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

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Well, I'm in over my head, no one told me trying to keep my footprint small was harder than I thought it would be. I'm in over my 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?

(00:32):
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 what a sustainable future could look like in the fisheries and the role of vibrant coastal communities in conservation. This is connecting to the ocean, part five, future and vision. What's your connection to the ocean?

(01:05):
Well, my connection to the ocean is that I love to be on the ocean, in the ocean and, and I really love the different ocean. So Indian Ocean, we have been at the South Pacific and here in Newfoundland with the icebergs. It's, it's really a wonderful place and it's always, we, we it's always amazing to be at the ocean.

(01:33):
In looking at the future, I want to learn about some of the barriers facing small-scale fishers around recruitment and retention.

(01:41):
My name is Maria Lopez-Gomez, and I'm a postdoctoral researcher with the Ocean Frontier Institute.

(01:48):
Tell me about the work you're doing with OFI and the retention project.

(01:52):
We were interested in issues of recruitment, training and retention of people in small-scale fisheries in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador, on the belief that there's a looming labour shortage in the province, given all the policy changes that took place in the 1990s and early two thousands as a response to the collapse of groundfish stocks. So what happened in the early 1990s, the government decided to downsize the, the fishery sector, including the small-scale fishery sector. So they created all these policies that were aimed at restricting access or reducing the number of people or vessels fishing out there. And they did this in a slower process. For example, there used to be core and non-core fishing licenses. Non-Core fishing licenses were for part-timers, people who didn't do that as a main job. And what happened after 1992 is that non-core licenses, once a person retired or passed away, these non-core license would go back to the government and it wouldn't be given to anybody else. So little by little they were getting rid of the part-time work, just leaving the core licenses. That's one, one of the many examples. There's also the combining policy. So that means when a fish harvester has a cut license, for example, and they want to fish more cod, they would buy another license for COD as well. And that would become one big license and it would be more costly for another fish harvester to buy it later on.

(03:32):
You said there's, there's this, this labour shortage that you're worried about. Is, is that because of an aging population? Is that what's going on?

(03:38):
There's two things going on. So first of all, the number of fish harvesters is declining. For example, in 2000 there were about 19,000 fishers registered in the province. And in 2017 there's there were about 9,000. So half the number and the other side of the story is that the average age of these fish harvesters in 2017 is 50 years of age. So there's not many people under 35 who are coming into the fishery. And there's several reasons for that. First, there's the reason of well, because of social changes, for example, people are not as encouraged to go into the fisheries. For example, fishers who have a license don't encourage their children to go into fishing as much as they used to do to do it. And this is because of all the changes that happened in the 1990s. The second part of it is that once you have a job crewing in a fishing vessel, it's very difficult to stay in the fishing vessel with a decent wage and to move up to become an owner-operator. So an owner, owner-operator is someone who owns a fishing license and also a vessel and fishes their own license in the water. And this is a way to become stable in the fishery if you become an owner-operator. So it's difficult to jump from crew to owner-operator. I would say these are the two stages that kind of become a barrier for people to be stable in the fishery.

(05:03):
Yeah. So you're on that the, you know, the family side where maybe some of the kids are leaving, they're going to study at university. My understanding is in your research you talked to some of these communities and these families, right? About how they felt about that or their perceptions?

(05:16):
Yes. From 2020 to 2021, we launched an online survey because it was during the pandemic for fish harvesters, and we had a response rate of 330 people. About half of that population who answered our survey were owner-operators, and half of them were crew. And from the owner-operators, we asked them if they encouraged their children to get into fishing. And about 57% of them said that they did not encourage their children to go into fishing, even though they own a license and it's easier for them to pass their license to their children, which is very interesting. So this is the social part where people are not saying, Hey, I can keep my license and give it to you later on when you grow up and you know, I teach you how to fish and you can come out fishing with me, and then I give you my, my fishing enterprise.

(06:03):
On the other side, we also heard from owner-operators 30% of them who answered the survey said that when they finish fishing, they would prefer to sell their fishing license to the person who pays the highest price. So that tells us a little bit about what people are thinking of with their fishing licenses. We asked them even if they wanted to keep the license in the community or for the highest bidder in the community, but 30%, which is a high percentage set, that they would prefer to sell it to the highest price. So not necessarily to community members or to family members. So that means that this fishing license would be accessible to other people.

