Scotian Shelf Capping Device Needs to Come Home
The issue of drilling for fossil fuel off Nova Scotia is getting a bit blurred.
However, one thing is getting clearer by the day, an oil company’s plans to drill exploratory wells 250 kilometres offshore, on the Scotian Shelf is meeting stiff opposition, something obviously the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency (CEAA) overlooked when it approved the proposal in June.
The issue is not the actual drilling for oil and gas but the idea that when it comes to safety measures, the rules ...
Fishing Industry Votes Could Be Scarce for the Tories
The writ has been dropped and we’re in for a federal election in October after way too many days of U.S. election-type hype, liberally sprinkled with character assassinations.
The knives are sharpened and as Winston Churchill is reputed to have said during the gloomy days of World War II, “the truth is so important that it has to be protected by lies and more lies.” It definitely applies to elections in this country.
It’s hard to imagine a more regressive government than the ...
Georges Bank Gets Reprieve, Now What About Old Harry?
A huge sigh of relief could recently be heard for those concerned about the health and welfare of Georges Bank.
Finally, after years of posturing, Ottawa passed Bill C-64 which extends the moratorium on drilling for fossil fuels on the rich and diversified fishing bank up to 2022. Nova Scotia will follow this fall by introducing legislation to this effect.
The fight for this extension was long and hard and led by NORIGS 3 chair Denny Morrow, who spent many frustrating months on the issue ...
Fisheries Science Will Take A Long Time to Recover
The federal government’s gag order on fishery scientists, which is forcing many of them into early retirement, threatens the viability of Canada’s ability to deal with the many changes which are occurring in the ocean abutting Atlantic Canada’s coastal areas.
With global warming and shifts in ocean temperatures, what this will mean to sea life and therefore to the commercial fishing community and to global communities, needs to be studied and understood so that we can all prepare for ...
Remembrance of Things Past
It could be a song, a phrase or a newspaper headline which triggers a stream of nostalgia for things past, but not forgotten.
In my case, it was a newspaper headline which proclaimed that the weather had sunk the Arisaig Mother’s Day Lobster Supper.
Arisaig is a small community in Antigonish County, Nova Scotia. That part of the province, as well as segments of P.E.I., saw its lobster season spring opening delayed by more than a week due to persistent ice conditions in local bays and ...
Aquaculture and Lobster; Two Reports, Different Responses
You’d think the discussion of a topic which could have a direct impact on your income down the road would garner a fair bit of response.
What I’m referring to is the release a few months ago of the generic marketing plan for Canadian lobster, which would be funded by a levy at the first point of sale.
The plan has been endorsed by lobstermen in P.E.I., parts of New Brunswick and the northern and eastern sections of Nova Scotia.
The tri-county area of Digby-Yarmouth-Shelburne in ...
Safety Culture Catching on in Nova Scotia Fishery
Various governmental agencies in Nova Scotia have been pushing the safety at sea issue for fishermen for quite some time — and their efforts seem to be paying off, in a big way.
While the commercial fishery remains the most dangerous occupation in Canada and each year claims far too many lives and limbs, the days of sailing without the prerequisite safety equipment aboard are long gone.
I remember when survival suits came out. The resistance was immense — they were too bulky and most ...
Georges Bank: A River Runs Through it
If you’re a Maritimer, it’s easy to get excited about a possible big oil strike off our shores.
I well remember the hoopla over Sable Island discoveries in the 1970s and the then Premier Gerald Regan holding a small vial of oil to a group of media types in Halifax — the photo made front page in the daily newspapers of the time.
There’s not a coastal community along our shores that hasn’t seen the population decline due to the lack of jobs here and the well-paying ones in the oil ...
Keeping the Home Fires Burning in the New Year
A climatologist recently stated that one of the impacts of global warming would be shorter winters for countries like ours.
The last week of November and first week in December readily brought that to mind as temperatures in my part of Nova Scotia, on more than a few days, hovered in the double digits.
Lawns seemed to beg for yet another clipping and teens whipped out their stored, cut-off jeans to pay homage to the sun.
This could come at a price for the lobster fishing industry in ...
