(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 over my head, no one me trying to keep my footprint small was harder than I thought it could be. I'm in over head what do I really need? Tryin' save the planet, oh 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 the challenges, small-scale fishers face around issues of justice. This is connecting to the ocean, part three, equity and justice. What's your connection to the ocean?

(01:04):
When I'm looking at what I'm eating here, fish products, obviously I have some kind of connection that way. And I will say even if in Calgary I do eat fish every day, that's just something I do. Being in Dutchman, I like to eat fish every day, but they tend to be canned. So I look at the ocean as a source of food and I just hope that continues to be a good source of food.

(01:32):
My first conversation would have me thinking all about access.

(01:36):
Hi, I am Paul Foley. I'm an environmental policy professor at Grenfell Campus in Cornerbrook, Newfoundland.

(01:43):
So you are the sub-module lead for one of the OFI'S projects, the access to resources and markets. Tell me a bit about this project.

(01:52):
So this project started a number of years ago when the module started. And yeah, we were really interested in the challenge of access and the complexities of access and what it means to fish harvesters and small-scale fish harvesters in particular, and Newfoundland and Labrador. You know, right now I think it'll depend on which fish harvester, which region you go to, but there might be a general sense that, you know, some don't have enough access, some have access, but the prices are not sufficient to mean that access can be translated into a large enough benefit to, to make a livelihood possible. It really is diverse regionally, but also across different types of fisheries.

(02:35):
And so you said it would, not just, just having access, but also the ability to benefit from that. What does that look like?

(02:41):
Yeah, and that, that, that's really the question that helped I think define this module is the difference between sort of a formal access, you get a quota versus okay, what does it mean to have it and, and what does it, what, what's needed to turn that quota into an actual livelihood where you can pay the bills and pay a mortgage and that sort of thing. So obviously you need the ability to actually have a sort of a right to access the fish in a, in a basic sense, in the traditional sense, economists in particular focus on a, you know, license for example or quota, but then, you know, one has to have a, the particular technology and vessel. So that increasingly, you know, means quite a substantial investment in terms of a vessel. Many of the fisheries of its crabs, shrimp in Newfoundland, they're often prosecuted by relatively large small-scale fishing vessels.

(03:30):
So 35 feet, 45 feet, some 65 feet, and you know, and these are a million bucks, 2 million bucks these days. So it's, it's a significant investment to just to be able to turn that license or quota into a benefit. And then you also need labour. You need a crew, you know, and, and many fishing communities, you know, it was traditionally mostly family based. Families today are smaller. More children are encouraged to go away from the fishery and get an education. So some harvesters might have to go further. Our owner-operators might have to recruit further afield to man a crew, and that's before it's even sold, right? So then you have to find a buyer. And the processing sector has its own set of complexities and geographic patterns. And obviously there can be tension between buyers and sellers in any industry.

(04:19):
And the fishing industry in Newfoundland, it's historically been, you know, periodically quite contentious. If you are around this spring and summer, you'll have seen that upfront and, and very clear what it could mean when, when they're not on the same page and when there's conflict over prices. And Newfoundland also has a particular social, I guess, political regime of collective bargaining in prices, which is fairly unique, where the fishing union and, and the processors bargain for prices. And if they don't come to an agreement that it's, you can see stoppages like you did this year. So, and then the processors need to find their own market, right? So much of the fishing in Newfoundland is commercial, internationally exported to fish. So small-scale fishers in coastal communities are linked to these international markets, which can also be very volatile in terms of prices pressures and standards.

(05:12):
So the ability to make a living in the fishery today, it's very different from the image of a, you might see in, in media about a traditional small scale fishery and remote areas, but it's very modern if you will and, and internationally connected and a lot of different elements, right from, you know, the, the complexities of insurance and professionalization, fish harvesters today need to go through training and safety training and, and other training to even get on board. It's, it's not like it was say, 30, 40 years ago where anyone could jump on, a boat and work as a deckhand. So there are a lot of layers of, you know, factors, institutional factors that impact access to the ability to actually engage in the fishery and the, the ability to actually benefit from it.

