An end to reliable funding has put a Newfoundland and Labrador non-profit in financial jeopardy.
Clean Harbours Initiative was formed in 2018 when Shawn Bath, who spent 21 years as a commercial sea urchin diver, couldn’t help but notice a staggering amount of trash lying just below the water’s surface.
“Most of our sea urchins were picked in harbours and coves all around Newfoundland and on a regular basis, we’d be picking someone’s food off of garbage — off of tires, off of refrigerators, off of TVs — whatever was tossed overboard,” said Bath. “I said, ‘Maybe I’ll try to bring some awareness to this problem and see if we can get some people aboard to clean up.’ Newfoundland is a beautiful tourist destination, and it is beautiful on the surface. If people were to see what’s under the water, they’d think we’re a bunch of pigs.”
With six months worth of employment insurance to live off, Bath used his limited budget to create imagery and videos to bring the issues he saw every day to light. After that, Bath started a GoFundMe campaign to keep the ball rolling, which after some exposure garnered Clean Harbours Initiative around $170,000.
“That was enough money to buy almost all the gear we needed,” said Bath.
Still in need of funding to operate his non-profit, Bath took advantage of the Canadian government’s Ghost Gear Fund, designed for interested parties to recover lost and abandoned fishing gear from the ocean, through which he was able to gather a series of smaller grants. In 2022, after Hurricane Fiona swept through the Maritimes and western Newfoundland, Bath and crew were granted a further $175,000.
While Bath admitted that his initiative did not solely focus on ghost gear, as the federal program intended, they were recovering massive amounts of trash from the shores of the island, from tires, to onboard engines, to bundles of fishing gear. Since 2018, Bath said Clean Harbours Initiative has recovered over 400,000 pounds of debris from the ocean. In the two weeks after Hurricane Fiona, he said his team recovered 80,000 pounds.
But, when the time came to apply for more funding with the Canadian government, his funding ran dry. Although there was around $4 million up for grabs, Clean Harbours Initiative ended up with $0, despite what he saw as a proven track record of success. According to Bath, larger organizations with more money to fund their operations were able to hire people versed in policy to draft their funding applications, whereas Bath completed his own.
“Before we started this six years ago, there was no funding whatsoever. There was nobody doing it. Now, all of a sudden that we brought awareness to the problem, all this money started flowing from the federal government to the provincial government to share amongst the people involved in this industry, and we didn’t get in on it,” said Bath.
“The people that were chosen were chosen based on how good of a job they did on their application. But, if you didn’t do as good of a job on your application, then you didn’t get a chance to do it… It was basically just taken into consideration whether you had a professional doing your application for you.”
According to Bath, the $4 million divided between four companies in N.L. amounted to them recovering 51,000 pounds of debris from the ocean. Of that 51,000, 17,000 pounds were recovered by Clean Harbours Initiative when they were contracted for five weeks by the Canadian Centre for Fisheries Innovation (CCFI).
At around $78 per pound of debris removed, Bath compared this large figure to his earlier funding of $175,000 given to his team after Hurricane Fiona struck western Newfoundland, during which they recovered a reported 80,000 pounds of debris — equaling around $2 per pound.
“If we could have gotten $1 million like each of the other groups got, we’d have no problem bringing in a quarter million pounds of ghost gear and debris,” said Bath.
As of 2024, the Ghost Gear Fund has run its course, with no announcements of further funding. In a press release, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) noted, “DFO will be holding the 2nd International Gear Summit in February 2025. This two-day summit will bring together Indigenous and non-Indigenous harvesters, technical experts, experts from around the world, and various agencies to discuss innovative fishing gear and practices to address ghost gear, as well as to prevent or mitigate whale interactions.”
With no more government funding in sight, Clean Harbours Initiative has fallen on hard times. While he has began to explore more avenues for private funding, Bath said willing parties are very rare.
“Because of that funding we didn’t get, it pretty much stopped us dead in our tracks. I’m hoping we’ll be back in the water soon, within the next three or four weeks,” said Bath. “We’ve been renting a truck to haul our gear, because we don’t have a pickup truck anymore.”
Beyond the business suffering, Bath said he and his team have seen little to no money to keep themselves afloat either.
“If anybody could spend a week or month with us and see the work we put into this without getting paid — especially myself,” said Bath. “My pay has probably been less than $80,000 for a full six years.”
