Fisheries committee  Obviously, living on an island, we're very isolated, and our economy is completely dependent on the sea, whether it is for the fishing or the aquaculture industry. Lobster is a primary fishery that we have, so anything that happens to that has a huge impact on the island as a who

Fisheries committee  Thank you for the question. I don't have any information on what the costs of flights are. I will say that, in the Bay of Fundy, because we have such active tidal waters, acoustic devices aren't functional here. The only way to do monitoring in the Bay of Fundy is through fligh

Fisheries committee  Good afternoon, and thank you for the opportunity to present today. The Grand Manan Fishermen's Association represents independent owner-operator fishermen on Grand Manan and White Head Island in the Bay of Fundy. Our approximately 200 members fish lobster, scallop, groundfish a

Fisheries committee  I think that's what's critical to this plan. It was developed by fishermen, and it's something they feel they can live with and continue to fish with. By getting rid of the rope on the surface of the water, it's more complicated to haul the traps. Especially when there's bad weat

Fisheries committee  A little bit about our pilot project is that we had a meeting with our fishermen earlier this fall. The solutions came from the fishermen, and I think that's really important to remember, that they were the ones who developed this. They went to the department and we asked for th

Fisheries committee  It's the maximum distance. They're doing a minimum number of traps on the end line, so they have to have a minimum number of traps per trawl. The second feature of what they're doing is looking at a watch and warning system, so that if we see one whale, as we did this spring, fi

Fisheries committee  That brings us to June of this year. On June 16, one right whale was spotted in the Grand Manan basin right whale critical habitat. We found out later that the scientist who spotted the whale identified it as likely transiting. Throughout many conversations with departmental staf