(05:58):
How do you decide on what that looks like? You know, who gets what, who benefits, things like that, how do you approach that?

(06:05):
The actual decisions to distribute fish are with, in the Canadian context currently with, you know, the minister of fisheries and oceans, but I think where we as researchers can help is to provide a lens that can identify the complexities of access, you know, who lives in various regions, what their current access relations are, what access challenges they might face in terms of market and labour and capital, and provide frameworks that could be sort of filled in with different information that could then inform governance response. So that could be provided to departmental ministers or deputy ministers and that sort of thing. We haven't gotten to that point from a long-term perspective. I think the framework could use a lot more testing. You know, the bottom line with distribution though, that can be challenging. And it's this tension between the desire for a technocratic solution that can tick a box and say, this group should get a resource in this group, shouldn't.

(07:07):
So questions of equity and social justice can be thorny, of course, and be subject to struggle and, and debate. But I think what our work, I hope does is that it shows that we don't, or we shouldn't just completely remove ourselves from those questions, right? And I think that's where a focus on purely economic efficiency or pure biological conservation can sort of gloss over the needs of society, the needs of different social groups for decades, where social considerations were taken into account were basic economic indicators around efficiency. Does it maximize profit? Does it, you know, result in financial optimization which are fairly vague concepts in and of themselves, but the minute you bring in questions of equity or distribution, those are completely separate principles of organizing and governance and decision making. So I think historically and in some areas currently that it's quote-unquote easier to just have efficiency, because if you can do a financial analysis and say, well, that's gonna work out okay, you can ignore what the distributional effects will be, whether, you know, whether it means the quota will likely eventually be sold to quote unquote more efficient enterprises larger scale enterprises, for example.

(08:25):
So yeah, distributional access is fundamentally a more challenging thing to measure as well. Right. And I think that's, that's why some economists and some politicians and policymakers prefer not to address it because there is this sense that you're picking winners and losers even by efficiency principles. I think you're defacto picking winners and losers because some of the outcomes are fairly predictable.

(08:51):
What would that look like to have the fisheries be more equitable in the future?

(08:56):
What it could look like is, you know, relatively geographically dispersed, small scale low intensity, low-carbon emitting fisheries around coastal communities that are again, you know, dispersed rather than, you know, high energy, high-intensity fisheries. So, you know, quote-unquote better for the environment, but also creating the basis for, you know, coastal communities, coastal livelihoods, many of these fishing communities are, you know, an economic pillar of these regions. So without the fishery, many of them will be much more vulnerable. And, you know, fundamentally, I guess the question might be, you know, who cares if they, if those disappeared? And it seems to be a lot of people do care. There's also, you know, cultural heritage that comes out of those places. There's also knowledge about the environment in terms of the, the people who interact with it and the ability for small-scale fisheries to become players in, in terms of stewardship and you know, knowledge around managing the fishery and, and enabling local co-management and management at the local level.

(10:04):
Is part of it also just having more voices included in those decisions?

(10:09):
Yeah, I think so. You know I think part of the challenge is that we don't know enough about that diversity. We don't have it documented where fish harvesters have taking some control or been given, you know, some authority over some of the, the practices that they do. But from talking to fishing associations and, and partnerships with them, we know that there are these experiments underway. Some have ended and, and are old and, and are no longer taking place. Others are still in practice, but we just don't, from an academic perspective or research perspective, we don't, I don't think we've documented enough of that diversity of how, how the fisheries of Canada and Eastern Canada are actually governed. It's easy enough to look at the Fisheries Act and look at the main policies and, and much of the fisheries are shaped fundamentally by those licensing regimes, quotas, re regimes.