(06:40):
What do you think would be the reason for that? Is it just because they just need the money, they're not as financially stable or why, why, why are they selling it to the highest bidder?

(06:49):
Exactly. So some of the things we've heard as well is that owner-operators have to struggle a lot to stay afloat. They have to constantly deal with different policies. Changing quotas from year to year, changing seasons from year to year. And some of them cannot even make enough money to hire crews or to hire crews in a stable way. So they have trouble just maintaining their business because in the end, they are business owners, so they don't have anything to rely on later on when they retire. In our interviews, something that was mentioned was that it would be nice for fish harvesters to have a retirement fund only for fishers, because that way they don't see selling their fishing license as a way to retire or an investment to retire. The other part that we saw that why owner-operators maybe don't want or cannot give their enterprise to their children is that usually, their children have a hard time just staying as crew.

(07:46):
Because there's one rule here that started in 1997, which is the professionalization system where it takes five years to become a level two fish harvester. So there are three levels, apprentice level one and level two. And to get to level two, you have to fish for five years full-time, which means that you have to earn 75% of your income from fishing during the fishing season, which goes from May to October. And most people could usually do this, but that's not enough to make ends meet for the whole year because that's too little of a wage. So people need to do another job. So it's difficult to fulfill this requirement and to become level two. And if you're not a level two, you cannot own your own enterprise. So what has happened is that sometimes older fish harvesters who own their fishing license and vessel want to give a ready to pass on their fishing enterprise, but their children are not ready to receive it because they're not level two.

(08:47):
When you were talking with some of these people in these communities, you know, how did they feel about these changes? What sort of emotions or feelings were coming up for them?

(08:53):
They're very angry, frustrated. They don't feel represented in many ways. They feel like people who make decisions do not know what's going on firsthand with them and how the fisheries works. In fact, the first policies didn't take into account the women in the fishery or other people who work in the fishery may be children as well, because the social reproduction of small-scale fisheries in Newfoundland & Labrador has been a family enterprise or a lot of people going on into it. And it hasn't been an individual just fishing. When you put in place policies that just take into account that this is an individual job and you don't take it to account the rest, then you're forgetting about the community and about all the people that are involved in the community. And I think you can still see the results of those policies back in the nineties.

(09:48):
Now, unfortunately, in our data, we also see the differences between men and women because first of all, there's very few women in the fishery. There's always been very few women. In our survey, about 13% of respondents were women and they earned less than men. Most of the respondents were only crew. We also obtained data from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada on who owns fishing enterprises. And only 4% of fishing enterprises in the province are owned by women. So there, there's very little participation of women and there's always been a high participation of women in the fisheries today and before, but not in a formal way, in an informal way. So now it's even more difficult to get into the fishery. And if you put the gender aspect into it, then it, it gets difficult because women everywhere in the world have difficulties managing a work life, right because of the socialization of gender, what is expected of women. But if you add into these the aspects of a fishery that can be unpredictable and sometimes unstable, then it just becomes difficult for people to, to make a livelihood from the fishery.

(11:01):
You said they're involved in an informal way. Can you maybe elaborate on that? What does that mean?

(11:06):
So what some scholars have called them have called women or children working in the fishery in the past, the onshore crew, because they are in charge of maybe preparing the bait or preparing the nets, even preparing food for the crew or making sure that everything is okay for those people who go fishing in the vessel. So they're part of the crew.

(11:30):
So it sounds like it's very much a part of their, their culture and their community. Right?

(11:34):
Exactly. Yes. everybody who fishes is very happy fishing . They tell me that they love nature, they love having their own hours owner operators that is, but even crew members, they told me that they really like it. You don't have to work the whole year. You cannot work the whole year because of weather reasons, and the season is not open the whole year, even though it has a lot of hard things with regards to stability, it's also a very rewarding job. You grow up fishing, people were telling me that basically, that's where they learn to play in the, on the water. So it's part of who they are. Other fish harvesters, I asked them if they wanted to retire and none none wanted to retire. And they say they will sell their enterprise, but when you talk to them one-on-one, most of them say, I want to fish until I die . Which I think it's, it's very interesting, you know?

