All three shark-fishing tournaments remaining in Nova Scotia have been cancelled this summer, a potentially permanent end to annual events dating back 30 years.
This year, Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) stopped issuing the science licences used to authorize the derbies and organizers cannot swallow DFO conditions that would have allowed them to continue.
“The bottom line is we’re not going to be able to hold the tournaments any longer,” said Bob Gavel, organizer of the Yarmouth Shark Scramble, largest of the derbies. It ran for 24 years in southwestern Nova Scotia before this summer’s cancellation.
“I’m very disappointed to say the least. It has a great impact on the local economy. It brought tons of tourists to the waterfront — in the thousands.”
This week the Petit de Grat Shark Derby in Cape Breton was called off as well.
The Lockeport Sea Derby in Shelburne County will continue, but only for mackerel and groundfish.
All the derbies are usually held in August.
No scientific justification
For almost a decade, the tournaments have been authorized based on the scientific information they can provide. But Fisheries officials have decided there is no longer any justification for landing sharks for research.
Since 2018 only one species — blue sharks — can be kept. Derby fishing for porbeagle, thresher and shortfin mako sharks have been banned.
A shark is dissected for research at a previous Yarmouth Shark Scramble. (Yarmouth Shark Scramble website)
DFO said the sample size is also unrepresentative because it includes only a few dozen large, mostly male, blue sharks.
“The issue we are facing today is that the scientific data gained by landing sharks from tournaments in recent history is not contributing or advancing departmental DFO shark research,” DFO resources manager Carl MacDonald told organizers according to records of an October 2022 meeting on the future of the shark tournaments.
Other options impractical or dangerous
DFO told tournament organizers a recreational fishing licence was an option. But organizers say bringing sharks on board to weigh, or even alongside to measure, makes catch and release too dangerous for people handling the fish
The other requirement — that landed blue sharks must be used for human food — was impractical, said Lockeport Sea Derby president George Benham.
“If we had say 10 or 15 sharks landed, we don’t have a market for 100 per cent of that. It would be too hard to get rid of that many. We just couldn’t do it. I don’t think any of the derbies could do that,” Benham told CBC News.
Tournament take too small to make a difference
Ending the tournaments will likely have little effect on the blue shark population.
In 2022, 60 sharks weighing 5,800 kilograms were landed between the three tournaments.
That represents a tiny fraction of blue sharks caught accidentally by commercial fleets fishing for other species like swordfish and tuna.
A 2017 Marine Stewardship Council assessment of Atlantic Canada’s longline swordfish fleet estimated between 2011 and 2015 an average of 1.5-million kilograms per year of blue sharks were retained or discarded as bycatch.
Lockeport Sea Derby is one of four annual shark derbies in Nova Scotia. (Lockeport Sea Derby/Facebook)
“From a conservation point of view, the number of sharks that tournaments are taking are not a threat to the population.” said Shannon Arnold of the Ecology Action Centre in Halifax.
“We’ve never been opposed to the shark tournaments, especially since they were no longer allowed to land any threatened species.”
Arnold said some catch-and-release shark tournaments in the United States use cellphones to document catches at sea and broadcast it back live to shore.
“There’s a beer garden, whatever. And they have a big screen set up and people are out there like in real time with their cellphones, they can measure it and it’s on video and people are watching it. It’s pretty cool.”
Scientific team measuring a shark at a 2003 shark derby. (Canadian Shark Research Lab)
Number of sharks taken is down
The number of tournaments and sharks landed in Nova Scotia has steadily fallen over the past decade.
Since 2006, tournaments have been held in eight different ports. That was whittled down to three in recent years. The Riverport derby was last held in 2016 and Louisbourg in 2018.
According to a DFO report, since 2006 a total of 2,964 sharks of all species were taken.
Between 2011 and 2016 tournaments were landing about 300 sharks per year with an average of about 23 boats participating.
“We’ve reduced the number of sharks. Last year, even though we had over 100 participants, only 40 odd sharks were landed,” said Yarmouth’s Gavel.
VANCOUVER – Contract negotiations resume today in Vancouver in a labour dispute that has paralyzed container cargo shipping at British Columbia’s ports since Monday.
The BC Maritime Employers Association and International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 514 are scheduled to meet for the next three days in mediated talks to try to break a deadlock in negotiations.
