Tag Archives: Nico Prins

Food, Rivers & Oceans

Oysters: Unsung climate heroes for your holiday buffet

Editor’s note: Shellfish harvesting is one of Cortes Island’s largest employers. According to Paul Muskee, Klahoose Aquaculture probably employs ‘about 20 different people between Klahoose and Islanders.’ While Cortes Currents has not seen any recent numbers, Island Sea Farms employed 21 people when COVID broke out. Erik Lyon, President of the Bee Islets Growers Corporation, in Gorge Harbour, said there are about 10 lease holders in his organization. In previous articles, Rochelle has identified the Steve Pocock mentioned in the following article as both a Read Island grower and a Quadra Island grower. (These are not mutually exclusive statements.) Oysters are a significant local business on Quadra and Read Islands and there are numerous shore leases around all three Discovery Islands.

Canada’s National Observer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

There are moments when Steve Pocock questions the wisdom of his chosen profession as a shellfish farmer.

Picking oysters off a beach in the dead of night during a low winter tide, then navigating whiteout conditions to get a loaded vessel home to port, while freezing and weary, is one of those times.

However, his disillusionment is short-lived when he hits mirrored waters at daybreak. Odds are he’ll also cross paths with orcas, bald eagles or sea lions during the morning commute.

Continue reading Oysters: Unsung climate heroes for your holiday buffet →
Cost of Climate Change

B.C. launches blueprint to fend off climate’s ‘one-two punch’ on the ocean

Canada’s National Observer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

B.C. has unveiled an action plan to tackle the two greatest climate threats to the ocean, coastal communities and marine ecosystems on the West Coast. 

Ocean acidification and hypoxia (OAH), or plummeting oxygen levels, that often occur in tandem with a snowball effect, are spiking due to human-caused greenhouse gas emissions. 

The plan’s goals include strengthening scientific collaboration and research and public awareness on these issues. Finding ways to adapt to or mitigate the negative impacts of OAH is also a priority. 

The province also wants a better understanding of how or if blue carbon — CO2 captured naturally from the atmosphere by marine plants and algae — could or should be used as a natural solution to buffer acidification and hypoxia.  

Continue reading B.C. launches blueprint to fend off climate’s ‘one-two punch’ on the ocean →
Rivers & Oceans, Waste

Coastal communities ‘fed up’ with B.C. shellfish sector’s plastics problem

National Observer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

Coastal communities are tired of paying to clean up plastic and debris from the B.C. shellfish industry to protect the marine environment, stewardship groups say.

The amount of garbage being retrieved from beaches in areas where shellfish aquaculture is concentrated grows year after year, and there’s little apparent enforcement by Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) to deal with the issue, said Dorrie Woodward, chair of the Association for Denman Island Marine Stewards (ADIMS).

Continue reading Coastal communities ‘fed up’ with B.C. shellfish sector’s plastics problem →