(12:29):
Yeah. And I guess like generally you know, we're talking about policy in the future and you know, your work with the, this, this OFI project was part of it. Like were you making any sort of recommendations on policy changes? Was that part of your research?

(12:43):
Yes. So because of the things we heard from fish harvesters, in fact, they know all the answers . There were several recommendations. For example, there used to be a fisheries loan board before the nineties, which this board would be for fish harvesters to buy their license or to be able to maintain their vessels. So they, they would loan give a loan to fish harvesters for that. Now, it's very difficult to get a loan to buy a fishing license. I mean, the bank won't give loans just like that. But this fisheries loan bo board before the nineties did give loans just for fish harvesters. Another recommendation was maybe subsidies for youth to come into fishing. There's been a lot of accounts of fish harvesters that go alone, fishing maybe for cod. And it's difficult for an older men to go out there and fish by themselves.

(13:40):
There's safety issues involved going by yourself. So if there's youth learning and it's subsidized by the government or subsidized by another entity, it would be interesting to see those changes. You know, someone who can try working in the fishery and maybe likes it and wants to keep going. At it. Another recommendation was to implement a retirement fund for fish harvesters and to make different rules regarding employment insurance and the professionalization system. So employment insurance, because it's a very touchy subject, some people are very thankful for employment insurance because they can only work for two, three months a year. And then the rest of the year they, they are on employment insurance, but then other people are suffering because they cannot get enough money from fishing to even get to a threshold to receive enough money from employment insurance the rest of the year.

(14:36):
So there needs to be some kind of change regarding that. Then the other one that I talked about was the professionalization system. So what's difficult for people is to earn 75% of their income from fishing in order to comply with the rule of full-time fishing for five years to go up in the professionalization ladder. So what I've heard people is like, it shouldn't be the, the rule should change because sometimes you only fish for three weeks from May to October, and you don't make enough money. And if 75% of your income has to come only from fishing, then that's, that won't be good for the rest of the year. So that's why there's so many people in the first level in the apprentice level, in our survey, 45% of people were apprentices, and they've been apprentices for 26 years. It's not that they don't know how to fish, so there's no incentive of moving up the ladder because they cannot do it. They cannot fulfill that requirement,

(15:35):
You know, small-scale fisheries and, and these communities in Newfoundland, you know, it seems like there's a lot of barriers there for them to be sustainable and successful. Right. Why are they important to keep going and to foster? Like, why, why is that important to the province and even maybe to the climate, things like that?

(15:52):
I think there are several aspects. First of all is the community aspect. Just having vital communities in coastal rural areas that are far away from city hubs or from other services that they need, hospitals, et cetera. If they wanna thrive, you need an income, you need some sort of income. And small scale fisheries is a great way to bring income to your community. And also there's a cultural aspect. People grow up fishing, they're proud of fishing, they wanna continue that. So it's something that fulfills them, and not many people have that experience in the world.

(16:30):
Next, I will learn about one small-scale fishing community's vision for the future.

(16:35):
I'm Rachael Cadman. I'm a postdoctoral associate at Dalhousie University in the marine affairs program. So I work on a project that thinks about, we call it visioning the future. I work up in Nunatsiavut, which is a land claim area in Northern Labrador. And so I work with a couple of different Nunatsiavut-based organizations in the fishing industry, thinking about what they want the future of the industry to look like.

(17:09):
Yeah. And, and what does that, what does that research look like? So you're, you're talking with people, you're surveying them.

(17:15):
Well, basically the whole project is one big long visioning project that took a couple of years to do. It started because there were a group of stakeholders in the fishing industry, the co-management board in the region, which is called the Torngat Joint Fisheries Board. They did this big literature review looking at the last 200 years of commercial fishing in the Labrador Sea and for Nunatsiavut but as a region. And when they did that literature review, they found that the fisheries are managed in a sort of crisis-by-crisis way, that they haven't had time to really sit and think about the long-term kind of goals for the fishing industry. So they wanted the chance to think about that. So they've looked at the past 200 years and they're like, well, what does the next hundred years kind of look like?

