Friends renew fish farm fight
Mark Roberts
Strong words were sometimes used at a hastily called Friends of Port Mouton Bay meeting Aug. 18 that featured aerial photographs of a plume emanating from a Cooke Aquaculture fish farm off Spectacle Island.
Friends members simply want the company out of the water for good. A Cooke Aquaculture spokesperson is responding to the renewed effort, which will be published shortly.
Currently, as advised at the meeting, all the salmon have been harvested from the eight-hectare site but the company plans to re-stock it in the near future, probably in the spring. A lease agreement with the provincial Department of Fisheries and Aquaculture also expires next March, which the members agreed should not be renewed.
Darlene Norman said, “From this point on, it will be the concerted effort of Friends of Port Mouton Bay to make sure that farm does not get re-stocked and the Minister of Fisheries doesn’t issue another five year lease.”
The mandate of the organization has always been to get the industry out of Port Mouton Bay. As Gloria Gilbert said, “It’s not new. We’re just finishing the job.”
The group was sidelined when Aqua Fish Farms Ltd., later purchased by Cooke Aquaculture of New Brunswick, applied to set up a 28-hectare fish farm next to Port Mouton Island.
The group organized protests, accomplished numerous scientific studies, lobbied the federal and provincial governments and rallied residents from Queens Co. and even Nova Scotia as a whole to fight the application. Last March, then Premier Rodney MacDonald announced an indefinite moratorium on further aquaculture sites. Concerns were related to the environment, fishery and tourism.
The group plans to re-start the huge lobbying effort - through letters, emails, phone calls, signs and other means - while continuing to gather scientific data. Norman said, “Once again, as a community we need to stir the pot.” In fact, they plan to urge the government not to lease the site to determine if the area returns to its natural condition to prove their hypothesis that the farm has hurt the area’s eco-system. Members are worried the company will stock the site quickly as a result.
As frequently stated, members appear to have a lot of faith in the New Democratic Party government, and Premier Darrell Dexter and Queens MLA Vicki Conrad. Both politicians actively opposed the larger site.
Robert Swim, who has received DFO permission to “test fish” for lobster, detailed a slide show of aerial photographs taken by Linda Ross, a member. The photographs showed about 20 fishing boats and a moss boat going out into the bay. The boats marked off the site of the large proposed site and then steered through the plume, which seemed to trail after them as they moved into blue coloured water.
Swim said, “Can you imagine what the new farm would have done? The whole harbour would have looked like that. What we have in this area is priceless. We want this for our grandchildren and their grandchildren.”
Physical oceanographers Dr. Ron Loucks and Ruth Smith, who have led the scientific effort, presented information about the Spectacle Island site.
They also said scientists and government officials seem willing to work with them since the NDP government was elected. “When we were in a conflict situation, we were too hot to touch.”
Professor Jon Grant, of the Dalhousie University Dept. of Oceanography, has offered $20,000 worth of laboratory time as a donation. He will be taking sediment samples from the bay, photographing them and then will count the life forms. Norman is in charge of raising $6,000-to-$8,000 needed to hire divers for the ecosystem recovery research project. Acadia University has also expressed interest in doing a pollution study of the bay.
Dr. Loucks described the scientific evidence in terms of patterns, including the plume, and the flow of water around the site. He said Port Mouton Bay has a 112-hour flush rate compared to 47 in Shelburne, 23 in Lobster Bay and 19 in the Annapolis Basin, according to a DFO publication. He added for much of the aquaculture site, the net is only three metres above the ocean floor.
They studied the tide cycle and found that the waters around the site in two of the three pattern currents that were studied cycled back to the start. “It closed its loop.”
Government data also shows the current speeds are less than the government itself prefers.
He added the site also “appears to have the worst environment record in Nova Scotia aquaculture.” He said Queens MLA Vicki Conrad obtained data that shows the levels of sulphides to be far above what is considered polluted.
He said nuisance algae appears to have increased. Although he doesn’t yet have enough data to link it to the site, “The fish farm is a massive source of nutrients.” He said ‘slime algae’ is all around the bay and Irish moss levels have dropped. Data from fishermen also show harvests near the site have dropped a large amount “to support the hypothesis” lobster are migrating from the area.
He is also asking residents to take photographs - accompanied by a ruler to show the depth of silt - on beaches around the bay where the sediment is black and smells bad. “I think we can make another inter-tidal pattern.” He showed a photograph and said it was oxygen-starved, “not normal sediment.”
The group also discussed lobbying to have a Bill passed through parliament to forbid fish farming in the bay in addition to their provincial government efforts. Members are worried the company might apply for an expanded farm again because MacDonald used the phrase “indefinite moratorium.”
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