Rusty scallop boats and shiny lobster trucks

DIGBY, NOVA SCOTIA
Targeted fish: scallop, lobster, herring, dogfish
Methods of fishing: side dragger (trawl), onshore and offshore traps
Footwear: Dunlop, Viking, and Baffin rubber boots
Favorite local saying: “They’re all a-gone uphill.” (fishing north in the Bay of Fundy); “So you ain’t a Bluenoser?”
Local food: fried scallops
Drink of choice: Alexander Keith’s IPA or red
Local entertainment: Hard telling. Judging by stickers on fishermens’ trucks, watching NASCAR racing.
Select Local Fishing Boats: Chief Charles Paul, Marianne Louise II, Greyhound, Maybe 99, Royal Fundy, Secret Sea, Artemis, Thundercat, Surchin IV, Elva G, Undaunted, Chief William Saulis, Fundy Retreiver

While waiting for a Brazilian visa application to bump its way through the Brazilian-American beaureacratic pinball machine, and since the constant wind hitting the southern Newfoundland continued to keep the boats at bay, I decided to spend a few days exploring the fishing scene in Nova Scota. The province has an interesting way of controlling fishng effort for lobster, while still keeping fresh “bugs” heading to market. A rotating schedule ensures that some part of the province is open at any particular date. After glancing at the chart of openings, I pointed my sails towards Digby, which lies on Nova Scotia´s west coast.

Digby, it turns out, is a beautiful town founded (in the conceited Anglo-American sense) by Loyalists who were booted from New England around the time of Paul Revere. If a person was ever inclined to buy a authentic five-bedroom Victorian-style house with an expansive yard and ocean view to match, this may be the only place to get the wntire package for less than Sarah Palin’s October wardrobe.

More than its lobster, Digby’s true claim to fame is its scallop fleet, which was once the largest of its kind in the world. A glance at the town’s boardwalk shows that tourism now plays a big role in the local economy, but just behind the flashy signs lies a struggling region. Somehow, though, Digby seems to be struggling in an amazingly elegant way.

The scallop fleet is comprised of side draggers, meaning that they drag their trawl off one side of the boat (usually the starboard it seems) rather than astern. To me, side dragging isn’t an intuitive thing for a boat to do. It seems to be asking for trouble. In my perspective, it also ensures an awkward-looking, asymmetrical boat. This is of course all irrelevant when the scallops are plentiful and the price is high.

These days, the scallop population is in a rut (fishermen maintain that scallops have always had huge natural oscillations in regional populations), and the state of the fishery is evidenced by the impressive amount of rust visible on the draggers. Shortly after inquiring, I was offered the chance to take a fill in job on one of the draggers. A great chance to really see the fishery. If I wanted to go, the boat was leaving at two in the morning (that night), and coming back after a week or so.

A blend of tides, temperment, and testosterone make late night departures common in the fisheries. This didn´t worry me a bit. The volume of rust covering the deck of the boat did. I decided to pass up the opportunity.

In my pass through Digby, I witnessed two other fisheries- targeting lobster and dogfish- and these may well exhibit the range of profitability in the world of fisheries. Roughly a dozen lobster boats steamed to and from the Digby docks. The boats were incredible hulks of modern design, half as wide abeam as they were long. Sternless 50 foot boats that stretch 25 foot abeam seemed like their decks were made for pickup basketball, not marine travel. I’m more accustomed to the smaller and much more sleek and unassuming Maine lobster boats. A small efficient boat like those built for Maine’s craggy coast just wouldn’t cut it in a fishery which offers huge rewards for being able to set 400 traps in one trip. There certainly were lots of big, new trucks near where these lobster boats tie up.

A few miles out of town, half-way down a long, thin peninsula known as Digby Neck, I ran into an 50 year old deckhand stripping rusty hooks from old groundline, spilling out of a cracked plastic bucket. He explained to me that he longlined for dogfish in the Bay of Fundy. Sometimes the sharks were “uphill” (up the bay), sometimes the were “downhill”, but the price was always the same- 11 cents per pound. Not really enough to pay for gas and lunch. Pick one or the other. Once in a while you lucked out and caught a halibut for dinner, he said. I immediately felt spoiled, but perhaps I shouldn´t have. Digby is yet another place where people fish for more than just a way to pay the bills. What else would you do, and where else could be better?