(18:14):
So they got together with the Nunatsiavut government, which is the land claim government for the region, and the Torngat Fish Producers co-op, which is a group that owns a couple of licenses and they run the processing plants in the region. And those three groups kind of together decided that they wanted to take on this visioning project. So my job was to help facilitate sort of how to think through that future. And so what we did was, over the course of a couple of years, we did a series of interviews with people in those organizations and with fishers and with processing plant workers and community leaders. Community leaders in Nunatsiavut are called AngajukKak. And so we spoke to them as well as kind of representatives of their communities. And we did a series of interviews to talk about what the future might look like, and the whole thing ended in a workshop.

(19:14):
So what were some of the themes that came out within that vision?

(19:17):
We developed kind of four big goals that people kind of across the industry all had for the future. The first one was sustainable harvest. So it was really important to people that, you know, their grandchildren would be able to continue fishing. And so maintaining kind of governance and management of the fisheries that would allow that to continue to happen. We found that community wellbeing was really important. So people talked a lot about how the fisheries could benefit communities as a whole. So employment is coming in and people feel a lot of pride and busyness even in the communities out of the fishery. And then we had political autonomy. So the fisheries were seen as being really important for Nunatsiavut, but so asserting itself as a political entity and in terms of like their rights as eating meat and their treaty rights through their land claim agreement and what they think fisheries are able to do to kind of advance those rights.

(20:26):
That's three, oh, it's just economic well-being or economic development for the region. So the importance of those kind of employment things, but also the processing aspect was really important. So there's processing plants in Makkovik, and those were really important as employment opportunities, but also for kind of reinvesting larger profits back into the communities. So political autonomy, sustainable harvests, economic development and community well-being were these kind of four big goals that people had for the future of the industry. And then we took a look at like exactly what does that mean for the future of the industry.

(21:08):
Just a quick note here. This was a remote interview and we had a connection issue, so you might notice a slight change in the quality. What were some of those, those details that you were looking at?

(21:17):
Once we established those four goals, we hosted a workshop, and the workshop was for partners on the project in the new government and the Torngat cooperative and the Torngat joint fisheries board, the co-management board. And we spent the first day of that workshop sharing stories that people had about things that they felt positive about the industry, so things that they were proud of, of the current industry or things that they remembered from the past, like fondly. And as people were sharing stories, we started kind of pulling out these different ideas of what made the industry important and what people kind of thought was successful or what success could look like for the fishing industry. And then on the second day, we broke them into four breakout groups, and each group was assigned one of those high-level objectives. So we had a sustainable harvest group and a political autonomy group, and a community wellbeing group and an economic development group.

(22:32):
And each of them came up with a story of the fishery 50 years in the future that was going to be managed for that one goal. So it's the year, I think 2072, and the fishery is being managed for community well-being, what does it look like? And so people had in the back of their minds these stories of success and what kind of values they held in the fishery. And then they were kind of telling these new stories about the future. And once we had four different stories, then we came back together and shared those stories and kind of saw, you know, if there were trade-offs between different parts of them, if there were synergies if there were things that mattered to us more than kind of other parts of that vision. So we developed one synthesized vision of the future based on those four stories.

(23:28):
And the big thing that came out that, that everybody kind of agreed on off the bat was that in 50 years, they wanted Nunatsiavut to have a hundred percent control over the fisheries allocations in the Nunatsiavut coastline and the region adjacent to the land claim agreement with a hundred percent access, then they could start to really think about how to manage according to, you know, the values and the priorities that they held. So that idea of access was a big one. And then the next thing that they decided was really important to them was that you need knowledge and local knowledge would be prioritized in decision-making. So alongside like Western science, you would get from, you know, your regular monitoring programs, they also wanted to think about how eating meat science and eating meat knowledge would affect management and that was going to be equal to any Western science.

(24:39):
You mentioned that in part of that is also the Inuit science as well. And that was one of the themes that came up that, that were very important. So, so yeah. Why, why is that important to this, this future vision?

