(00:00):
In Over My Head's connecting to the ocean season was made possible with support from the Ocean Frontier Institute, module I and Memorial University.

(00:08):
Well, I'm in overhead, no one told me trying to keep my footprint small was harder than I thought it could be. I'm in over my head, what do I need? Tryin' save the planet, or will someone please save me? Tryin' to save the planet oh will someone please save me?

(00:31):
Welcome to In Over My Head. I'm Michael Bartz. While connecting to the ocean, and exploring small-scale fisheries and governance. I want to learn more about ocean health and sustainable development. I was also curious about the different types of wealth these coastal communities have. This is connected to the ocean, part two, health and wealth. So what's your connection to the ocean?

(01:05):
My connection to the ocean is that myself, I'm from Vancouver, so the water is next to where I live, and it's a huge part of, you know, the landscape and the scenery as well. So for me, it's pretty close to home. And of course, at the last thing I want is to see it disappear and not be the same as it was when I, when I grew up,

(01:25):
My first conversation had me thinking a little more holistically about ocean health.

(01:29):
I'm Rob Stephenson. I'm a research scientist with the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans. I'm also an affiliate of the University of New Brunswick and a few other universities. I've been in the research related to fisheries for several decades. Started in the mid-1980s with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. And at that time my job was stock assessment. How many fish are there of a certain species to be able to set quotas in my time, my career time with DFO, I've seen a change in the emphasis of and considerations of stock assessment from an emphasis originally on the productivity of the target resource herring or another species to greater a consideration of more diverse ecological aspects, productivity of the target resource and other resources biodiversity within species, among species, trophic level diversity, and increasingly habitat considerations of habitat in diverse aspects. And these are the elements that we think of now in ecosystem considerations. We're thinking more broadly about fishing and other activities. The work that I've been doing with Ocean Frontier Institute is in putting those ecological aspects together with economic, social, cultural and governance aspects to be really holistic, to take a, a full spectrum sustainability approach, an ecosystem approach, an integrated management approach. And that's where we are now. We are thinking about the holistic ecosystem and people in it.

(03:15):
Yeah. And so what would that exactly look like?

(03:18):
Well, some of us associated with this research have a vision for that. And that is that we would be considering the ecological, economic, social, cultural and governance consequences of management scenarios at all times. That we would be taking a more cautious approach to the decisions related to those that we'd be looking longer term at the consequences, not of next year and the year after, but of 10, 15, 20 years down the road or leaning on indigenous concepts, seven generations in the future. You will have observed, a change nationally and internationally about this. I mean, look at things like the UN sustainable development goals. They're very broad. Look at the changes in our legislation, the development of Canada's Oceans Act in the last couple of decades, the recent changes to the Fisheries Act, the changes to the sustainable development legislation, even the environmental assessment legislation. It's becoming broader.

(04:19):
I think the writing's on the wall that we need a more holistic perspective. So you'll, you'll hear in interviewing others in, in relation to to the Ocean Frontier Institute research that we're trying to achieve several things. We're trying to achieve ecological sustainability. We're also trying to achieve a variety, a diverse variety of economic returns or values. Also social and cultural values and objectives, and also some institutional or governance objectives. So the work that I've been doing recently is on trying to put those on the same kind of a, into the same kind of conversation. We have been siloed in the past. We've had groups dealing with the ecological aspect, what's the productivity and how much is safe to take. We've had others dealing with the economic evaluations of individual activities. We've had others dealing with the social and cultural consequences of those activities. And I believe it's time to put these in the same sort of a structure so that we can evaluate scenarios more fully.

(05:30):
Do you feel like you've been making progress in getting those groups together?

(05:34):
Absolutely. I'm pleased to have been part of groups that have done the research to articulate what we consider to be the spectrum of objectives of what we call full-spectrum sustainability. So this includes the ecological objectives of productivity and trophic structure of biodiversity of habitat and ecosystem integrity, the economic objectives of viability and prosperity of individual activities, of livelihoods, the creation of jobs and so on. Importantly, of the distribution of access and of benefits, who gets the benefit from these resources and of the regional economic benefits to community. Also, increasingly, the social and cultural objectives, health and wellbeing, the sustainability of communities indigenous and other cultures and heritage, the ethics of our activities and the institutional or governance objectives, the legal obligations that we have, including those two indigenous peoples. The elements of good governance structure and the effectiveness of our, of our decision making. This I suggest is the holistic or full spectrum list of sustainability values, sustainability objectives. And I think we need to create systems in which those are discussed upfront more fully.

