ISSUES: Obama shuts the door on Arctic and Atlantic drilling for next five years

by Julie M. Rodriguez

 

As Trump’s incoming administration makes its complete disinterest in protecting the environment clearer each day, it seems President Obama is doing all he can to enshrine whatever green policies he can during his final days in office. The current administration recently announced a ban on new oil and gas drilling in parts of the Arctic and Atlantic oceans for the next five years — long enough to outlast Trump’s first (and hopefully last) presidential term.

The Interior Department’s finalized oil and gas leasing plan for 2017-2022 was originally supposed to open up beaches from Virginia to North Carolina to new drilling, as well as the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas in the Arctic Ocean. However, after massive opposition from conservationists and businesses in the affected areas, the administration has cancelled most of the proposed leases. Unfortunately, offshore drilling is still allowed to move forward in 10 lease areas in the Gulf of Mexico, but this decision is far better than what was initially proposed.

Read the full story at: Obama blocks Arctic and Atlantic drilling for next five years | Inhabitat - Green Design, Innovation, Architecture, Green Building

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NOVA SCOTIA: Fish deaths in St. Mary’s Bay baffle experts - Chronicle Herald

HEATHER DESVEAUX
Published November 28, 2016 - 5:43pm
Last Updated November 28, 2016 - 7

Dead herring are washing up on the shore of St. Mary’s Bay. It’s got local residents and Department of Fisheries and Oceans looking for answers

For almost a week, hundreds of dead and dying herring have washed up with the tide along the northeastern shores of St. Mary’s Bay in Digby County. But no one seems to know why.

And now reports of injured and dead seals are surfacing.

Brighton resident Joan Comeau has a beachfront property she walks daily and first saw the fish washing up either dead or near dead a week ago.

When she checked on Monday, the herring were still washing up, but all were dead.“I hope they find out what’s going on,” she said in a phone interview. “Because they’re washing up on our property, this is personal to me.”

A day or so before she told the Chronicle Herald, she also saw some seals that had gashes all over them.

She’s never seen anything like this, she said.

Fisheries and Oceans reported a dead seal Monday that Department of Natural Resources staff picked up that afternoon. It apparently had washed up from the Digby side of the Racquette on the Annapolis Basin. Staff told the Chronicle Herald it was for the most part intact, but did have a small piece cut out at the back of it.

DFO’s Digby detachment says they hope to know before the end of this week what’s causing the herring mortality.

Apparently the highest number washed up on Friday, dead and dying members of the species used at this time of year to bait lobster traps.

Samples of the herring were sent to Moncton for testing, said detachment supervisor Gary Hutchins. Then they’ll know if the herring have a parasite that can affect their behaviour patterns, or whether it’s a natural phenomenon caused by whales or another predator.

“We’re learning this has happened in other areas before,” Hutchins said, explaining that DFO staff learned recently it happened off the coast of Tusket when a whale was looking to feed and chasing the fish up on shore.

Shawn Craik, associate professor of biology at Université Sainte-Anne, took some students to the site on Friday to collect samples and confirmed that the mortality appeared to be very localized.

“I’ve never seen anything like it, nor have the clam fisherman that we spoke to who’ve worked on the inner tidal flats around Gilbert’s cove for 40 years,” said Craik.

Read the entire story here: http://thechronicleherald.ca/novascotia/1419735-fish-deaths-in-st.-mary%E2%80%99s-bay-baffle-experts

ISSUES: Protecting the Quoddy Region with a Marine Protected Area

The first public presentation is being held today in St. George. Apparently meetings have been held with target groups, but there has been little public discussion as yet.

The first major effort to protect the area was many years ago when Parks Canada attempted to establish the first Canadian marine park. The effort was abandoned after they encountered stiff local opposition.