(24:51):
So when we talk about indigenous knowledge, indigenous knowledges are generally defined as being specific to a place based on history on the traditions and the cultures and the values that are held by that people that develop over time and allow them to make the types of decisions that they make, right? They're justice systems, their education systems, all of those things are kind of part of what an indigenous knowledge system is. So part of this is about sort of the data that comes from local long-term observation. So knowing about seasonal changes and being able to recognize populations over time or size of catch or size of species over time, like those types of changes that come from really long-term observational data are really important. And part of the vision was about making sure that that makes its way into the scientific information that we have and informs decision-making.

(26:00):
But it was also about those kinds of bigger, broader ideas about the values and priorities that are held by communities and how those would affect decisions that are made. So you might think about like, if you have a Canadian governance system making decisions about fisheries, they're really kind of top-down hierarchical decision-making. Somebody is at the top and they sift through information and they will make a, a decision about it. Whereas traditional Labrador Inuit governance looks a lot more sort of consensus-based. You have elders who make decisions for communities for various reasons. You have this sort of other system of decision-making. So you might think about how do those governance characteristics make their way into the ways that we make decisions about fisheries.

(26:55):
Okay. And, and as things are right now, like that input, are they able to include that in the discussion right now or is it still very much top-down?

(27:03):
It's still very much top-down. Yeah. Fisheries management decisions are still made by DFO, Nunatsiavut, you know, only part of the larger region. And so DFO makes most of those decisions that Nunatsiavut does have. The Torngat Joint Fisheries Board which is a co-management board. So that's got appointees from the federal government, the provincial government, and from Nunatsiavut. And they kind of jointly create recommendations on how fisheries should be managed in the region. And so that looks a lot more like a kind of consensus-based process. And they're able to bring in other types of information. They do their own science and they talk to communities, and that helps them to create those recommendations. But they are only recommendations the minister still has sort of the final control over decision-making. So part of that final vision that they created was that the joint fisheries board could be the final decision-making power 50 years from now that you would have the torn get joint fisheries board as the one who was making final decisions with DFO and the Nunatsiavut government submitting their recommendations to this more collaborative body.

(28:28):
Was there anything else, Rachael, like around that vision that you think is important to mention?

(28:34):
The point of this project was really to think about like an ideal or desirable future for the industry that kind of gave this we called it like a beacon, like something that is something to aim for in the long term future and gives the stakeholders in the fishing industry an idea of what they collectively want that future to look like. Our next steps would be to think about how do you go about achieving that over the next 50 years? What will need to happen? This project, we called it partnership-driven research because it was really driven by the relationship between like the academic partners who were involved and the community partners who were involved and that they owned the project and, and drove it from the outset was like essential to it working the way that it did.

(29:33):
Lastly, I learned about coastal Newfoundland communities and conservation with someone who is all about community engagement.

(29:39):
I'm Dawn Mercer and I'm a senior oceans biologist with Fisheries and Oceans Canada here in the Newfoundland Labrador region. I always say I work with the ocean side of fisheries and oceans. I know a little bit about the fisheries, but I can tell you more about the oceans themselves. My group that I work with is Marine Planning and Conservation. So we deal with things like the establishment of marine protected areas in around the province. We look at things like marine environment quality, looking at the stressors on our marine environment and how we can help mitigate some of those stressors. And we also look at things like marines spatial planning. My work particularly deals with engaging communities on coastal conservation matters. One of the initiatives that I lead right now is actually called the Coastal Community Conservation Opportunities Initiative. Every single descriptive is in that name, so I just call it the Triple COI. But within that initiative, the idea is to go out and talk to coastal communities, talk to the residents in the coastal communities, not just those who are actually physically engaged in the ocean, but it could be residents who's lived there all their lives and knows, certainly knows more about that area than what I will ever glean gathering baseline information.

(30:45):
And so you're, you're getting information from them to do research then? Or what does that look like?