(11:00):
Those are fairly clear in terms of a top-down perspective. But there are, you know, I think plenty of cases where fish harvester associations and groups have lobbied for better access have lobbied for some further control and been successful in doing so. But I don't, I, yeah, that, I don't think that's documented enough for us to give enough credit to those efforts. And there are obviously efforts that have been unsuccessful where voices have not been heard or continue to not be heard. And I think that that's very clear if you talk to many fish harvesters and associations as well.

(11:37):
You know, in reading some of the research, you know, some was on policy, and I'm just wondering about like, the role of policy in equity in in fisheries. How does that play into it? Is part of the solution about changing policies?

(11:50):
Policies are, are, are absolutely critical to, I guess, the current structure of fisheries, right? They, you know, many of them, even those that were say traditional and pre-state or not governed by federal or provincial entities are now under provincial jurisdiction in Canada, for example. So, and much of what, you know, the small-scale fisheries in Newfoundland and Atlantic Canada in particular, much of what defines them is also in policy in terms of the owner-operator fleet separation policies, for example. So, you know, the small-scale fisheries and, and policy go hand in hand, they are, they co constitute each other. So, you know, moving forward there, you know, policy's gonna be a part of things one way or another. And I, you know, I think the integration of social science information are around questions of like equity and distribution of benefits. If those are gonna be taken seriously, they need to be informing policy.

(12:52):
And so there needs to be a recognition. And already in, in federal policy in the last several years, there has been some changes at the federal level that turn some of these policies into legislative recognition. So changes in the fisheries Act recently, for example, enable the minister to consider social and cultural factors more clearly. It doesn't require him or her to consider social equity, but having some language changes actually opens up a door for an opportunity for them to consider social and cultural factors such as equity. And that's a different layer than policy because policy can exist outside of legislation in, in some sense, right? So, but policies are front and center of many of the key issues and challenges of, of the fishery. So, you know, many of these solutions will need to work its way through policy.

(13:50):
If I could just ask a simple question of like the project you're working on now, the access to resources and markets. Why does it matter to have this kind of research being done?

(14:01):
The ultimate question is who benefits from this thing we call fishing? And you know, we know if you look up United Nations statistics, you know, there are millions upon millions of people around the world who benefit from fishing. We also know that there's been policies put in place and practices put in place that threaten the foundation of these fisheries, whether it's the ecological basis, biological basis in terms of overfishing or the access that people have to fishing. The most predominant example is the policy tool that's often referred to as individual transferrable quotas, which in academic terminology is often seen by critics as this neoliberal tool that tends to benefit those who have large amounts of power and capital. There's a lot of research showing how the institutionalization of ITQs around the world, starting in the 1980s had resulted in a lot of dispossession of, of access for small-scale fish and communities where entire fish disappeared from some communities, right? Because access was consolidated into 70 or, you know, more urban centers and, and corporate control. So really what's at stake is what kind of fishing there will be for the future and who benefits. And I think that's significant, especially in an era of climate change where things and ecosystems will be changing, which will put pressure on those who currently have access. But yeah, I think what's at stake is what kind of fishery will there be for the future and who benefits.

(15:36):
Next, I would discover that equity and justice issues aren't new in the fisheries. While I was in Bonavista, I made a quick stop in Port Union to get a little history lesson.

(15:46):
I'm Edith Samson I'm the executive coordinator with the Sir William Ford Coaker here at each foundation. So we are I guess we're the people who manage and look after the Port Union National Historic District, which is the only union-built town in Canada. So Sir William Ford Coaker started the Fishman's Protective Union, which was started in 1908. And from that they started a company called the Fishman's Union Trading Company, and they were looking for its headquarters and they bought this piece of land here, which was the south side of Catalina Harbor. And they went about sitting up their own town. So hence the Union built town, I guess it was a social experiment social justice experiment and trying to help the fishermen actually have cash in their hands. Prior to that, it was more of a truck system where the fishermen would've been a kind of beholden to the merchant.