The union, which represents more than 700 longshore supervisors at ports, including Vancouver, Prince Rupert and Nanaimo, has been without a contract since March last year.
The latest talks come after employers locked out workers in response to what it said was “strike activity” by union members.
The start of the lockout was then followed by several days of no engagement between the two parties, prompting federal Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon to speak with leaders on both sides, asking them to restart talks.
MacKinnon had said that the talks were “progressing at an insufficient pace, indicating a concerning absence of urgency from the parties involved” — a sentiment echoed by several business groups across Canada.
In a joint letter, more than 100 organizations, including the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, Business Council of Canada and associations representing industries from automotive and fertilizer to retail and mining, urged the government to do whatever it takes to end the work stoppage.
“While we acknowledge efforts to continue with mediation, parties have not been able to come to a negotiated agreement,” the letter says. “So, the federal government must take decisive action, using every tool at its disposal to resolve this dispute and limit the damage caused by this disruption.
“We simply cannot afford to once again put Canadian businesses at risk, which in turn puts Canadian livelihoods at risk.”
In the meantime, the union says it has filed a complaint to the Canada Industrial Relations Board against the employers, alleging the association threatened to pull existing conditions out of the last contract in direct contact with its members.
“The BCMEA is trying to undermine the union by attempting to turn members against its democratically elected leadership and bargaining committee — despite the fact that the BCMEA knows full well we received a 96 per cent mandate to take job action if needed,” union president Frank Morena said in a statement.
The employers have responded by calling the complaint “another meritless claim,” adding the final offer to the union that includes a 19.2 per cent wage increase over a four-year term remains on the table.
“The final offer has been on the table for over a week and represents a fair and balanced proposal for employees, and if accepted would end this dispute,” the employers’ statement says. “The offer does not require any concessions from the union.”
The union says the offer does not address the key issue of staffing requirement at the terminals as the port introduces more automation to cargo loading and unloading, which could potentially require fewer workers to operate than older systems.
The Port of Vancouver is the largest in Canada and has seen a number of labour disruptions, including two instances involving the rail and grain storage sectors earlier this year.
A 13-day strike by another group of workers at the port last year resulted in the disruption of a significant amount of shipping and trade.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
The Royal Canadian Legion says a new partnership with e-commerce giant Amazon is helping boost its veterans’ fund, and will hopefully expand its donor base in the digital world.
Since the Oct. 25 launch of its Amazon.ca storefront, the legion says it has received nearly 10,000 orders for poppies.
Online shoppers can order lapel poppies on Amazon in exchange for donations or buy items such as “We Remember” lawn signs, Remembrance Day pins and other accessories, with all proceeds going to the legion’s Poppy Trust Fund for Canadian veterans and their families.
Nujma Bond, the legion’s national spokesperson, said the organization sees this move as keeping up with modern purchasing habits.
“As the world around us evolves we have been looking at different ways to distribute poppies and to make it easier for people to access them,” she said in an interview.
“This is definitely a way to reach a wider number of Canadians of all ages. And certainly younger Canadians are much more active on the web, on social media in general, so we’re also engaging in that way.”
Al Plume, a member of a legion branch in Trenton, Ont., said the online store can also help with outreach to veterans who are far from home.
“For veterans that are overseas and are away, (or) can’t get to a store they can order them online, it’s Amazon.” Plume said.
Plume spent 35 years in the military with the Royal Engineers, and retired eight years ago. He said making sure veterans are looked after is his passion.
“I’ve seen the struggles that our veterans have had with Veterans Affairs … and that’s why I got involved, with making sure that the people get to them and help the veterans with their paperwork.”
But the message about the Amazon storefront didn’t appear to reach all of the legion’s locations, with volunteers at Branch 179 on Vancouver’s Commercial Drive saying they hadn’t heard about the online push.
Holly Paddon, the branch’s poppy campaign co-ordinator and bartender, said the Amazon partnership never came up in meetings with other legion volunteers and officials.
“I work at the legion, I work with the Vancouver poppy office and I go to the meetings for the Vancouver poppy campaign — which includes all the legions in Vancouver — and not once has this been mentioned,” she said.
Paddon said the initiative is a great idea, but she would like to have known more about it.
The legion also sells a larger collection of items at poppystore.ca.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