(30:50):
The idea behind it is to kind of figure out what are the priorities of the communities with regards to conservation in their coastal areas. So what did they wanna see conserved or protected? We didn't want to be seen as a government agency like DFO and say, Hey, we really like your area. We think we can protect it and here's how we're gonna do it. My way around it right now is to go and talk to the communities, get their priorities first, use that as our point of discussions in moving forward in talking about the best fit of conservation measures. So when I say that it's not just looking at what DFO can offer, but what, what else is out there? What can Environment Canada provide? What can Parks Canada provide? We even look at what the province has in terms of conservation measures what indigenous groups are doing, and we even look at local management areas.

(31:34):
Do you find you're asking a lot of questions about the community to them first? Or what does the process look like?

(31:39):
Yeah, the process is varied. It really depends on the community we're going into and how involved they've been in conservation in the past. So that's the very first step that we take in before we go anywhere, is we look at the community as a whole. We try to figure out who are some of the key players that we need to speak to. Obviously, fish harvesters always come to mind, but then there's the retired fish harvesters. And again, I mentioned the people who have lived there all their lives, they know a lot as well. We try to engage the youth in the area. We always contact municipalities first to see if there's an interest. Would you like us to come in and talk about conservation? What do you know about conservation? What are the perceptions? Because right now, there is a lot of misperception when it comes to conservation and protection, especially in our marine environment. So we often find that part of our role in terms of talking about conservation protection, trying to find priorities and looking at best fits of measures, is alleviating some of those misperceptions around conservation itself.

(32:35):
And what are some of those misperceptions that people have?

(32:39):
Put a plain and simple, it's coming into an area and we're gonna close everything , there's not gonna be any fishing left. You can't go down on a beach and have a boil-up. You're not allowed to go berry-picking on the barons. But conservation really is, is much more, it can be no-take zones, but there are so many measures out there that means so many different things. They could be, they could be short term they can allow activities or exclude activities. It really is dependent on what the community wants to see happening in their area.

(33:06):
Okay. And and so does that involve, like, do you bring the people together in one place and talk to 'em in person? Or is it, how does, what does that look like?

(33:13):
So yeah, we had targeted engagements with folks fish harvesters, retired fish harvesters. We made a point of going into the schools to speak to the youth in particular. 'cause they have a very unique voice. And what we have found is that their voice actually marries quite nicely with the voice of some of the residents older residents in their communities, which we thought we would have some opposing opinions, but we did not.

(33:35):
So what are some of those things that the young people are saying that are similar to the older people?

(33:40):
Well, you know, when we go out and we talk about conservation, the question is what are some areas or species that you would like to see protected and conserve and why? We always need to know why behind it. And that why doesn't always have to be scientific. It could simply be because someone likes to have a boil-up on the beach every Friday night with their family. So social, cultural, those aspects really come into play with regards to the students. It was really interesting because they were talking about, you know, they like to go down to the beach and hang out with their friends. So there was a very big social aspect to that. But then we had some really keen students and they were talking about birding. They like to hunt birds. And they, they brought up some really keen observations about, you know, a declining population of this particular bird, and this is why they think this is happening.

(34:24):
So then when we started talking to some of the older residents, we would ask them, so this is kinda what we heard earlier. We didn't say who it came from. We just said, this is what we heard earlier. What's your thoughts? And their, their thoughts were coming together basically. It was amazing. The students were really keen on the idea of conservation. They were keen on the idea of conservation while still being able to utilize the areas that they were talking about. We've been all through the province now and in various communities, big and small. But I think one of the tie in factors that we are hearing as much as we talk about species and particular places, it always comes back to the sustainability of the indoor fishery for Newfoundland Labrador. This is kind of one of those overarching pictures that we're starting to see emerge from our public engagements. You know, the sustainability of inshore fishery really is the sustainability of communities. It's the livelihood of people, but not only their livelihoods, it's their culture. You know, it's their reason for being so, and that's particularly important here in Newfoundland and Labrador.

(35:20):
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And yeah, it would make sense that, you know, those communities have those strong ties and, and the traditions that they have. So they want to protect those as much as they want to protect the, the species. And do you find, like with the young people especially how do they feel about kind of the future of, of Newfoundland conservation, those kinds of things?