(06:57):
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And, and it seems like, you know, when I think about the way that we're addressing climate change and the concerns we have, it seems like a lot of people focus on the ecological side and maybe they don't focus so much on, on the social side and the governance side. Right? That seems like more of, a new conversation that people are having.

(07:16):
Yeah, we're having these conversations. The conversation is changing, but the conversation tends to be in silos. The challenge of climate change is a very, very good one. And I think in that regard, we should be looking down the road and, and I think the concept of foresighting is important there. If we think down the road 20 years, what would happen? What position would we be in if we reacted as we have done in the past year after year, where would we end up in 20 years? And is that where we'd like to be? Or is there a preferred outcome for our communities or for our industry? And if there is a preferred outcome, which I think there would be, what changes should we make today to increase the probability of reaching that preferred outcome? So many of us are dealing now with trying to do research around this notion of foresighting. How can we do this with industries, with communities how can we encourage people to think down the road and to differentiate between status quo, reactive approaches and something more proactive.

(08:22):
And so what does that research look like?

(08:25):
Well, that's, that's in the formative stages, but it looks like having workshops with communities and with groups and encouraging them to think ahead, encouraging them to think of what are they seeing now in terms of the changes? What changes do they expect? Where would that push them? Where would you end up and where would you rather be? And and I think this, this also encourages coastal communities, for example, to think about what have been the unintended consequences of management in recent decades. Many of our communities have seen things happen that have not been intended. And this is because we've been managing, in my opinion, in too isolated a way. We've been managing different activities in different ways. Right? And I think if we were to look at our communities as a whole, coastal communities, assuming that we want to have vibrant coastal communities going forward, and that's what I'm, what I'm hearing in, in coastal Canada and elsewhere in the world, then what would a vibrant, viable community mean 10, 15, 20 years down the road?

(09:27):
And how can we get there? I think one thing that is worth focusing on here is on the, the sort of economics of our activities in recent years. I think it fair to say that we've been focusing too much on the viability of existing or remaining enterprises. And we've not been discussing the distribution of benefit to a broader range of interested parties to coastal communities. There's a trade-off here, I think between the generation of wealth for individual gain and the distribution of that benefit to coastal communities to help viability in the long term. I like the idea that is prevalent in indigenous thinking now about thinking seven generations down the road and about taking an amount that is sufficient. And I think that we could learn a lot from that. We would be in a better state now if we were to think that way. That is very different from the economic model that has featured in my career time.

(10:32):
Yeah. And it seems like, like if we're looking at ocean health more generally, when you talk about that, it seems like that that's, that is a healthier ocean potentially. Would you say that that has that in mind? And, and is is planning those seven generations ahead?

(10:46):
I mean, I take a broad perspective of health, ecological health, health of the ecosystem, the productivity, biodiversity habitat, but also the health of our human society, economic values or objectives. We have social, cultural values and objectives that we have and the way we're governing. To have a healthy ecosystem means having healthy, natural resources and healthy human systems. It's a social ecological system. We want a healthy social ecological system. We need to consider it as a social ecological system. I think we know where we want to go, the challenges putting it in place, and it requires governance change. That's the weak link here. We're governing different activities in different ways, different groups, managing different activities in different ways. We need a governance system that looks at at all of these. And I think the way to get at this is through the objectives or values.

(11:42):
What is it we're trying to achieve? We are in a, in an objective-based or outcome-based management system for the most part. So what are the specific objectives we want to achieve? What are the values that communities and that individuals have? And then are we tracking our activities against those we need to manage effectively if we're going to manage in relation to climate change and to social change? That means managing more holistically. It means looking at a broader perspective of sustainability. It means looking ahead to the future and to making wise choices now towards a more sustainable approach. It means looking not only at the ecological aspects of the ecosystem, but of the diverse economic, social, cultural and governance aspects of our system. It means considering not only the economic return from a resource, but the distribution of access and benefits. Who is getting the benefit from these resources? So it means thinking things differently. It needs a more holistic approach.

(12:58):
Next, I would learn about ocean health and sustainable development.

(13:02):
Hi, I am Gerald Singh. I'm an assistant professor and Ocean Nexus Chair in Global Change and Sustainable Development at the University of Victoria School of Environmental Studies.

