By Barry Stagg
March 1994
OCEAN WATCH
In a rare, but inspired move, the federal Department of Fisheries has created a new auxiliary program to guard the stocks of lobster in Newfoundland waters. The program called Ocean Watch will enlist fishermen to assist the full time fisheries officers working for the federal government in standing guard over the dwindling stocks of lobster.
The program was initiated on the West coast of Newfoundland and there is a strong likelihood that the process will be extended to other parts of the Newfoundland coast.
An attitude of cooperation going both ways between the federal enforcement officers and the fishermen will go a long way toward creating a healthy atmosphere where fishermen and the Fisheries Police are working together rather than trying to outsmart the other.
For too long the attitude of these two solitudes has been very much adversarial. With the federal government and fishermen all realizing that the stocks of all ocean species are very much exhaustible the new attitude is a vital necessity.
Conservation is no longer just a noble word to be tossed around at seminars held in the off-season. Many people are going to be forced out of the fishery in the next few years and the federal Department of Fisheries will need the whole hearted cooperation of the professional fishermen who remain in the industry. It will not do for federal fisheries policy to create a black market in fish along the same lines as that created in cigarettes and alcohol in various and notorious parts of the country.
The attitude of the fishermen will have to orient toward the concept that they must work with the federal Fisheries Department as partners in the overall effort to keep the resource healthy and viable. Any return to an attitude where fishermen are spending any amount of time devising ways to get around the rules will result in a repeat of the periodic disasters that have bedeviled the fishery for decades.
The present disaster that has benighted the Newfoundland fishery has its equally nefarious counterparts elsewhere in Newfoundland history.
Before the 200 mile limit was declared in 1977, there were at various times a 3 mile limit and a 12 mile limit for fishing in Newfoundland. Many people can remember the humiliation of seeing numerous "cities of light" consisting of flotillas of foreign fishing ships fishing well within sight of land after every nightfall. The reason for this, of course, is that the foreign fishermen were treating the 12 mile limit with the same contempt that many are now treating the 200 mile limit. As soon as darkness became a convenient cover, the ships simply moved in as close to land as they could safely sail and commenced to vacuum whatever stocks they could find. This kind of behaviour on the part of foreign vessels has been thrust to the outer limits of the 200 mile fishing border, but in its day, the ravages of foreign fishing took their toll within sight of land.
Ocean Watch is a responsible beginning for self control within the fishing industry. It is significant that this initiative has begun in the in-shore sector. It will be interesting to see if such a plan can be extended in any viable and honest way to the off-shore sector. When foreign fishing was still permitted within the 200 mile limit, thef ederal Fisheries Department had Canadian observers on foreign trawlers and certainly this method of regulation should be extended to Canadian registered trawlers as well. Certainly it would not be an affront to Canadian off-shore fishermen to have federal observers on their vessels when the off-shore fishery is opened again.
Just as the federal government finds it necessary to remind natives on various reserves in this country that they are not above the basic laws of Canada, so must the federal government make it clear to all who prosecute the fishery that the participants will have to obey the laws and rules laid down to protect the fishing stocks and the livelihood of those in the industry. This must be done by creating a program where enforcement is done thoroughly and intelligently. Fishermen must be presented with a scheme of enforcement and regulation that covers all the angles both with respect to dishonesty and with respect to measuring the size and health of fishing stocks.
Fishermen know only too well that the thinly spread resources of the Federal Fisheries Department at sea were really only a ridiculous joke when it came to enforcement of the law against dishonest fishermen, whether these fishermen were Canadian or foreign. At the same time fishermen and the general public learned only too well that the federal Fisheries Department methods of measuring the fish stocks were woefully inadequate and lead to the present state of disaster.
Ocean Watch and any other fisheries programs that have conservation and the enforcement of honest practices at heart should find a very receptive audience among professional fishermen and those who depend upon the strength of the industry for prosperity. It is a sign of maturity when enforcement is recognized as a necessary part of the process of creating and maintaining a healthy industry. Surely Ocean Watch is a steady if small step in that direction.