Three parts to the puzzle

In trying to piece together the internal tickings of at least one fishery here in Newfoundland, it seems like three factors come into play, and have a huge influence on all island fishermen and a noticeable effect on entire rural communities. Although unrelated, I throw all three together here. Keep in mind that I’m attempting to showcase the perspective of island fishermen I’ve spoken with and so in turn my information may be biased, slightly incorrect, and is certainly under-researched. It is, however, the reality for the fishermen I’ve met.

The Moratorium
In 1992, after conceding that the Grand Banks groundfish stock was showing unmistakable signs of a complete collapse, the Canadian government (FAO) closed Newfoundland waters to all fishing which targeted groundfish. Foreign vessels still fished waters, while even subsistence fishing was prohibited. Communities which had been created around cod fishing were abruptly altered. Unemployment and alcoholism rates rose, and people began leaving the small towns for St. John’s or headed off-island. I’m told that the moratorium effectively killed the nearshore fishing fleet. The midsized fleet quickly diversified to target other fish, and the existing non-cod fishermen (say, lobstermen) were suddenly competing against a crowd.

Today, 16 years after the moratorium, the event is still a bitter subject on the docks, causing widespread head shaking and cynicism, and many fishing grounds are still closed. Although some have pointed out that the value of upstart fisheries (mainly crab and shrimp) since the initial moratorium exceeds the highest value ever attained in the peak of the Grand Bank cod fishery, fishermen are quick to point towards a common sight in many of the outport towns- the rotting skeletons of small fishing boats. Clearly, the internal structuring of the island’s fisheries was significantly altered, and fewer nearshore boats survived.

Employment Insurance
Known locally as pogey, EI is the Canadian parallel to collecting unemployment in the US. This social program, for better or worse, plays a significant role in the dynamics of Newfoundland fishing communities. The design is interesting in that a person can collect from EI only if he/she has a work history from that year, and increased wages earned while working qualify a person for higher EI benefits. This is intended to help seasonal workers, such as fishermen, make it through the offseason.

Fishermen are entitled to two claims per year, for as long as six months per claim. I’m told that some fishermen are strategic about their work: they fish for an intense period in the spring, collect EI for the summer, fish for another spell in the fall, and return to their pogey for the winter. As far as I could tell, there is no stigma attached to collecting EI. A few younger fisherman had their own nickname for the program- unenjoyment insurance- and spoke of how dull winter life was in the outports, with no work to make the time pass by. Nothing to do but spend money, drink, and get into trouble, they told me. Work was more fun than this.

Out of curiosity, I wandered into an employment assistance office one day, and began asking a friendly lady who worked there about the specifics of their EI program. She told me unabashedly, but in a quiet voice, “Everybody around here collects in the winter, and then goes and works on top of it. I mean everybody. I even used to collect and then work part-time here in the office. It’s just part of life, how we get by. But don’t tell my boss, I’m not sure if she does that.” In Newfoundland, it seems that pogey is in bed with fishing, and that seems to be fine.

Tar Sands of Alberta
Newfoundland has a population of 450,000 people or so, and is losing a trickle of people every year. In recent years, a major draw out of Newfoundland has been the lure of quick money working in the oil fields/tar sands of Alberta. Who cares, eh? Well, young males from the island outports are the main group heading out west, and this is the demographic that in years past would make up the bulk of up-and-coming fishermen.

By enticing a particular slice of rural Newfoundland off-island, petro-based work in Alberta has a indirect, but significant, effect on Newfoundland fishing communities. Young fathers are away from home for much of the year, or young families decide to emigrate west. Reliable deckhands are hard to come by, and so turnover on the boats is high, accidents are more likely, and skippers’ jobs are more stressful. In some families the fishing baton isn’t relayed to the next generation. Perhaps this in an inevitable transition, but the effect is apparent and has come up a bunch in conversations around town.