(13:14):
So I wanna talk about ocean health and how that relates to people and, and those impacts and sustainable development. So maybe tell me a bit about some of the work you've been doing around ocean health.

(13:25):
So I've been working for a number of years on the cumulative effects assessment. So if you think about any time people want to extract something from the ocean or in a coastal area, they wanna do some kind of development if it's extractive or not, even if it's just building piers and, and wharves and hotels and anything. If people are doing something to the environment, they're changing it in some way. And at large scales, you know, landscape seascapes, our developments and our activities on the water don't just occur in isolation. So they can compound, they can build off each other, and that can pose a lot of risk to the conditions in the ocean that people benefit from. And so a lot of my work is, is trying to understand that, trying to understand what is it people are doing, what risks do they pose alone and in combination, especially in ways that are to the I guess disbenefit of people themselves. So really trying to tie all that together.

(14:33):
Do you have maybe kind of a, an example of what that might look like?

(14:36):
Yeah, so I'm doing a lot of work right now actually thinking about disaster risk from development. For example, if we're doing offshore energy development, let's say that's offshore oil and gas. The minute you say oil and gas, people will think spill, right? But I think it's often underappreciated the risk that the spill can pose, partly because we don't think about how that development might interact with the larger environment or other activities. So in some jurisdictions, for example, if you're gonna put out an oil and gas facility you're gonna drill in some jurisdictions that's actually gonna prevent fishers from fishing that area because you, there might be legal requirements, zoning, that kind of stuff. But then if you go out, you do your engineering risk assessment work and you say, you know what, by the way it's built we think a spill is highly unlikely, but it can be really easy to forget that we're in a changing climate that's gonna mean more variable or unpredictable storm events.

(15:42):
And if there's a storm event that co-occurs with a location of an oil and gas drilling site there can be kind of a cascading effect. So things are happening outside of the engineering assessment, right? So you're getting a bigger storm event than you might've thought about before, that could lead to a bigger spill event. And so that's kind of the, the work I'm working on now, thinking about, you know, how bad can it get and kind of who loses. So I think that's kind of a running theme through a lot of my work.

(16:15):
Mm-Hmm, . Yeah. No, that's interesting. So yeah, I guess you, I feel like you have to find a balance between using those resources and, and taking care of them too, right?

(16:24):
Yeah, I know, exactly. And, and to me it's a big distinction between sustainable development and, and conservation. I was trained originally in, in conservation biology, but conservation is largely focused on the idea of untouched things free from human influence, partly because it's kind of where it comes from. It really caters to a more Eurocentric notion of what nature is. Humans are somehow separate from that. But a sustainable development standpoint is that, well, people benefit from use, so we don't want to eliminate use, but we have to think about how to use and how to interact with the environment in a way that's not going to cause other people undue harm and cause future generations from losing out. It is more of a balance piece. It makes it, to me, it makes it much more complex.

(17:14):
Yeah, no, for sure. You very briefly mentioned like even with the oil and gas development, how that doesn't allow fish harvesters to fish in a certain area, right? So that would kind of be part of the equation too, if I'm understanding that just like access as well, right?

(17:28):
Yeah, the access piece is, is a key one. And I think again, underappreciated and, and how we've talking ocean health, how the community trying to understand that and trying to, trying to quantify risk and impact to the environment, we often forget that impacts can come through more, that kind of policy side and access issues, that's a key consideration. And so when like spatial plans get developed for, for development, for example, one of the reasons why it's really key to have multiple kinds of stakeholders involved, because you wanna see, you know, if you put a certain kind of development in area, is it gonna prevent other people or in other kinds of industries, especially industries with strong legacies. Fisheries for example, are often that and you know, will it prevent them from working towards their own livelihoods? I think when it comes to marine health, the two areas that are most prominent when it comes to human health are issues of food security, so nutrition. But then the other one is on issues of toxicity. So pollution and toxicity are, are another key one, and those are gonna be really, really important. And some, some areas, I mean, for some specific kinds of developments, those will be the important issues.

(18:44):
Yeah, no, I think that, and that could also tie in with, with small scale fishing, the small scale fishing industry too, right? 'cause If you talk about food security and, and even just the, the health of, of the, the, the things that they're catching to me that seems like there's a pretty strong connection with those, would you say?

