Closure of Maritime baby eel fishery fails to stop widespread illegal fishing
CBC
Poaching continues uninterrupted on some Nova Scotia rivers despite a federal shutdown of the baby eel fishery earlier this month, new video and still photographs show.
Images of active fishing for the tiny eels also known as elvers were provided to CBC News and the federal government by a frustrated commercial elver licence holder. Some images were taken as recent as Sunday night.
Fisheries and Oceans Minister Joyce Murray issued an order closing the chaotic and occasionally violent elver fishery on April 15 because of what she called a "huge escalation" in illegal fishing by poachers.
They included Indigenous and non Indigenous people.
But the order is being ignored, says Stanley King of Atlantic Elver Fishery.
"This is the sixth report of poaching I've made since the minister shut the fishery down one week ago today," King said in an April 22 email to Timothy Kerr, director of conservation and protection for the Maritime region with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO).
"The [order] only punished the licensed fishers as it's clear from years past, and holds true today, that poachers continue to fish regardless.... DFO [conservation and protection] refuses to enforce despite claims the [order] gives them more enforcing resources. In all my years fishing I have never seen so little enforcement in a season."
The order effectively ended the season for nine commercial licence holders and two Indigenous groups operating under their treaty right to a "moderate livelihood" elver fishery.
"I understand that shutting down the fishery is difficult for legitimate fish harvesters," Murray told CBC News after the shutdown.
"It was simply too dangerous to let this continue…. I was not prepared to take the risk of harm to human life, which was certainly a possibility, and nor am I willing to take a risk of the undermining of this stock, which is a very important one, and that was also a risk with poaching."
Elvers are caught each spring as they migrate from the ocean into nearly 200 Nova Scotia and New Brunswick rivers. They sell for up to $5,000 a kilogram and are flown live to Asia where they are grown for food.
King is part of a delegation of Maritime commercial elver licence holders in Ottawa this week meeting with politicians — including Nova Scotia cabinet minister Sean Fraser — to voice their concerns about the troubled fishery. They are scheduled to meet with Murray on Wednesday.
King has provided post-closure images of poachers at stationary nets, in boats and dipping from the East River, Hubbards River, Ingramport River, Mushamush River and Sackville River.
DFO grants each licence holder exclusive access to several rivers.
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