While MPAs can be totally different, it will be interesting to see how folks react to this latest effort. After a lifetime fending off the Pittston Refinery at Eastport and spending 2 decade plus fighting LNG developments proposed for the Quoddy Region, it is clear that some mechanism for protecting this unique and vital area needs to established. One of the key new developments will be tidal power and Head Harbour Passage has already been studied for this purpose by the Irvings. How will this be handled I wonder?

The following publication describes the Quoddy Region and outlines its importance ecologically and in human terms:

Creating a Quoddy Marine Protected Area by ART'S PLACE on Scribd

The next study is the original draft outlining why the Quoddy Area is important and why it was chosen as a potential marine park over other areas on the east coast.

A comparative Resource Analysis of the Deer Island and Grand Manan Archipelagos, Bay of Fundy by ART'S PLACE on Scribd

PRESENTATION: “bone detective” to visit Saint Mary’s with ground-breaking new research

Champlain's map of 1609 showing the river's French name of Rivière du Dauphin. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Paleoethnobotany Public Talk - NS Archaeology Society (January 28)

Tue Jan 19, 2016 3:48 pm (PST) .

PUBLIC TALK

Thursday, January 28, 2016
7:30 PM, Atrium 101
Saint Mary's University
The Seeds of Inquiry: Paleoethnobotanical Research in Atlantic
Canada

Dr. Michael Deal, Memorial University of Newfoundland (MUN)

The term "ethnobotany" was coined in 1895 in reference to the
study of plants used by aboriginal peoples. The field was
later broadened to include plant remains from archaeological
sites. This more recent subfield, which is referred to as
"paleoethnobotany," or "archaeobotany," concerns
the recovery and analysis of archaeological plant remains as a
basis for understanding past human and plant interactions.
Paleoethnobotanical research was slow to develop in eastern
Canada, and particularly in Pre-contact archaeology. This talk
outlines the development of paleoethnobotany in Atlantic Canada
through a number of cases studies involving the author and
various colleagues. Much of this research has been conducted
through the MUN Paleoethnobotany Lab.

Dr. Deal has had a diverse career in archaeology, which has taken
him to Mexico, Guatemala, Cyprus, and multiple locations within
Canada. His work focuses on ceramic ethnoarchaeology,
paleoethnobotany and, more recently, Canadian industrial and
aviation heritage.

Dr. Deal's teaching career began in 1985 at St. Mary's
University, which led to the initiation of paleoethnobotanical
research in Nova Scotia. This work resulted in the creation of a
comparative modern seed collection of over 500 species, which is
currently in use in the Paleoethnobotanical Laboratory, at
Memorial University. Paleoethnobotanical research has since been
expanded to include a variety of sites throughout Nova Scotia and
Newfoundland.

The Minas Basin Archaeological Project
<http://www.mun.ca/archaeology/field/minas.php> , sponsored by
the Nova Scotia Museum, aims to reconstruct prehistoric patterns
of land use and resource exploitation in the Minas Basin. This
project applies a diverse methodology, including ceramic
analysis, paleoethnobotanical investigations and
thermoluminescence dating, and the cataloging of local museum and
private collections. Current research interests in Nova
Scotia are focused on the Boswell Site, a Pre-contact, deeply
stratified site along the Annapolis River. This work began in
2011 with the involvement of the Nova Scotia Museum and the
Mi'kmaq Rights Initiative.

Professor Deal is available for interviews prior to Thursday,
January 28, 2016 and can be reached at 709-691-8310

.

MARINE PROTECTED AREAS: Sometimes good news might not be so good after all. |

MARINE PROTECTED AREAS: Sometimes good news might not be so good after all.