(19:00):
Oh, yeah. No, there's definitely a strong connection there, especially with communities where there are small-scale fisheries that are fishing not just for their own profit, but for their own subsistence. And that's gonna be the case for a lot of coastal communities. There's some emerging work that I'm getting involved with that's really looking at coastal food systems in, in British Columbia with First Nations and also northern communities. So, I mean, when it comes to, I guess, ocean health, there's, I think, special considerations when it comes to indigenous and First Nation communities in a, in a lot of places, especially in areas where there is there's still a really sizable part of their food systems that are coming from kind of more traditional and subsistence means. So that, you know, small-scale fishery is very, very important with the catch from the water and northern systems, they'll call them country food systems.

(20:00):
So that's when they're, if they're hunting seals, if they're catching fish, if they're hunting caribou, there are special considerations because, you know, what happens in the, in the ocean and climate effects, climate effects, issues of like industrial fishers and, and other kinds of developments that can put harvesting and sm small scale harvesting. And, and risk has massive implications. Because if people can't rely on the country food systems and more subsistence and local forms of food, they can start switching into more commercial food systems in remote areas. That's really bad because they're usually a lot more expensive. The nutrient density is a lot lower, so you're usually gonna get more calories from, you know, sugars and things like that, things that can survive transport to remote areas, things that you can kinda ship in bulk. So you're a lot less likely to have things that, you know, you can get adequate amounts of micronutrients, for example, you're not really gonna get a lot of greens for affordable prices up north, right?

(21:09):
And so if you can't rely on more traditional food systems and you can't rely on local fisheries massive, massive health outcomes for those people. That's, I think, another really, really important aspect of thinking about human health. Small-scale fisheries and development. There's a lot of interest right now to try to understand climate effects on, on coastal food systems. And that usually means people are looking at temperature. So increased average temperature, what does that mean for different fish populations? What does that mean for shellfish? Other things that people harvest? One thing that I've noticed in research I've done here in British Columbia, some work I've done in New Zealand is that sometimes the impacts climate change has, is more relevant indirectly. So climate change yes, it's increasing temperatures, and that's gonna have direct impact on animals in the ocean. So fish, it's gonna increase, you know, it's increasing sea surface temperature that can make it less livable for some fish that, you know, there are optimal temperature tolerance might be a bit lower, but what climate change is also gonna do, it's gonna make precipitation more variable.

(22:24):
It's going to lead to, you know, faster spring melts and things like that. So that's gonna increase magnitude timing and of runoff into coastal waters. So that's potentially gonna have massive changes to nutrient dynamics in coastal waters. You're potentially adding more and more pollutants. So especially if you're close to agricultural areas and add a lot more sediment to coastal areas because you're just erosion. In some cases, that's more important. So if you're thinking about shellfish, so let's say there's an oyster bed that local people rely on, and then if you have conditions changing so that you're having a lot more sediment coming into the area, that could drastically change the bottom conditions for, for oysters for example. There's that, but then there's also issues of other kinds of development, right? So again, if you have like a small-scale fisheries community and they rely on some fish populations close to shore, of course, you have to worry about how fish might move because of temperature effects.

(23:34):
But you know, what, if there's some development proposal out in, in the ocean or, or fishing industrial fisheries get access to an area and actually they're, they're fishing down the population that you rely on. So those things happening at the same time, if you're trying to understand what's happening with the resource as much as you can, you wanna try to get a full picture of what's going on and, and all the things driving it. We can't just think about the kind of metabolic effects or temperature effects because those are the direct climate impacts. Doing research on cumulative effects is really difficult, partly because there's not often a lot of data. And so sometimes that means when you do assessments, you have to rely on, on expert judgment. So you need to convene workshops and things, and you have to think about how you ask, but you have to start asking questions about what changes are being observed. Do we know why? If I'm doing research that's focused on a local area, typically people with local knowledge tend to outperform people with credentials almost all the time. If I'm putting together a workshop and I want to figure out what's happening in some specific bay, I'm gonna be trying to invite locals. So that, that kind of local knowledge is definitely needed.

(24:54):
My next conversation had me discovering the wealth coastal communities have beyond just their natural resources.

