questions online. It gave the total size of the print collection as 660,000 items. Some 30,000 departmental publications are available online and more documents are being digitized. But many books can’t be digitized due to copyright laws.

So only 4.5% of documents are available online (assuming departmental publications == print collection, which I'm not sure about). Too soon to start throwing out entire collections, it seems - if ever.

Those bullying Yanks - imagine trying to use a provision in the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, just like other countries do.

Yeah, I'm one of 'em. I learned about this when I was on a boat impounded in St. John's for a couple weeks after fishing crab off the Flemish cap. Before we went out there the company called everyone in the Canadian government they could think of and was given a "no problem so far as I know" as we were outside 200 miles and in deeper than 200 fathoms. From the legal adventures that followed, I learned that, at the time, neither Canada, nor the USA was signatory to Article 76, because neither wanted to do the delineation mentioned in paragraph 7. Canada made an internal law, the Oceans Act of 1996, that didn't require delineation and then uses the legal precedent with fishermen to secure the billion$ in petroleum out there. Knowing our Congress, I'd be surprised if they managed to agree on a law. It's easy enough to just use intimidation rather than setting up some sort of legal precedent.

As for the scallops, there's a photo of some scallop gear on this page. When you literally dredge the bottom for 'em with some of the heaviest commercial fishing gear in common use, it's easy to associate them with the bottom from which they're dredged.

If you want a demonstration of how unlikely it is that multibeam sonar would cause problems for whales, take a look at The Gully marine protected area off the coast of Canada, where one of the main concerns was the possible effect of oil and gas exploration activities on whales. The area was set aside as a marine protected zone because whales seem to spend a lot of time in that area. The first thing marine scientists did before making the case for setting it aside was to survey the sea floor with multibeam sonar (that's what makes the pretty picture on that web page). Why on Earth would they do that if it was at all likely that multibeam sonar could have a negative effect on them?

Since a government's Exclusive Economic Zone extends to 300 km from from its territory, and shallow seamounts are often geologically young (and therefore potentially geologically active), I don't think that 'hundreds' is a good number. Could you be more specific? For example, the Bowie Seamount and Muirfield Seamount seem candidates, but both are within a country's EEZ. More generally, seamounts are often very biologically diverse with valuable fisheries around them - they're not automatically some kind of deserted, worthless land for anyone's taking.

IE7 is a CSS compatibility NIGHTMARE and should scrapped. Even my banking got hosed forcing me to use firefox for it online! I am friends with the guys who originally developed the Unix version of mapster, of which this is an example http://www-heb.pac.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/maps/maps-data_e. htm All I can say is that I have become tired of trying to please the MS crap code side of the ".NET"

fisherman to locate large quantities of fish in mid-sea

wicked stuff ...

now this will make the sexual movie industry just blush /* from the article mentioned above */

The male's sexual organ is actually a bit like a high-pressure fire hose and is normally nearly as long as his body - excluding legs and head. /* end snippet */

So pr0nowood has a long to go with the genital enhancements.

So you can pretty easilly say that "he is a serious pr*ck!"

sneak/peak preview here (warning, explicit content!) : http://www.pac.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/ops/fm/shellfish/Imag es/couple_squid.jpg

A freshwater lake drained into the sea, the researchers reported. I think CNN is misinterpreting the following comment, also from the article: all of the fresh water poured out of the 20 mile (30 km) long Disraeli Fjord.

Disraeli Fjord is (was) freshwater on top and saltwater on bottom. The freshwater was due to the ice shelf, with the boundary at the bottom of the shelf. It would make sense that only the fresh part was drained. It's sad that this unique body of water is no longer that way.