Category Archives: Rivers & Oceans

Environment, Rivers & Oceans

Canada confirms protections for marine protected areas but shipping pollution isn’t included

 Canada’s National Observer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

Canada formalized its minimum protection standards for marine protected areas on Wednesday at a global ocean conservation summit in Vancouver. 

Oil and gas activity, mining, the dumping of certain waste materials and destructive bottom trawling fishing won’t be allowed in any MPAs established from April 2019 and onward, said federal Fisheries Minister Joyce Murray and Steven Guilbeault, minister of Environment and Climate Change Canada, during a press conference at the IMPAC5 summit. 

The new protection standard is a policy blueprint based on a 2019 promise by the federal government to curb these industrial activities.

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Indigenous Nations, Rivers & Oceans

Canada, First Nations take first steps to protect massive swath of deep ocean on West Coast

 Canada’s National Observer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

The federal government and coastal First Nations took a significant step towards establishing a massive marine protected area off the West Coast of Vancouver Island on Tuesday.

The proposed Tang.ɢwan — ḥačxwiqak — Tsig̱isMarine Protected Area (MPA) covers a 133,000-square-kilometre swath of open ocean 150 kilometres off the island’s west coast. The area harbours a unique concentration of hydrothermal vents, underwater sea mountains and rich deep-sea biodiversity hot spots found nowhere else in the world.

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Indigenous Nations, Rivers & Oceans

Milestone agreement to protect vast West Coast marine areas endorsed by First Nations, Ottawa and B.C.

 Canada’s National Observer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

Fifteen First Nations are assuming stewardship of a vast network of marine protected areas in their traditional territories that span two-thirds of Canada’s West Coast. 

The Great Bear Sea MPA Network, an unprecedented initiative co-developed with the B.C. and federal governments, is the result of two decades of work, said Christine Smith-Martin, executive director for Coastal First Nations. 

The Indigenous-led initiative, also known as the  BC Northern Shelf MPA Network, involves 100,000 square kilometres of ocean and stretches from Northern Vancouver Island to the border of Alaska. It was formally endorsed and celebrated on Sunday at IMPAC5, a global marine conservation summit underway in Vancouver. 

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Rivers & Oceans

Death on the Coast: A Stormy Night, a Missing Tugboat

By  Zak Vescera, The Tyee, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

Troy Pearson had never wanted a job on land. On Feb. 10, 2021, he got up early to make a big breakfast for his wife, Judy Carlick-Pearson,  and their 11-year-old son who had an 8 a.m. hockey practice in Prince  Rupert. 

Pearson worked on tugboats  at Wainwright Marine, a tug and barge company in nearby Kitimat. He had  been on the water since he was a 10-year-old on his dad’s fishing boat,  but Carlick-Pearson said safety problems at work were keeping him up at  night. “He didn’t feel safe,” she said. 

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Forests, Rivers & Oceans

Running on Empty: Déjà vu

In 1949, Newfoundland joined Canada as a new Province. Its fisheries then fell under the authority of the central government in Ottawa — the infamous DFO (Department of Fisheries and Oceans, or as some call it, the Dead Fish Organisation).

DFO’s mismanagement of the Newfoundland fishery — the immensely productive shoal banks of the northern Atlantic seaboard — is now a classic cautionary tale. DFO’s bureaucrats ignored repeated warnings — from marine biologists, environmentalists, and fishermen themselves — and allowed brutal overfishing of Canadian waters.

The high-value fish in those waters were the prolific Atlantic cod, the basis for centuries of both subsistence and prosperity for fishing communities. Larger industrialised boats, more entrants each season, and ruthless exploitation of the stocks ensured that prosperity was short-lived. To be fair, other nations hammered even harder on the cod stocks of the North Atlantic; but Canada could have done something to protect the fish in its territorial waters — and did far too little, far too late.

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