Seizing Savage Harbour
BY Robin Gillingham
Photography by Connecticut Sea Grant
Ten years ago, Gordon Mosher left a steady job as a carpenter to head to the water. He leased 33 acres of aquatic space, built his own boat and began a modest living as a mussel harvester on Prince Edward Island’s northeast coast. “My father fished, his father fished, my brothers fished,” says Mosher. “I’d rather be on the water than on the land anytime.”
But this summer, Mosher’s small operation is near collapse because of tiny pests inhabiting the harbour where his mussel lines hang from buoys on the water’s surface—pests that may have stowed away on government ships at a time when there are few regulations to protect Canadian waters, and the workers who farm them, from such problems.
In December 2004, two invasive species—the golden star and violet tunicates, tiny animals that coat mussels and fishing equipment in a brightly coloured gelatinous layer—were identified in Savage Harbour. Following their discovery, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) asked local mussel and oyster harvesters to voluntarily refrain from harvesting until the department could ascertain the extent of the invasion.
Mosher, along with the other leaseholders, halted operations and waited for answers. “I don’t know how we can trust the DFO,” says Mosher. “They’re just trying to cover up the whole story and take some of the blame or problems off themselves [because] it was a government contract that brought them in.”
In 2002, Public Works and Government Services Canada contracted three barges and a tugboat to do repairs on a breakwater in Savage Harbour. Following a phone call from a local harvester, provincial fisheries officials discovered the golden star and violet tunicates growing on the bottoms of two of the barges.
Although there is no way of determining whether it was these particular barges that brought the species to Savage Harbour, DFO scientist Andrea Locke says it was the first time each species had been identified in the bay and the first time the violet tunicate had been identified in PEI waters.
She says the tunicates in Savage Harbour have the potential to do heavy damage to the province’s mussel industry. “[The violet tunicate] has a very strong reputation for settling on things, growing right over them and killing them,” says Locke. “That seems to be what it has done to the mussels in Savage Harbour, and that’s what I’m afraid it’s going to do.”
Mussel farming is big business in PEI, with the province supplying about 80 percent of all mussels in the Canadian market and 99 percent of all live mussel imports to the US market. Since 1997, six invasive species have been identified in PEI’s waters, disrupting aquaculture and costing harvesters thousands of dollars in additional labour and repairs. Yet, despite the significant economic and ecological impact invasive species have had in Canadian waters, few regulations are in place to prevent new species from being introduced.
Locke says there is very little federal legislation overseeing the accidental transport of invasive species to and within Canadian waters largely because of enforcement issues, which, in her opinion, is why the DFO opts for education and communication in lieu of regulatory tactics.
Today, Mosher says he’s frustrated at how things stand—he hasn’t heard from the federal or provincial fisheries since May. Fearful of losing thousands of pounds of mussels and without a source of income, Mosher and some of his counterparts in Savage Harbour started harvesting their mussels and selling them at a reduced price. “It was a nice way of living,” says Mosher. “Whether it will be now, down the road, we won’t know for a couple of years to come. But you can’t operate at a loss and keep going.”
