Tag Archives: Pendrell Sound

The origins of Cortes Island’s Shellfish Industry

In the most recent of her interviews about Cortes History, Lynne Jordan, former President of the Cortes Island Museum, traces one of the Island’s foremost industries from its pre-contact beginnings up until recent times.  

Lynne Jordan: “ The First Nations cultivated clam gardens on this coast for 3,000 to 5,000 years, maybe even longer. One on Quadra Island was recently dated at being around 3,500 years old.”

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Cleaning up shellfish growing areas on Cortes and East Redonda Islands

Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) is cleaning up some of the shellfish growing areas in our area.

Erik Lyon, of Rising Tide Shellfish, believes the clean-ups may be connected to the fact aquaculture licenses in this area will come up for renewal in 2025

DFO has not yet returned Cortes Currents initial query, but Lyon is working on extensive clean-ups on Cortes and East Redonda Islands. 

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Becoming Nature Boy

George Sirk’s radio program comes from a lifelong passion. He became a specialist in “tropical ecology, in places such as Australia, Papua New Guinea and tropical America,”  and later an expedition leader in the Canadian Arctic. He first brought this to the airwaves for CFUV in Victoria. George also produced seven minute clips on the Arctic for CBC’s Morning Show, before Prime Minister Harper cut back on funding. He returned to Cortes Island in 2016 and on February 1 became CKTZ’s newest talk show host. In this morning’s interview, I ask George Sirk about becoming Nature Boy.

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Turn It In Week

For the past eight years Gorge harbour residents, on Cortes Island, have been cleaning up the aquaculture debris, left by industry, at their own expense. This was sometimes a source of tension between property owners and industry. Barry and Amanda Glickman, who organized these annual clean-ups, said the first year they hauled away three truck loads of debris. The most recent clean-up was last May. Now the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) is stepping in and, in partnership with industry, will be holding Turn it in Week between September 11-15, 2017.

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What The Misty Isles Offers

[From the Archives: April 26, 2016]

A thriving ecotourism sector has grown up in the twenty years since logging ruled over British Columbia’s economy. One of the foremost voices in the Discovery Island area is Mike Moore, whose sailboat the Misty Isles has been touring these waters since 1997. This is the first program taken from a long conversation about ecotourism and what the Misty Isles offers ecotourists.

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