(35:38):
I think it's quite positive, to be honest. And it was a little surprising to me. I know growing up I was always like, well, when I get ready for university, I'm gonna be going off land off, off to the mainland and coming back and what have you. A lot of the students we speak to, they don't wanna leave. They wanna stay here in newfound Labrador. They wanna see the prosperity of Newfoundland Labrador. And as much as they talked about conservation in terms of species habitats and things like that, we also had talks about conserving the heritage of the coastal communities in Newfoundland, Labrador, IE rebuilding some of the stages, the houses, the buildings. It was another one of those little spins that when you go talk about conservation, where your conversation can land anywhere, and to me this was a very positive spin.

(36:21):
You mentioned people being concerned about certain areas closing, like is, that's a difficult conversation to have, right? So it's-

(36:27):
A very difficult conversation.

(36:28):
Yeah. How do you, how do you navigate that?

(36:29):
Yeah, it is a difficult conversation. And again, the, the misperceptions of what conservation and protection can mean to folks. In the past, sure, DFO has been seen as going out and we close this fishery and we close this fishery, but it's much more than that. When we talk about conservation and protections, you know, the crux of it is, is talking to communities and finding out what they need and what they want, making them part of that process so that they are empowered, they have a bit of ownership over the information that's coming out, the information that's being received. They're part of that decision-making process. And I think that's, that's kind of the role that I play with, with my community engagements. And I always keep that in the back of my mind, that as much as I'm going out and talking to people to glean information from them, I feel like I'm giving them a bit of power as well to be part of this process, to be part of the decision making. I'm building the trust with them, and it's that trust at the end of the day that's gonna lead to that best measure, that best conservation measure that's gonna be the best fit for them.

(37:26):
Yeah, that to me seems like that's the most productive way to go about it. That you're involving the communities and, and gaining that trust so that they can work together, right?

(37:33):
It is, it's about gaining the trust and it's also about them being more informed so that, again, if they have an issue or concern, the more informed they are about it, the more informed their decisions, their decision's gonna be made as to whether or not they're forwarded or against it. And that's perhaps the biggest take home for me when it comes to engagements is that I need to give them as much information as I can so that as we go through the process, they're completely involved 110% right from, again, the background information on a project, right up through looking at the best fit of measures to the actual implementation. And it's the trust that is built from that, that once a project or a policy or an initiative like the triple COI, once it's implemented if you have that trust with folks, that's gonna proceed even further.

(38:18):
So then you start looking at things like monitoring. People want to be involved in the monitoring of this conservation initiative. They wanna see what the outcome is gonna be, how is this working? How's it not working, because that could also be the case. But then the other side of that is enforcement. DFO can't be everywhere at all times. So if you have the citizens engaged in this process and they have a vested interest in it, then they're gonna wanna be more involved in the enforcement of it. I strive very hard when we go into communities to create a citizen. Science essentially is getting the communities involved in the hands-on type of work. And for me, that kind of, I've realized it serves two purposes, . One is it helps fill the coffers of baseline information in a community. There's a lot of things that we know about coastal areas.

(39:04):
There's a lot of things we don't know about coastal areas. But then the other side of that, of course, is we're not everywhere, you know, so we can't see where all the whales are. We can't see where all the seals, the puffins and what have you are. So we actually have a program called Tell Jack. Jack is an actual scientist. People always ask me, who's Jack? And I was like, he's a scientist, he's a marine mammal scientist at DFO. And the Tell Jack program allows us to engage the community. So they're on a beach, out on a boat in the water where have you, and they see a whale or a seal or any marine mammal, even a sea turtle. They can actually tweet it to Jack, let it know where his location is, you know, approximate size, all that wonderful stuff. And for us, it engages them, it gets a conversation going. So we have a tagline now called the Conversation on conservation. When folks see their own community members out doing work, they're gonna ask the question, what are you doing? Why are you doing that? What's this all about? And then our initiative comes into play, then we start talking about the triple COI, we start talking about conservation and possible measures. And again, it's just all about that relationship and trust building for us.

(40:07):
And I guess one thing that comes to mind just generally is like, I mean, I know you've been working at this for a very long time, but you know, what, what got you involved in conservation work and community engagement?

