Florida Waterways – “Fishing in Nova Scotia”
Captions:
The cover of my book on Nova Scotia
This fisherman caught a 977-pound tuna in 1950.
Hauling in a large fish in the 1950s
Stacking dry cod for shipment
This old abandoned fishing boat in Nova Scotia probably had many great tales.
A fishing boat in Nova Scotia in the winter
Having recently completed a book about Canada’s Nova Scotia, and having spent time there last summer, I came to appreciate the rich fishing grounds off that province’s coast. I put on the cover of the book what I think is the most famous fishing village there: Peggy’s Cove. The picture shows a small fishing boat in the cove next to a house, where a fisherman might live.
The proximity of the cove to the ocean, something that is true of many towns in the province, allows fishermen to get into their boats and out to the fishing grounds in a relatively short time, but they do have to pay attention to the changeable weather there. The Atlantic storms, even hurricanes like the kind that hit there in the past few months, can be very treacherous.
When you see the size of the monstrous tuna fish that fishermen in small boats catch and struggle to pull over the side of the boat, you wonder how they do it. Having worked hard to bring up fifty-pound halibut in Alaskan waters, all by hand and not an electric reel, I can appreciate the efforts of those dedicated fishermen.
The picture of a worker using a forklift to store thousands of cod in stacks and stacks makes one realize how overfishing for cod in the 1980s and 1990s led to a moratorium on cod-fishing off the Grand Banks of Newfoundland. Fishermen throughout the region realized that something had to be done to try to restore the cod-fishing, a lucrative product that many, including European fishermen, had engaged in for centuries.
Many independent workers, including fishermen throughout the world, often resent tight regulations, but even they had to realize that something had to be done to protect the fish. When the Federal Minister of Fisheries and Oceans put on the moratorium, the catch of Northern Cod had fallen to just one percent of earlier levels. During the previous five hundred years, many local Canadian communities had relied on fishing the waters off Nova Scotia, but now most fishermen believe that such a moratorium is necessary to revive the industry.
If you visit Nova Scotia in the winter, which can last for months, you can see fishing boats in the snow and even in the ice. Such a visit will make you appreciate even more the warm, sunny conditions that fishermen have here in Florida most of the year.
By Kevin McCarthy
Kevin McCarthy, the author of Nova Scotia: An Illustrated Maritime History (2019 – (available at amazon.com), can be reached at ceyhankevin@gmail.com.