(25:00):
I'm Brennan Lowery. I am the manager of Navigate Entrepreneurship Center based in Cornerbrook, Newfoundland, and I'm also an adjunct professor at the Environmental Policy Institute at Grenfell campus of Memorial University. Overall, my research focuses on how communities mostly rural and natural resource-based communities, can take asset-based approaches to enhancing sustainability and well-being overall. I am particularly interested in a couple of specific interventions within that. One being storytelling, how, you know, communities that often have been labeled with a kind of a deficiencies-based story, negative story can turn that around. And, you know, think about alternative stories to tell about their communities and about their sustainability. And separately from that, but, but also related is an interest that I have in entrepreneurship, in thinking very broadly about how entrepreneurial action, whether from a for-profit business or some other kind of entity can help to catalyze those stories you know, that move towards greater self-determination and realization of, of local sustainability goals.

(26:20):
So you talked about that asset-based approach. So what sort of assets might that be?

(26:25):
It really depends a lot on the community. I mean, certainly in the context of coastal Newfoundland, often we are thinking about communities that are transitioning from fisheries to other industries or continuing to, you know, have an active fishery, but also looking to, you know, how local economies can be more diversified. But I'm also, you know, very interested in assets and community strengths that are not only sort of economic in nature. I definitely want to help to broaden the conversation of community development beyond, you know, just economic development. So I'm also very interested in cultural heritage and, you know, again, kind of in the, the context of coastal Newfoundland communities. But, but I think in a lot of other places in the world, cultural heritage is often a very strong asset and a unique piece of community identity that, you know, maybe doesn't get recognized as much as it could or, or sort of isn't valued to the fullest extent.

(27:26):
Do you feel like people are thinking about that in those communities? That they think about culture as being an important aspect?

(27:32):
Absolutely. Yeah. So I've done a lot of work on the Great Northern Peninsula of Newfoundland, which is a really remote region in the northwest portion of the island. And it's got a very rich history for being a, you know, a pretty remote part of the world. It's, it's, it's happened to have all sorts of different groups intersect with its history over centuries from different indigenous groups to Spanish, Basque, French, English settlers that kind of have touched different communities in different ways. For example, I've, I've done a good bit of work with the community of Conch, which is on the Northern peninsula and has a very strong French heritage folks there. And, and, and other communities as well are just trying to figure out how that rich cultural heritage, which, you know, is, is usually pretty well known to locals, how it can, you know, maybe present some new economic development opportunities often in tourism.

(28:30):
But you know, also just to think about how that heritage can be preserved for its own sake as well. I also really am hopeful about local manufacturing opportunities that communities can look to if there are skills, for example, traditional craft skills or some sort of knowledge that exists that could lend itself to some kind of small-scale manufacturing that could be done in a place-based way. There is a really cool place in another community on the northern peninsula called the Dark Tickle Company that's in St. Lunaire-Griquet, which is near L'Anse Aux Meadows, the National historic site. So what they have is, it's an economusee, it's part of the economusee network. And they also make a wide range of specialty jams and tees and all sorts of, you know, kind of boutique products that are made right there and shipped around. So if you were in St. John's and stumbled into a gift shop, you might've seen some of their products. I think there's tremendous opportunity for communities to look more into those sorts of opportunities.

(29:39):
I asked Brennan if Heritage buildings were another asset these communities could utilize.

(29:44):
Absolutely. Actually, it's, it's great that you bring up buildings and built heritage. 'cause I, I think that is often one of the strongest assets that, you know, small communities in, in Newfoundland, you know, can look to. There's a really cool initiative in a community and Gros Morne National Park that I've had some involvement with over the years. And it's at the Bonne Bay Cottage Hospital. So it's in Norris Point, which is right in the middle of Gros Morne. And essentially it's a community-based initiative that has repurposed this old hospital. Back in the day, Newfoundland had this cottage hospital system that was kind of community-run hospital that were peppered throughout the island. And the one in Norris Point was the last one that remained operational until maybe the year 2000 or something like that. And when the Health Authority closed the hospital down and built a new one, local residents petitioned to save the building and keep it from being torn down.

(30:48):
And now 23 years later, it's a multipurpose community space that has yoga studios and health clinics and the communities library and a community radio station. And it has community concerts that are held where local artists will come in musicians and, and musicians from, from all across the country will stop in and play you know, play for, for a small audience. And its main revenue source, I believe is a hostel. So it operates a, a hostile for, you know, travelers. They do retreats for the university, for other groups, and it's all based in that built heritage asset. So that's just one example. But for sure, I see a lot of potential in communities looking to underutilized buildings, especially heritage buildings that have some kind of a, you know, a special architecture or historical significance. And I think there's, there's so many cool buildings out there that communities could look to, to figure out something that they could do with them.