(16:41):
They would've went fishing in the spring, got all their supplies from the merchant, and then in the fall of the year they would settle out with the merchant. So it was very much a cashless society. And so what Coaker wanted to do is really have the fishermen be paid for their work and their labour and actually have to choice to go buy their supplies wherever they wanted to buy that, rather than beholden to one particular merchant. And so that's what he set out to do, and to give a fisherman a voice with the starter of the Fisherman's Union that was the whole premise, I guess, of giving the fisherman a voice.

(17:17):
And he was in St. John's to start with rights, and he came out here and, and around what, what year was that?

(17:23):
He was born in 1871 in St. John's. And actually he held his first strike when he was only 13 years old. He was working on the docks in St. John's as a young boy, and they were loading the boats to get the salt fish to market for the merchants. And he thought that they should be getting a better wage, so he had all the other young boys to go on strike with him, and they did. So you can imagine a 13-year-old leading the strike at that age and going up against 40, 50, 60 year old men. And so the company he was working for saw that he had leadership skills and they encouraged him to go back to school. And he did. And then they put him in charge of a store down in Pike's Arm, which is down in the Twillingate area.

(18:06):
And while he was here, he became friends with a lot of the fishermen and he ended up buying his own store, but there was a bank crash in Newfoundland around that time. So he went and bought an island and he went farming then for 18 years. And what he would do in the wintertime is he wanted the other fishermen to learn how to read and write. There was a lot of illiteracy in Newfoundland around that time. And so he would teach night school at the Orange Lodge in Herringneck and he would teach the fishermen how to read and write. He thought they should know what the price of fish was because many of them didn't realize the price of fish and how it really tied, I guess, to their family economics. So from that, he came up with the idea for a Fisherman's Protective Union.

(18:51):
And so he brought together a bunch of fishermen at the Orange Lodge in Herringneck in 1908 to discuss the council for the Fisherman's Protective Union. And he wanted to make changes so that would improve the lives of fishermen. And that winter, once they signed a first council on November 3rd, 1908, he went around the East Coast, Newfoundland, whether it would be by dog team, boat, walking sled, however they could get around to the other communities to talk about setting up a council for the Fisherman's Protective Union. So within a couple of years, they were operating the Fisherman's Union Trading Company and renting premises downtown St. John's. And the population of Newfoundland around that time was around 200,000 people. So within a couple of years they had 30,000 members for the Fishman's reunion, and the merchants were getting very concerned about him and wanted to get him outta St.

(19:45):
John's. So they didn't wanna rent any premises to him in there. So he needed to find a place that was a nice port and he knew he had to pick a community that was on the south side of Cape Bonavista. Bonavista Bay freezes in the wintertime. Trinity Bay had a little bit more flexibility in winter. So this was the south side of Catalina Harbor, and there was a small Scottish room that owned the property here. So they ended up buying this property and setting up their own town and called it Port Union.

(20:15):
Was there any kind of struggles when they were creating the town? Any kind of things that happened that got in the way?

(20:21):
There hasn't been really anything that came up about them with the town. I think Coaker just wanted to really push through, I guess his the change for the fishery and making sure that the fishermen benefited. And I think that's more where his issues came from, rather than him building a town. And he got involved in every aspect of the fisherman's lives. And once he started the town and he realized that he couldn't make the changes that they wanted to make in the fishing industry just by having a union, that they also got into politics. And so Coaker ran the Union Party that later formed the coalition government with the liberals when we were a country, and he took the portfolio of the fisheries minister. And while he was there, he brought in some fisheries regulations and he was very interested in, I guess, making the fisheries sustainable.

(21:11):
And what we're trying to do currently is, is trying to make the fisheries sustainable. So look, you're looking back at like 1910, and here's this man who's trying to bring in some fisheries regulations that's going to make our fisheries sustainable for the future, and bringing in standardization for the fishery and, and calling of the fish so that it's graded and the fishermen can get the best price at the market for the product they're bringing in. So their livelihood is improved, but also making sure that fish is not being dumped. You know, like back then it would've been dried salt cod, which was Newfoundland currency, really at that point, if you have it and it's not dried properly and it's going to a warm climate, of course it's going to spoil. You're gonna have to throw that fish away. And of course, that's not sustainable. You know, you, you wanna have a sustainable fishery, you wanna be able to ship that product and you're gonna get the best value for, for that product. And that's what he was concerned about, is making sure there was a call, there was a standardization. He even went and wrote a circular letter that says how to split your fish, how to cure your fish, to make sure that all the fishermen understood that this would benefit them at the end. And this would be, you know, a sustainable fishery.

