Global Courant 2023-04-27 14:00:00
A week and a half after Wine Harbor Fisheries was ordered to pull its baby eel or glass eel nets out of the water, poachers are at work on the Liscomb River, 100 miles from Halifax on the east coast.
“Our net should be here, not an illegal fisherman,” said Brenda Golden, co-owner of Wine Harbor Fisheries.
Golden looks under the Liscomb River bridge, where a fine-mesh net, supported by floats, extends into the black foaming water.
She has no doubt it’s there to catch hugely valuable, tiny, translucent “glass eels” that are shipped alive to Asia and farmed for food. They can fetch up to $5,000 per kilo.
Hoping to have the net removed, Golden’s daughter reported it to the local Department of Fisheries and Oceans on Tuesday.
“She contacted the DFO here in Sherbrooke. As far as I know she was told they are on strike and won’t be coming to look. This net could be full of eels that are dying. Where is the conservation? Where is the DFO doing its job? ” ?” Golden said in an interview at Riverside.
Fisheries officials have not responded to questions about this incident. Nor to questions about the impact of the ongoing Public Service Alliance of Canada strike on its ability to curb the widespread illegal harvesting.
Reality check of the fisheries officials’ union
Meanwhile, a union official representing striking fisheries officers said they do not patrol rivers.
Scott Mossman is the local president of the Union of Health and Environment Workers, which is part of the Public Service Alliance of Canada.
He says that while many fisheries officers are essential to protecting the safety of Canadians, they only monitor shellfish-infested areas to make sure people don’t get sick.
“Although fisheries officers usually patrol to enforce conservation measures and laws for fish species, that is not currently a function considered essential to the safety and security of Canadians. Therefore, patrols to enforce closures and other conservation and catch laws are coercion is not being done during this period of the strike,” Mossman said in a statement to CBC News Wednesday night.
“While there are concerns about interpersonal violence within fisheries, such as illegal glass eel fishing, fisheries officials have no power to enforce public safety, except (whatever) was directly related to their authority under the Fisheries Act. That role falls to the police jurisdiction, such as the RCMP.”
Poachers are at work on the Liscombe River, 170 kilometers from Halifax on the east coast (Paul Withers)
DFO minister says it is illegal
Wine Harbor is one of nine commercial glass eel license holders and two Indigenous groups in the Maritimes ordered to cease operations over what Federal Fisheries Secretary Joyce Murray called a “massive escalation” of illegal “poaching.”
Illegal harvesting has been carried out by non-Aboriginal and non-First Nations Indigenous groups with DFO-approved plans to practice a moderate subsistence glass eel fishery.
‘It is regrettable’
Wine Harbor had landed just 33 kilograms of its 1,000 kilograms of glass eel eels when the fishery closed.
“Last year we paid almost a quarter of a million dollars to workers. This year they have nothing. We made nothing,” said Golden.
It was one of her employees – Shelley Bowen – who came to the net this week during an interview with CBC in Liscomb.
“It’s definitely in the cards for glass eels. It’s unfortunate,” says Bowen.
She is one of 20 people who lost their jobs when Wine Harbor closed. It will be difficult this year to get enough weeks to qualify for employment insurance.
“I’m not that happy, and a lot of other people aren’t either. I think it’s unfair,” she told CBC News.
‘I don’t understand why we can’t still fish if the illegals are fishing anyway. They only hurt the permit holders.’
Brenda Golden is a co-owner of Wine Harbor Fisheries. (Paul Withers)
Elsewhere, illegal glass eel fishing continues
The closure ordered by the DFO has also not stopped illegal glass eel fishing elsewhere in Nova Scotia.
Time-stamped images of eelfish on half a dozen rivers were provided to CBC News and DFO by Atlantic Elver Fishery, another commercial licensee operating south of Halifax.
They fish the East River near Chester, which is used by fisheries personnel to monitor the health of the stock.
Shelley Bowen works at Wine Harbor Fisheries and came to the net this week during an interview with CBC in Liscomb. (Paul Withers)
South Shore-St Margaret’s Conservative MP Rick Perkins asked Murray about it in the House of Commons in Ottawa on Monday.
“No one from DFO has been on that river. And if you can believe it, DFO enforcement proactively called the permit holder this morning to say they won’t be monitoring the river,” Perkins said.
“We closed the fishery to protect public safety and conservation,” Murray replied.
“But enforcement for the closed glass eel fishery continues, so we are working to reduce the amount of illegal fishing and will continue to do so here,” she said.
Mi’kmaw leaders are silent
The Assembly of Nova Scotia Mi’kmaw Chiefs has remained silent on the DFO’s decision to close the glass eel fishery, and on the role of indigenous harvesters in the illegal fishing.
Fisheries chief Gerald Toney of the Annapolis Valley First Nation declined to comment when recently approached by CBC News.
Four Nova Scotia First Nations had “interim agreements” with DFO for a Department-approved moderate subsistence fishery in 2023. They shared a 1,000-pound limit taken from the allocation of the eight non-Indigenous commercial licensees. We’koqma’q First Nation in Cape Breton also has a commercial license.