(31:56):
And it's, it's amazing how different community groups can mobilize around that cause of, of restoring a, a, you know, a, a building that's got some sort of significance or some kind of ties to people's, you know, identity or, you know, memories or things like that. That was definitely the case with the, the Cottage Hospital in Norris Point. And Joni Cranston, who was one of the original founders of the group that saved the building, you know, she was a physiotherapist in the hospital, so she remembers going in, and if you ever visit there, she can walk you through all the rooms and tell you who all the doctors were, who were in the different offices, and you know, which babies were born and all, you know, different birthing rooms. And so it's this very visceral memory that people often have. Speaking of kind of adaptive reuse and, and repurposing heritage buildings, I'm also sitting in, in a building that's, that's kind of had a similar history in Cornerbrook, which is where I'm based.

(32:58):
There was an old building that was part of the paper mill Cornerbrook pulp and paper, and it had been abandoned and sat around for 10 or 20 years vacant, and it was an eyesore in downtown. And myself and many, many other people were part of this collaborative initiative to repurpose it and turn it into an innovation hub. And so it was a collaboration between Grenfell campus of, you know, Memorial University, the mill, and the local college, college of the North Atlantic. And now six or seven years later, it's a fully functional coworking space and maker space and event hall. And it's cool to see just all the different things that can happen, especially when people have that, that personal attachment to a building

(33:46):
Learning about place-based development from Brennan made me want to see some of this for myself. So I travelled three and a half hours north of St. John's to Bonavista, a community that has embraced its built heritage in a big way.

(33:57):
I am Mayor John Norman from the town of Bonavista. I run businesses in the community and I chair the regional Chamber of Commerce. I grew up in Bonavista in the late 19 nineties number of years after the cod moratorium. There were town meetings to talk about the concerns around the loss of community vitality and the asset-based development that the town came up with was its built landscape, its heritage from that, a large, not-for-profit called the Bonavista Historic Townscape Foundation was founded and still exists today and is probably one of the largest heritage foundations in the province. And from a lot of their work private business and social enterprise has gotten more involved in the redevelopment to the built landscape of Bonavista. And some of my companies are involved with that. So Bonavista currently has over 1000 built heritage structures.

(34:57):
So these structures date from the 17 hundreds to the mid-1940s, fifties period. We have very significant inventory the largest heritage inventory in the province by far outside of St. John's. And there are a lot of restoration projects ongoing. I myself are tied to about 80 or a hundred restoration projects and properties organizations like the Townscape have done dozens more parks Canada and the federal government the provincial government, they've also done projects. So out of the roughly 1000 heritage buildings, there's about 200 that are restored and utilized right now.

(35:38):
Mm-Hmm, . And, and I guess just for some context, like how, how big is Bonavista? How many people live here?

(35:44):
So Bonavista covers 32 square kilometers though it's most densely packed in about six square kilometers population is about 35 to 3,700. And in recent years, it's on a bit of an upswing. Bonavista is very focused on place-based development. So community identity is incredibly important here. We actually have a department and a new managerial position created to deal with that side of things at the town hall. And it's one of a number of new management positions we've created to handle Bonavista's new development. It is through our built heritage and our unique landscape, a way to attract new residents, attract new business stabilize and enhance the socioeconomic condition of the community. And as a result, it has given the town council itself and management the ability to be flexible and creative when it comes to budgeting. Capital works, public investments, and as a result Bonavista has a good healthy, growing annual operating budget. And it is spent in unique ways.

(36:58):
What sort of ways?

(37:00):
Compared to pretty much any other municipality in Newfoundland, we spend a very high ratio on culture, heritage, and arts. We have multiple operating grants that are totaling in the hundreds of thousands of dollars to local social enterprise with cultural sites, with museum sites, art installations, public art, public beautification. Those are things that a lot of towns our size or smaller struggle with. But we've decided that if the investments are put in place for those, they tend to result in financial benefits and long-term stability for the town, which is good for the town hall and good for the town council and management. The work that we've done is very inspiring I think to a lot of people. I do a lot of speaking tours on rural economic development, strengthening, using the Bonavista model as an example of how you can, I guess, implement unique plans and unique strategies based on the place itself and the existing assets.

