July 6th
Okay, I'm off! First trip of my sabbatical, and I'm headed to Moncton, NB, to visit with two colleagues at DFO: Leslie-Anne Davidson, and Monique Niles. Leslie-Anne and Monique have been working on various aspects of the scallop fishery up there for many years, and have been to Maine a few times as well. I'm looking forward to catching up with them.
This first time up, I'm headed through Houlton into NB, and eventually stop in Fredericton, the provincial capital. It's a scenic enough drive, as anyone who has travelled the more northerly sections of Maine will know; miles of spruce trees, wide farmlands, and lots of water. There is entirely too much stream and river territory to think about fishing all of it, but a guy can dream, can't he?
So, after a night at a hostel in Fredericton, I'm headed west to Moncton, and to the DFO offices. Moncton is a small city, situated on the Peticodiac River, and about 15 miles south of the shores of the Northumberland Strait. The river itself is also referred to locally as the Chocolate River, because of its banks; a smooth, reddish-brown mud that belies the geology of the entire region and looks like, well....chocolate. No kidding - from a ways off, it looks edible. Anyway, the City has plenty of good shops for dining and shopping, it's really clean, and - as everywhere in Canada - Tim Horton's is just around every corner. With Wi-Fi, no less, which makes it convenient.
Oh yeah - virtually everyone in Canada is really nice.
Leslie-Anne and Monique fill me in on their work of recent years, some of which is review, some new. The thing that we in Maine and elsewhere know them for is their work in spat collection and stock enhancement. The PECTEN project ran for several years, in three principal areas: Baie de Chaleur, Miramichi and in the Northumberland Strait. The project was a collaboration between industry and science, and is still active to a degree with the Maritime Fishermens Union.
Collections in some areas were regularly over 1000 spat per bag, but not everywhere, so it was a long process of identifying consistent areas. They have developed a robust longline system to support their spat collectors, and part of this hinged on anchors - they finally hit on sections of railroad rail, with flukes welded to them. As for success, they used video surveys to assess standing stock, and they noted increases in the number of scallops per square meter in all sites, between 2001 and 2005. Densities were still relatively low, but the trend was there. For example, in the Chaleur site, scallop density was estimated as below 0.05 scallops per square meter in 2001, but that increased to more than 0.2 scallops/sq. meter by 2005. Given that scallops move, it's not possible to say exactly that the increase was due to enhancement alone, but since more than 70 million scallops were seeded to the bottom over the years, it seems like a reasonable guess.
Reaction by industry has apparently been mixed, with some groups thinking about continuing the work and what to do next, some deciding that the increase in standing stock was natural recruitment, and others who felt that the reseeding sites were wasted space and they'd rather have it for fishing area. This situation of differing opinion sounded quite familiar!
In any event, they and the industry members who have participated have developed a great deal of expertise in many different areas of collections, handling, reseeding and stock assessment. They've got a pretty slick setup (though I've only seen photos and movie clips) for their video assessment, and this appears to have been a useful tool for all involved. Rejeann Vienneau is the man to go to at DFO, for details on the camera system, GPS overlay, sled, and all that good stuff.
The scallop fishery up there runs from April through December; kinda hard to run scallop boats through the two or three feet of ice that forms up there in the wintertime. Numbers of fishermen are much, much lower than in Maine, and the NB coast is divided into several fishing areas, all of which have different seasons. There is no minimum shell height, but rather a meat count, which is agreed up on by industry. The meat count generally runs from about 32 to 52 per 500 grams, depending upon the area. Also, the fishery uses 3.25" rings in the drag (most of them Digby-style), and up to 20' of drag per boat.
Leslie-Anne and Monique repeat some things we'd learned earlier, but bear repeating. Don't seek to rehabilitate dead beds - start with beds that are at least productive, and try to enhance them. The bigger the seed you put down, the better; they've seeded with a 10mm seed on average, and in Maine, we can do better. Don't move seed on very cold or very warm days. Rotational management has had a bigger effect on production than has re-seeding, as a general rule. Expect some difficulties in getting rotational management implemented. Expect change to come slowly in the fishery, but keep working at it.
All of that seems to be coming true in Maine to date, although it's too early to tell what impact the newly-created closed areas will have.
We discussed aquaculture a little bit: also a process that's going to take years to unfold. They thought that there was a fair bit of chance for cultured and caught scallops to complement one another in the marketplace, and for scallop farms to help in reseeding local areas. I'm intrigued by those thoughts too. They've worked a bit with scallop farms throughout the whole region, and recognize that it's a tough business, with a whole different set of challenges to profitable operation. On the other hand, the PECTEN project, the REPERE Project in the Magdalene Islands (more on that later!) and other groups have really advanced the knowledge of collecting spat, moving and sorting it, and various husbandry and equipment techniques, such that the chances of efficiently growing scallops are increased. Again - it'll be a longish process, but you readers will be introduced to some scallop growers in a little bit, below.
With that, our meeting ended. However, Monique did need to see some colleagues about a new project, and I tagged along with her. Not only did I get a chance to see the Oyster Culture Museum in Caraquet (L'Éco-Musée de l'huître - http://ecomuseehuitre.com/), but I managed to get on to a mussel farm briefly and see part of an experiment growing oysters cemented to lines . Marcel Poirer is the owner of that enterprise.
Photo: L'Éco-Musée de l'huître - Caraquet, NB
**This museum and store is operated by the Dugas family, in Caraquet NB. It's got a great display of various aspects of oyster culture, and you can buy the product right there at the counter. Good fun, and probably a nice business combination**
***Here is a photo of the rack used in the glued-oyster experiment. The rack holds several thousand, and is suspended from one of the mussel lines seen in the background.
Later that day, we visited Thomas Kenney in Stonehaven, in the Baie de Chaleur region. Thomas is a fisherman who got into shellfish culture a few years ago, primarily mussels. He got some heat from it from his fellow fishermen, most of whom were concerned with a loss of fishable bottom. Things seem to have worked out though, because he still has a good relationship with the guys he fishes with, and they support his diversification - at least to a degree. I think he's a lot like fishermen in Maine who have started to diversify into shellfish farming - funny how locations change, but the issues are often just the same.
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