Just one perspective on three issues facing Newfoundland outports. Perhaps this spoils the simple, romantic image that some have about commercial fishing. Perhaps it should.

Fresh frozen

This time of year, Americans celebrate a holiday to give thanks for food and family (no news to any readers I’m sure, but hang with me…) The way this is expressed, strangely enough, is by eating huge volumes of food. Of course the origins of an autumn feast are logical enough, but at some point the celebration of abundant local food became a holiday with standardized fare, for many families involving food shipped from distant farms and factories. Sharp minds like Michael Pollen (The Omnivore’s Dilemma) and Thomas Friedman (The World is Flat) explain the range and effects of globalized food markets much better than I could here, but I find food stocks and diets in outport Newfoundland interesting and possibly indicative just how far out of hand these markets have gotten.

Newfoundlanders traditionally leaned on salt cod for export and income, but also as a staple of their diet. On any sunny summer day, split and salted cod would line the rocky coast; in later months the dried cod would be stacked like cordwood out of the weather and whittled away through the long winter. One American friend, who had visited the island decades ago, told me that I’d be impressed by the “rounders”- small codfish brined and dried whole- atop nearly every roof in the outports.

In Fortune, I haven’t seen a single rounder on the roof. I’m told that salt cod is now sold as a delicacy, and few islanders eat it much. Although Mansfield, my friend and host, is in the process of drying out some salt fish (mostly pollock and haddock, and a few very small cod which probably deserved to be rounders), his are the only fish I’ve seen drying in all of Fortune. Did the scarcity of cod in recent decades force rural Newfoundlanders to shift toward processed, imported food, or is this apparent shift away from local seafood mainly due to a preference for beef, pork, chicken, and Little Debbie snacks when given the choice?

My first walk through the meat section at Fortune’s small supermarket really surprised me. The big three- beef, pork, and chicken- commanded nearly all of the cold space on two walls. A discerning palate could choose from dozens of different cuts from each land animal. But where was the fish? I finally found the dusty nook that made up the whole of the store’s seafood menu. The choices: farmed Atlantic salmon, cod tongues, salt cod, and, advertised as a “new product: fresh-frozen cod fillets”. A product of China, read the label. Cod, probably caught in the north Atlantic (although perhaps Pacific cod caught in Alaskan waters), frozen and shipped to China, and there thawed, processed, re-frozen, packaged, and distributed around the globe (and marketed as fresh). I doubt I’m the only person who finds the extensive post-mortem travels of this cod, now resting in a town famed for its truly fresh cod, outrageous and somewhat tragic. Does this surprise anyone else?

If locals aren’t getting their fish at the store, they must be getting it themselves, direct from fishermen, or from the processing plant in town, I thought when leaving the store. But after being in town for a while, I see no easy options for getting fish. Everybody tells me that Mary Brown’s, a local fast-food chain, has the best (chicken) legs in town, but nobody can tell me where to find fresh fish. Mansfield tells me that fishing for cod or haddock in a skiff near the harbor is not worthwhile. His freezer and pantry is a nice contrast to that of the town’s store: salt cod and pollock (his own work), cloudberries, partridgeberries, bags of whole frozen brook trout (known as mud trout in these parts), frozen Dolly Varden, frozen cod fillets (a product of Newfoundland), moose, blueberries, cranberries, whole skinned rabbit, salmon, canned rabbit, canned trout, canned moose. One small and lonely box of chicken nuggets sits alone, intimidated by all the local wild food surrounding it.

Yet Mansfield tells me that his freezer and diet is the rare exception in outport Newfoundland these days, and my freezer sleuthing in other homes backs that up. Although pizza seems less common than in the US, fried chicken and red meat is the norm, seafood is rarely put on a plate, and an onlooker like myself has a tough time telling the difference between American and Newfoundland cuisine. I’m not out to paint globalized food marketing in any particular light, but I do think that mainstream diets in North America are often detached from fresh and local foods, and that there’s more to a meal than just its taste. I once saw a picture of Michael Pollan wearing a shirt once that read, “Vote with your fork.” Something to chew on.