Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - On March 27 Cortes Currents published some concerns that Cortes Island shellfish growers have about liveaboard and recereational boat owners coming too close to their operations. Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) did not have adequate time to respond, which it eventually did by email on April 6, 2023.
Cortes Currents was hoping to secure an interview and sent DFO a list of topics to be covered. The most important was ‘the problems of liveaboards and recreational boaters coming too close to shellfish growing sites.’
According to Erik Lyon, of Rising Tide Shellfish, “The problem is too many people in too close a proximity to shellfish farms. You can’t have any shellfish destined for human consumption in water where there’s any kind of a man-made dock, boat liveaboard or float house within 125 meters.”
“People come in the summer, they’re cruising and they anchor in the harbour. Maybe they are a new liveaboard. They don’t know the place and) they’ll anchor right up close to someone’s beach lease because they’re trying to get into shallow water. They don’t even know about that 125 meters setback, and that’s not their fault that they don’t know.”
Phil Allen, President of Bee Islets Growers Corporation in Gorge Harbour, confirmed, “You cannot sell any shellfish from that lease while the boat is there.”
So what do you do?
Allen said, “You just have to harass them. That’s the only option you’ve got. Say, ‘Look, I can’t operate while you are here. Could you please move?’”
Lyon explained, “We don’t have any safeguards to protect us from something as simple as a bunch of people living on their boats too close to our farm because there isn’t any government or regulatory body that has the teeth to enforce, remove, or in any way influence the conduct of the people who choose to live on a boat.”
“It’s highly risky for us because Environment Canada is taking note of vessels that are in close proximity to the leases. They are GPSing people’s position (where their boat is), and keeping track of that. If there’s a cumulative risk perceived by them, they will close areas as a precautionary thing – which is what they did in the west end of the Gorge.”
Another Cortes grower, Kristen Schofield-Sweet, stated, “It wasn’t that the water testing was coming back negative. it’s that DFO decided there was simply too much traffic, too many boats. So they closed that area, but there was no evidence that the water itself was fouled.”
Lyon added, “They said, ‘this is too much of a risk, we can’t control for this.”
Those quotes were taken from the March 26 article, and Cortes Currents sent DFO a link.
DFO’s response does not contain a single reference to ‘boats,’ ‘liveaboards,’ or their proximity to active shellfish growing sites.
