OCTOBER 1995
BY BARRY STAGG
THE PORPOISES OF ST. GEORGE'S BAY
The porpoises dive and jump through the cloud-gray water on an August day. Port au Port lies still on the shoreline. Up the bay the animals surge from Robinson's Head on through to the inner reaches along the Port au Port beaches. St. George's Bay is ready for the porpoises, has been awaiting their seasonal arrival. The land is still but eyes follow the seeming glee of freedom that tracks the porpoises running eastward. The day is dim and the fall beckons its cool hand with every inshore whiff of satisfied decay. This is the time for the mackerel run when man and beast compete for the schools of silvery fish swarming in the shoals. This should be the end of a cycle of sea harvesting and the beginning of another. But why the stillness? Why the mute silence? Why the perplexed beachhead stance?
This is the era of cheque book fishing and post office fishermen. The warrior fishermen are on the shoreline looking seaward. Inshore the post office fisherman looks expectantly toward the mailbox.
Those who still persist in the ancient rite that is true fishing, stare at an empty sea where fishing is forbidden and security guards patrol. The porpoises are just barely beyond the jurisdiction of the security force and the prying eyes of the idle informants. Mail order fishing breeds happy informants who record the trips out on the water by restless neighbors. Cheque book fishing depends on religious obedience to the "no fishing" signs. The mail order boys have no problem with that. They fished on paper before the package and they see the profit in continuing the practice.
Meanwhile the dolphins prowl and the fishermen fume.
In the ancient pattern of things the fish came in seasonal cycles. Fishing went on in response and in preparation for the seasons and the cycles. Now the white shirts in Ottawa work with their branch plant managers in Newfoundland to break the cycles and to write fiction called "compensation packages." This is the misery of the fishermen watching the porpoises play in St. George's Bay.
The fall is always ahead of the calendar on St. George's Bay. Before August is done, the chilly squalls are blowing in and the cycle of mackerel and herring and squid is begun. These days the changes in the water and the clouds and the smell of land and sea are hollow changes bereft of the corresponding switches in human action that always went with them. In these times of discontent the workers are tied to the slipways and the seasons change in separation as if the whole bay is now a convenient nature preserve. The computers spit out the cheques from the Fisheries Department's precarious database. The logic of government money overwhelms the scene. Warriors sit and stew in frustration. Hangashores draw their pay with a happy heart. The decay and disintegration of the fishing industry go on. Not a line shall be dropped in the water in pursuit of the sacred cod. Not a word about the good strike of fish in the bay shall be muttered without fear of indictment.
This is the lot of frustrated fishing people in Newfoundland in the year 1995. The savior of the Grand Banks turbot has banned his own kind from jigging a cod in the bays and inlets of his home province. Brian Tobin and his Fisheries Department are happily in the arms of the professional conservationists. The prospects of Newfoundland and its people being a huge nature preserve loom larger every fishing season. Is Greenpeace now writing fishing policy for Mr. Tobin? What unholy sermons on conservation to the point of social extermination await Newfoundlanders this fishing season?
Meanwhile, the porpoises gambol in sweet oblivious freedom. Yellow tinged missile bodies shoot beneath the surface, playing games with the surface-bound humans. The days are shorter and the instinct of the porpoise crosses paths with the dull indifference of a memo from Ottawa. 'Stay off the water' is the mantra of the pensionable boys and girls from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans.
The porpoises play and hunt fish. Our own fish hunters are roped to shore, bound by regulation and righteous missionary enforcement. The do-gooders have got the scent of fishermen in their flared nostrils now. They are hot on the trail of another outcast bunch of harvesters. There is plenty of credit to be had on the sidewalks of Toronto for saving the fish from the fishermen. There is plenty of punishment to be handed out to the inshore fishing people. They are easier targets than the idiots who gave away the fishery to rapacious trawlers and their big business stakeholders and their big government toadies. The missionaries far away from the salt water do what missionaries have recklessly and piously done for centuries. They impose punishment and foreign rules on the natives for their own good. The porpoises are better off.