(22:26):
Something that I wanna touch on a little bit is that justice piece. We talked about it a little bit earlier, but tell me about why justice matters in the, in the fishing industry.

(22:36):
For a lot of us growing up in Newfoundland, we've all been tied to the fishery one way or the other. And I guess my family's no different than anyone else. I grew up in a, a fishing family have all kinds of family that still participate in the fishery. And sometimes, you know, you think about how unjust, you know, sometimes the, it could be the regulations, it could be the way that they're paid. Sometimes it's just the way that they're treated as second-class citizens. And when you look at what Coaker was trying to do and trying to give the fishermen a voice, I think it's important. And I know that sometimes when you look and it's Newfoundland fishermen and some people might see the bigger fishermen, but you've got small inshore boat fishermen who probably don't have the loudest voices. So the justice in that has always been important to me.

(23:26):
And I guess I think about kind of, you know, the work you've been describing is maybe having a history lesson, a good way to kind of inspire some change.

(23:34):
I hope so. I really think that history is either gonna teach you don't do that again, or if history says, you know, this is why we're going to do a certain thing. So I think history is always important. There's always lessons to be learned.

(23:48):
Finally, I would learn a bit about some concerns fish harvesters have around rules and regulations in the industry.

(23:55):
I'm Lil Saul. I'm a commercial fishing deckhand and owner of Roots and Wings Fish Company, which is a social enterprise in St. John's, Newfoundland.

(24:05):
I wanna talk, start talking about your, your research. So you just finished your, your master's in science and your thesis was part of the too-big-to-ignore partner project informing governance responses in a changing ocean. Tell me about the research you conducted.

(24:20):
So the research I conducted was focused on improving the viability of the small-scale fisheries in Newfoundland and Labrador. And for a long time there's been a lot of governmental focus on growing the growing vessel sizes and rationalizing the fleet. So reducing the overall number of fishing boats and making each one of them bigger so that each one can be like more economically viable. At the same time, Canada has recently become a quote friend of this document called the Small Scale Fisheries Guidelines, which is an international document promoting the human rights and dignity and all these different principles of small-scale fisheries globally. So my question was how does this fit into how does this fit into fisheries here in Newfoundland and Labrador? And so I went around and I asked 46 different fish harvesters in this province about these different principles and which ones were being implemented strongly and which ones where a lot of work needed to be done.

(25:20):
And kind of how the Canadian government could really live up to, I don't wanna say commitment 'cause that's a strong word, but it did recognize the document and at the same time has committed to a lot of principles in that document through other policies and strategies like the blue economy strategy, which has recently been unfolding. And then even in the Fisheries Act, there is language that kind of aligns with the small-scale fisheries guidelines. So we wanted to know really where Canada could improve on implementing that and where they're already doing somewhat of a good job.

(25:52):
And so you, you had talked to these fish harvesters and what were some of your findings when you talked to them?

(25:58):
So there's definitely a long way to go. I would say it was interesting because I found certain findings, I should say during my research. And then also I've discovered a lot like since becoming a fish harvester in this province. Like I used to fish in The States. So my background was there and I found the whole environment and legislation, regulatory environment of the fisheries here is very, very, very different than my experience back in The States. When I was doing my research, I found there was major gaps between what the actual legislation and policies around the fisheries were stating and then what the harvesters were experiencing on the ground level. So for instance, with consultation and participation, DFO consults, harvesters on what the quota should be. So a quota is the amount that a boat can catch in a certain season and also on the season time.