Posted on January 9, 2016 by admin

To the attention of The Honorable Hunter Tootoo, Minister of Fisheries, Oceans and the Canadian Coast Guard and copied to: Honorable Karen Ludwig, New Brunswick Southwest

I posted a brief article this week expressing my pleasure at hearing Minister Tootoo’s announcement that areas in the Bay of Fundy will come up for consideration as Marine Protected Areas. Almost immediately, I received negative comments and concerns about the loss of fishing and other rights long held by families … native and otherwise … who have survived in this remarkable ecosystem we call the Bay of Fundy. Since my maternal family is from Grand Manan and has native connections as well, I am fully aware of the history of the fishery in this area, the families that live here and the local and regional economic benefits that come from the resources of the Bay. In fact data show that annual income from fisheries, tourism, and related local industries can approach a billion dollars annually. Quoddy is a special and rich place that deserves to be protected. However, humans are and have been part of the ecosystem here back into post glacial times. It will take a wise individual to see how all of the components of the Quoddy ecosystem can be beneficially integrated.

Having been through the entire process under contract to Parks Canada where we carried out the actual field work, wrote comparative reports for 2 sites in New Brunswick, 1 in Nova Scotia and 1 in Newfoundland, I fully understand the values and concerns. In fact I did not share the extreme positions of many protesters at that time because it had been made clear by Parks Canada that traditional fisheries and related industries would be grandfathered and being relatively young and trusting, I did believe that would be true. Others did not trust these statement from Ottawa. Indeed they had no trust in Ottawa at all based on their experiences in the fishing industry over the years.

In the current situation,  I am now not so sure. In fact an article showed up on CBC today where Minister Tootoo stated that decisions would be made on the basis of science. I have no fundamental problem with that, but further down in the article, I see that the environmental heavyweights have already been knocking on the doors …

In the past environmental groups such as the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society have pointed out that development sometimes continued in the small percentage of areas set aside by the previous government. Tootoo wouldn’t define what, if any, development would be permitted in future marine-protected areas, but said all decisions would be based on science.

That’s good news to Sabine Jessen, the national director of the Oceans Program for the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society. “The science is really clear that the best marine protected areas are ones that don’t have fishing, don’t have commercial fishing, don’t have industrial uses, so that’s what the science has been telling us,” she said in an interview from Vancouver.

Jessen applauds the minister for trying to hit the interim target of protecting five per cent of ocean areas by 2017, but admits that it may not be possible. “All the steps that are required to obtain legal protection, I think that’s going to be part of the challenge. And then there’s a big commitment to consultations,” Jessen said. “So I’d say he’s got a big job ahead.”

Well, if the environmentalists from afar are planning to weigh-in on these considerations and if there is not a plan to include traditional fisheries and marine based businesses … however they might fit under a cooperative management regime … then there will be serious trouble.

Keep in mind that the coastal citizens of Grand Manan and West Island … the so-called Quoddy Region … have fought off challenge after challenge including the tidal development proposed by Franklin D. Roosevelt, the proposed giant oil refinery proposed by the Pittston Company for Eastport, The Marine Park proposal, 3 proposed LNG Terminals (with one remaining) and sundry other inappropriate developments. As tired as many of our citizens are of fighting these continuous battles, they have shown time and again that they can rise to the occasion … and I have no doubt they will on this occasion as well.

In spite of protests, aquaculture slipped through  … to the benefit of many of the initial protesters incidentally. Unfortunately, it was largely mismanaged during its early expansion days and rapidly outgrew the ability of this ecosystem to handle it. That has been remedied in some respects, but there is still work to be done and just how this would fit with a proposed MPA remains an open and difficult question to answer. Additional, I suspect that the current players are also,  “heavyweights” even as they remain hidden in the shadows.

Major protests will happen again if consideration is not given to a way of life that has sustained the people of the Quoddy shores for hundreds of years including Canada’s neighbours on the Maine side which is only a stone’s throw away and equally depended on the fishery, tourism and coastal shipping.

So Minister Tootoo, welcome to your new job. Many of us are encouraged by your background and your position on our oceans, fisheries and Coast Guard. Listen to all … but be careful what you believe.

That’s my position tonight.

Art MacKay

Copied to Editors at: Saint Croix Courier, Quoddy Tides, Calais Advertiser

ALTERNATE ENERGY: Great information available here

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