(38:12):
And that's what Bonavista has done. Growing up here in the nineties downtown for example, would've been mostly vacant. A lot of boarded up buildings, a lot of out-migration businesses either shut down or downsized. Now we're in quite an opposite situation. There's a tremendous upswing. We have the fastest business startup rate in the province. We have a business incubator space and a business center that's run by the regional Chamber of Commerce. And over the past few years, Bonavista's seen over four dozen new businesses move in open. Other sectors have certainly helped diversify the economy. That was the main focus, and that is my main focus. It is diversification of the economy and stabilization and enhancement of provincial and federal government services in the community. And that's what we have been working on for the last number of years. The fishery still accounts for many, many hundreds of people in the community and their employment, either they are fish license holders, crab license, shellfish license holders.

(39:18):
They work in the processing and harvesting and shipping of that seafood, but the fastest growing sectors tourism, culture arts, and small business manufacturing with export capabilities. So five years ago there was one exporter on Church Street, for example, in Bonavista. Now there are seven and they're exporting to upwards of 20 countries around the world 12 months of the year. So it's I think quite an anomaly for a rural place like ours to be doing this. But again, it's all about that critical mass and building on what you have, there was a shift in the fishery from cod to shellfish fors. It's proven quite lucrative actually. The challenge with the shellfish industry is that it employs fewer people. The labour is not as great. So if you had a processing facility that needed a thousand, maybe now it only needs, I think our processing facility has about 420 people working at it right now.

(40:22):
But crab itself other than this season is an incredibly lucrative catch. And those license holders are business people. And as a result, you do see a, certainly a density of wealth in the fishery that you didn't see with cod that you now see with crab. It's more diversified and the money is more spread out than it was in the cod fishery. So there are pros and cons, of course, to both fisheries, but crab has treated Bonavista quite well thus far. But like any natural resource, and we've experienced it through cod and others, we have to prepare for bad times. So the town has been very, very actively diversifying to make sure that it is the most stable it can be long term.

(41:14):
I think about like the connection to place. Like you've worked a lot on making Bonavista a place that people want to come and live and, and raise their families. And do you feel like that connection to place can help people care about climate change and adapting?

(41:27):
Absolutely. Yeah. It's everything to do with our place-based development here in Bonavista has yes, enhanced community vitality, but it's also, we think and hope and all indicators are, it has enhanced pride of place and not just pride of place in that, oh, you know, the new sidewalks are nice and we're putting up white picket fences on Main Street. Aren't they pretty? And here's the new bushes and flowers, but valuing the more natural already existing environments, the coastal barrens, the pocket beaches, what purpose do they serve? The wetlands, the marshes. People now see these as part of the Bonavista landscape, and we try to talk more about how it affects them, how they connect with those places, what is their family history to those places. And you do have families that have lived next to this particular bog or next to this particular seas stack for, you know, 200, 300 years. So we try to instill a strong connection to those places and then people much more eager to protect them and save them.

(42:39):
What's your connection to the ocean?

(42:41):
My connection to the ocean it's different than lakes. It's vast, it's scary, it's strong. It smells great, it sounds wonderful. It's too damn cold except the Pacific Ocean.

(43:13):
Next time on connecting to the ocean, I learn all about equity and justice in the fisheries.

(43:21):
Really what's at stake is what kind of, of fishing there will be for the future. And who benefits.

(43:28):
I think history is always important. There's always lessons to be learned.

(43:32):
There is a lot of discussion of like equity inequality and human rights and dignity. But then the question was like, how is this being implemented for small-scale fish harvesters? And a lot of them feel that their human rights are being impacted.

(43:45):
We got people that are risking their lives to put food on the table basically. And that's, that's what we've done for years. Wendy fished on the grand banks and Doris, they risked their log. We're fishermen, we take, we take calculated risks.

(43:56):
Connecting to the Ocean was produced by Michael Bartz with production assistance from Evan Andrews, Truman, Nantakorn Chayangkul, Vesna Kerezi, and Ratana Chuenpagdee. Special thanks to all the guests who gave generously of their time and expertise.

(44:11):
I'm trying to save the planet, or will someone please save me?

(44:20):
In over my Head's Connecting to the ocean season was made possible with support from the Ocean Frontier Institute, module I and Memorial University.