(26:50):
So when a season can open and close beyond that, there's very little consultation. So if the government is working with other ocean industries and planning out ocean territories, like oil and gas can drill here and fish harvesters can't fish here, there's very little consultation with harvesters. Harvesters feel like they're being, especially small-scale harvesters, a lot, a lot of rules and regulations which are limiting them in what they can do in their enterprises. While these bigger industries are from the harvesters' perspectives, kind of being able, to have free reign over, over the ocean and having way larger impacts. So another major principle was human rights and dignity and equity and equality, which aren't totally, totally discussed in fisheries policy, but they are discussed in a lot of other laws in Canada. There is a lot of discussion of like equity inequality and human rights and dignity.

(27:41):
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 because of different rules. Like for instance, when they're staining for let's say herring and they can only bring in a certain amount and then they're being forced to actually dump dead fish overboard while on offshore boats, they can keep every single fish that comes aboard. They're allowed to keep it fishers feel that that is not only disrespectful towards their own human rights and dignity, but toward the dignity of like the sea and the fish.

(28:12):
What were some of like the feelings from these fish harvesters that you were talking to? Were they mad, were they angry? What, what sort of feelings were they having?

(28:20):
A lot of the fish harvesters are very mad and fed up with everything that's going on. And that was even last year. This year it's become a lot, lot worse because of everything that's been going on with the snow crab fishery. The price of snow crab was down, the processing monopoly had total control over like every stage of the negotiations that were going on between harvesters and the processors when they were discussing like what the price should be and bargaining over what the price should be. Harvesters made an effort to tie up and not go fishing to try to get a better price. And it nothing came of it. So we postponed our season for six weeks, which put a lot of people in financial trouble. It was extremely stressful. Everyone was very anxious. And this is over a billion dollars in raw material landed the previous year.

(29:07):
So this was a major event for like Newfoundland and the government, the provincial government when this was happening, said that this is out of our hands, this is just like a market issue. And so they took zero responsibility or accountability. So everything that I was like realizing during my research basically just unfolded this spring. And it made, it made me realize like on a whole nother level where these harvesters are coming from. 'cause I was also fishing personally, it completely and totally overhauled my personal life. It produces a lot of personal anxiety because we're on trip limits, we're on the processing processor's schedule. So I could like get a call right now during this interview. We're going fishing, get your stuff. And like, I have no schedule. We should be fishing like every day, but because we're on trip limits and we can only go one trip a week and the processor determines when that trip is, it take not only takes us like a long time to catch our quota, but also we have like no set schedule as to when we're going.

(30:04):
So yeah, this spring has just been extremely stressful for harvesters and everything that they set in my research. Like for instance, that the fisheries overly dependent on snow crab, that processors have total control. All of this is just totally unfolding and coming true and I'm also experiencing it firsthand myself 'cause I now fish here. So one more thing I wanna say about my research. The most prominent thing that I realized this spring throughout this snow crab crisis was the lack of cohesiveness between what the federal government is saying and what the federal government is doing. Because I feel like most of the like the provincial government has a really, really huge impact on the fishery bec through the processing. 'cause They regulate the processing and the federal government takes very little responsibility for what happens on shore. So they're essentially in the Fisheries Act, they do say protection of the inshore fleet.

(30:58):
They just added that in 2019, but they're not really doing anything to protect that because that's completely tied in with what's going on on shore. And also when you talk about the well-being of harvesters, which there is language DFO does use language like that in certain policies. There's very little to be done about that as well because well-being is so tied in with the corporate control and the stress and anxiety that this entire crisis has caused because of corporate control and just the total lack of autonomy that we have to determine what price we sell our fish at, which is one of the most fundamental aspects of fishing. When you come in, you sell your fish. How stressful is it that over years and years and years, fishers feel that they're being undermined on the value of their products because of the total control of the merchants that they have over the fishery. So it really just leaves harvesters with a feeling of lack of autonomy, lack of dignity and lack of human rights.

