Dire Straits: The Dilemmas of a Fishery

Richard Wilbur is Supervisor of the Legislative Research Service at the
New Brunswick Legislature and author of The Rise of French New
Brunswick.

Consider this as further evidence indicating why our commercial fishery
has drastically declined and will probably disappear within a few years.
Even though the field data was gathered in 1984 and involves only a few
communities along Digby Neck on the Nova Scotia side of the Bay of
Fundy, what social anthropologist Davis has to say applies to today’s
larger fishery scene. It is a grim picture.

For those of us who have been writing about the East Coast fisheries (I
have had a weekly column since 1982), Davis’s story has no surprises.
What was once a viable and environmentally sustainable fishery based on
small boats and low technology has been irrevocably changed by a
government-financed shift to draggers. A small-boat dragnet fishery
existed before 1939, but during World War II and especially in the 1950s
and 1960s, federal and provincial policies aimed at accelerating the
industrialization of the fisheries resulted in ever-larger draggers,
fewer but larger processors, and, in the end, depleted fish stocks.

When groundfish stocks collapsed in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the
federal policy-makers tried to reduce the fishery effort through annual
licences and limited entry management. The result: fewer but richer
licence-holders and more fishermen forced to survive on unemployment
insurance benefits, once the regulations were revised in 1983. To quote
one fisherman (or fisher, to use Davis’s politically correct term that
is never heard in fishing communities), “All that draggers done around
here is to make a few millionaires while the rest of us ’ave been left
paupers.”

Davis’s suggestions: ban ecologically dangerous gear such as otter
trawls and seine nets. Governments—which largely financed such
technology in the first place—should make a one-time buyback offer for
those who refuse to change gear voluntarily. Follow Norway’s example
and prohibit fish-plant buyers and processors from owning and
controlling fishing boats. And let those who do the fishing manage the
resource and decide who should fish.

Similar suggestions have been made before, only to be ignored by the
policy-makers, who do not fish for a living: bureaucrats, biologists,
and politicians. Anthony Davis is a respected name both among fisheries
scholars and among others who have benefited from his comments in the
popular media. This study is further proof that he knows his stuff and
that his advice should be heeded.