Harbour Spiel Online

January 2017 editorial: The answer to fantasy questions

Brian Lee

For some reason, we like to entertain ourselves by asking fantasy questions:
What would you do if you won the lottery?
If you could marry a Spice Girl, which would it be?

Here, we also fantasize about what it would take to make our community economically self-sustaining:
What single entity could deliver year-round employment and reverse our schools’ declining enrollment?
A penitentiary?
A tram up to the Caren Range, like the one Squamish recently built?
Maybe large-scale marijuana facilities or the headquarters of a tech company?

As with the lottery question, everyone has a different answer when it comes to what that shot of economic Viagra might be.
Until now.

The riddle has been solved with the Ruby Lake Lagoon Society’s PODS marine research station. Work is underway to secure the Irvines Landing marina property. Now a derelict site, it was once the centre of commerce for a fledgling community. But even now, 100 years later, our community is still struggling to find its way. Despite an uptick in a real estate economy and the frenetic pace of the summer season, many businesses still can’t cut it through the winter. A local cafe recently announced it will shutter four days a week because of anemic winter sales.

Pender Harbour and Egmont seem to lack the momentum to spark a transition from seasonal economies. The proposed Pender Ocean Discovery Station will change that with a world class pull for students and visitors.

And with jobs.  PODs will require administrators, biologists, groundskeepers, lab technicians, cleaners, servers and cooks. Someone will maintain a fleet of boats, others may be hired to operate them. The $10 million or more in construction costs alone will help fill schools and empty seats in winter coffee shops, and PODS is projected to be profitable by year three.

It will also put this area at the forefront of marine research to interpret some of the changes taking place in our ocean. If nothing else, a few more smart people in town could provide a welcome boost to the local gene pool.

But to appreciate how thoroughly PODS will impact this community is to understand how it will become the symbol and brand of Pender Harbour. Not only will PODS provide a visual first impression for visitors arriving to Pender Harbour by boat, it will provide continued media exposure to the rest of the world.  It will be what we are known for.

Site and business plans are in place, and support has come from a long list of influential people that includes the lieutenant-governor of BC.  So, it’s time to stop asking fantasy questions about what our Hail Mary might be and recognize that it’s here now, and we need to catch it. As one local shopkeeper interviewed in the “PODS Away” video said, “It’s a game-changer.” When PODS opens in 2020, imagine your family’s pride in finding their name listed with others who contributed to its necessary first step — the purchase of the land on which it sits.

Harbour Spiel January 2017 issue

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December 2016 editorial: Who's looking out for the fish?

Brian Lee

Like local chum runs, Mixal Creek has seen a hearty return of coho — 200 to 300 by one mid-November estimate. So, I snapped some photos to document the phenomenon (see p. 16).

There’s something about salmon returning to spawn that gives me hope we might still pull out of this mess. By the time I knew the difference between a coho and a pink, I understood salmon stocks were depleted.  By years of overfishing, overpolluting and overlogging — greed.

Still, like most fishermen, I saw salmon as $10 bills coming over the roller and assumed there’d always be more. Mixal Creek connects Sakinaw and Mixal lakes and as I sat alongside it waiting quietly for a spooked coho to return so I could resume shooting at him with my Nikon, I couldn’t help but consider how fragile it is.  An MVA, erosion, spills or logging — any number of mishaps could wipe it out.

People are its biggest threat but we’re also best positioned to protect it. That’s not the case for possibly thousands of salmon runs already lost in BC, many hidden away up some inlet. In 1996, the American Fisheries Society identified 142 genetically unique stocks of salmon that have gone extinct in B.C. and the Yukon. A further 920 runs were not yet classified despite having mean escapements of zero for the previous decade. More startling, the health of approximately 4,000 others is unknown.  Like the Mixal Creek coho, each is unique and allowing even one to be destroyed is unacceptable. Criminal.

I recall my Grandpa often returning home after some salmon enhancement meeting or creek cleaning project. Local people have always accepted responsibility for fixing what is broken. But even during my Grandpa’s time, we relied on a framework of provincial and federal support. Fisheries biologists must be available to guide enhancement projects and enforcement must prevent someone from gillnetting the mouth of Sakinaw Creek during spawning season.

A few days after visiting Mixal Creek, I shut down my computer and paddled around Francis Peninsula. Off the southern end, near the mouth of Churchill Bay, I came along a gillnet floating in the water. It was a fraction of the length of a regular gillnet and was bunched up but hanging straight and untangled.  It had a good weed line with clean corks but no Scotchman buoy or lights. Clearly someone was taking advantage of the fall’s chum return.

It reminded me of a gillnet washed up on Martin Island a few years ago. I didn’t go ashore to inspect it but it doesn’t take a fisheries cop to know it too was likely used for poaching. That’s if we had any fisheries cops. Since the closure of the Madeira Park DFO office, we rely on three fisheries officers in Powell River to patrol from Toba Inlet to Howe Sound. DFO basically told the Harbour Spiel this month (see p. 10) not to expect too much when it comes to the management of local fisheries projects. This on the heels of the federal government’s announcement of a $1.5 billion “ocean protection plan” to protect us from oil spills.

The ocean protection plan may be a convenient salve slapped on a political sore spot but despite the headlines, our marine habitat’s greatest threat isn’t tankers, it’s us. And if you ask anyone who is out on the water regularily, we’re out of control.

Harbour Spiel December 2016 issue

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