(31:50):
And I, and, and so as far as saying the price, that's the, the who sets the price on the fish or the crab?

(31:57):
So it's supposed to be set by the price setting panel, the provincial price setting panel. And there's bargaining committees between the FFAW, which is the union that represents fish harvesters and the, the Association of Seafood Producers. So ASP, but a lot of harvesters during my research said that this is no longer an effective method or maybe never was, because the corporate processors still have total control. 'cause They have essentially a monopoly. They're controlled mostly by two companies. So it's not really an effective method because harvesters don't really have much bargaining chips. Like they can say, oh, we're not gonna fish. That was our bargaining chip this year, right? We're not gonna fish, but it didn't work. Harvesters still have to go out and catch something or the producers will just import crab and start producing and they'll still make money. So they really don't rely on us, whereas we rely on them in a big way.

(32:50):
If they don't buy our crab, we're legally not allowed to go to Nova Scotia to sell it. Now if you eliminate many minimum processing requirements, that gives us a lot more bargaining chips. But until you eliminate that, then we essentially have no bargaining power. So while you have this process set up to bargain between harvesters and producers, there's really nothing that fishers can use to bargain with. They still have total power and they base it on market research, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But consistently boats in Nova Scotia are getting a better price than boats in Newfoundland.

(33:22):
During my visit to Newfoundland, I talked to some fish harvesters and many echoed what Lil Saul said, one vocal advocate for small-scale fisheries is Ryan, a fish harvester from Petty Harbor.

(33:32):
The only thing I like more than fish is talking. So welcoming the wheelhouse of a boat here. Now, it started when I was a little boy and grew up in fishing boats and I grew up here in the same wharf, catching sculping, catching dabs. And that's when I developed an instinct that I wanted, I knew I wanted to always become a fisherman.

(33:50):
Ryan talked about many concerns including trip limits.

(33:54):
Right now, some of the major processors as the big get big and the small gets smaller, they have the monopoly or they're getting them, they're gaining the monopoly on the industry. So they give us individual quotas. And because we were fishing further offshore and now we're right back to being forced to fish in whatever weather. Once they give us the small window to go, 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 when they fished on the Grand Banks and Dorries, they risked their lives. We're fishermen. We take, we take calculated risk, but sadly, a lot of times it don't work in our favour. So that's why, that's why these trip limits really don't work. It's a, it's not only a matter of being taught up, told when or not to go, someone controlling you. It's a safety. It's a, it's a major safety concern in our industry.

(34:35):
So what's your connection to the ocean?

(34:38):
Well, I grew up in New Brunswick, probably about 20 minutes from the ocean. So I spent a lot of time on the coast or at the beach as a kid. And then in my early twenties, I moved to Arctic Quebec along the coast of the Hudson's Bay in a little village called Inukchiwak. And we were like right on the ocean. And then on Baffin Island again in Pangnirtung, right on the ocean. So I've always, always been very close to the ocean. I find it very calming to be close to the ocean. I don't know whether it's the sound or the smell or the whole feeling. Yeah. But it just brings me a little bit of peace and calmness.

(35:35):
Next time on connecting to the ocean, I learn more about safety risks, legal protection and risk prevention.

(35:43):
The research I've read says participatory approaches to fishing safety are the best way to go. So the question is how do you do that?

(35:52):
The problem is that even when the weather's perfect, fishing is not a safe occupation, right? I mean, this is, this is a moving platform in a changeable environment. Everything off of your boat is potentially risky, right?

(36:07):
I would say globally speaking, maritime jurisdiction is really one of the most challenging parts.

(36:15):
Connecting to the ocean was produced by Michael Bartz with production assistance from Evan Andrews, Truman Osmond, Nantakorn Chayangkul, Vesna Kerezi, and Ratana Chuenpagdee. Special thanks to all the guests who gave generously of their time and expertise.

(36:30):
I'm tryin' to save the planet, oh will someone please save me?

(36:39):
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.