(40:18):
Back in my days in university, I had one prof in particular Norm Cato, and he's actually a professor here at Memorial University, and I did a coastal geomorphology course with him, and I just really got interested in it. And then I did another course with Dr. Staveley was his name, Michael Staveley. And he was very much on the public engagement side of things. And I just really took an interest on how those things got married together. And then as I went further on in my educational career, I met another professor, Dr. Farmer, and he was a conservationist to no end and all about the ocean. When I first started out, when I first graduated, there really wasn't a lot of talks about conservation in the marine environment. It was more about the resources, how we utilized them, but not necessarily how do we conserve them and sustain them. So he really turned me onto that.

(41:09):
Okay. Yeah. And, and do you feel like that conversation is changing now? Are we talking more about that?

(41:14):
I think a hundred percent. I think people see now it, it's not about just the resources in terms of the environmental aspects of the o of the, the resources themselves. But now it's tying in the economy. It's tying in the sense of communities, the culture, the heritage. All of these things are now being tied into sustainability and is being tied into conservation. It's a much broader topic now, which it needs to be. We do a thing here in Newfoundland, Labrador, World Oceans Day. You may or may not have heard of it. But World Oceans Day is actually an international thing. It's a celebration of our oceans, and we take quite a lot of pride here in involving our communities in those celebrations. And one of the things that we do is involve our detachments and our fishery officers who are literally the face of DFO in the communities.

(42:02):
People know who these people are, they see them every day. They see them on the whaf talking to fishermen and what have you. So we've been able to engage our fishery officers in communities to have events and activities and celebrations of erosions. It could be presentations presentations on the fisheries, on conservation itself, species at risk. They have barbecues, they do beach cleanups, like just really fun things to get the youth engaged. And I think that's absolutely phenomenal because it's getting them excited, it's getting excited about the ocean. But then to piggyback on that, we need to be talking to the youth and gaining what their information is on the ocean, on the coastal areas that they reside in, how they wanna see it used for future.

(42:43):
And, and so what, what sort of things are you, are you hearing from the youth that, that they're bringing to you?

(42:47):
They're talking sustainability as well. It may not be always in the same sense of when we say sustainability of our fisheries or sustainability of our resources. They're talking about sustainability of their communities, which ultimately relates back to things like conservation, right? How do we conserve this so people can use this in the future? You know, they talk about their resources, they talk about areas and spaces, but they talk about their heritage. How do we conserve our heritage of fishing in Newfoundland laboratory in our community? We have one gentleman in particular, he very, very passionate young man. And he said, you know, I walked down to the beach every day and every day I pass five sheds who are about to fall off their stilts. And he said, why don't somebody go and fix those? And obviously, I didn't have an answer for it, but then he answered himself.

(43:34):
He said, if we fix those and we made them look really, really cool, and we put up plaques about what they mean to the community and what they were used for. He said, wouldn't people come see that stuff? And I was like, you're a hundred percent right. A hundred percent right. So that's what I mean when I getting the youth involved and getting what their thoughts and ideas and feelings are. Yeah, they wanna hunt. Yeah, they wanna fish, they wanna do things that their fathers and grandfathers did, but they wanna protect the actual cultural and heritage of Newfoundland and Labrador as well.

(44:05):
What's your connection to the ocean?

(44:08):
Well, I dive in the ocean. I used to a lot and I like playing in the ocean and feelings of awe, seeing an octopus and getting our own shellfish to eat, go out quite a few times during the summer and get prawns and crabs and go for a swim each evening. So yeah, yeah, we have a strong connection to the ocean.

(44:45):
Next time on connecting to the ocean, I end my visit by looking at how locals connect to the ocean, and I'll explore the transformation that needs to take place around small-scale fisheries and governance.

(44:57):
But the whole point was to try to get the youth to care about the ocean that, you know, to kind of bond with it, to care about it, and therefore wanna protect it.

(45:09):
And so right away, if we're talking about connecting young people with oceans and oceans and climate and all wrapping together, now they're like, oh my god, that fish came out of the ocean. They start to connect. Okay, now I see why oceans are so important. My food just came out of it.

(45:26):
So how do we see our connection? And, like it's really awakening. It's like, how do we open up this channel that will connect us to the sea?

(45:35):
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. 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.