PNCIMA Update – Marine Spatial Planning and Zones
As our regular readers know, here at Coastal Voices, we have been paying close attention to the unfurling of the Pacific North Coast Integrated Management Area marine planning process on the B.C. coast.
 Download pdf of PNCIMA map (2.9 MB) Open jpg of PNCIMA map |
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What is marine spatial planning and why is it important? Essentially, marine spatial planning involves collecting information about all of the different ocean characteristics and human uses; mapping all of these different requirements and uses; and then making policy decisions about what activities will be good in which spots.
Here at Living Oceans Society we advocate for marine spatial planning because we believe that this planning method is very useful in identifying everyone that relies on the ocean, and fitting in all of the different uses in a way that ensures the ocean’s prosperity for years to come.
There are some early indications that Fisheries and Oceans Canada and other leaders in the Pncima process might use a step by step approach to marine spatial planning that was designed by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). This method is highly regarded by ocean planners and users around the world. In order for BC to have a world-class plan we are urging the Pncima Secretariat to use the UNESCO approach.
An effective spatial planning process will provide us with integrated management of our shared resources. It will also ensure that the marine ecosystem is healthy and that it can continue to provide us with all of its services. We encourage the Pncima Secretariat to commit to using the UNESCO approach to Marine Spatial Planning in Pncima, and we will continue to press DFO for excellence as the planning process unfolds in the months and years to come.
Summer Fun on the North Island
The summer is an exciting time to be living on the North Island: the sun shines until late into the evening, the harbors fill up with boats, and summer festivals abound on weekends. At Living Oceans Society, we love celebrating the North Island communities that we serve.
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| The Otesha Sunshine Coast Bike Tour performs in the Sointula community hall. Below: The LOS table at the Vancouver Island MusicFest. |
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This year, you may have already seen us at Campbell River’s Canada Day Celebration, Port Hardy’s Filomi Days, Alert Bay’s SeaFest, or at the Sointula Co-op Centennial Parade. A little further from home, we also took part in the Living Green initiative at this year’s Vancouver Island MusicFest in the Comox Valley.
It is always such a treat for us to celebrate coastal living and to speak with other community members about the issues that are important to them. Look for us at the summer craft fair in Telegraph Cove and OrcaFest in Port McNeill this August. And any time that you see Living Oceans folks out in the community, please stop by to say hello and to tell us what’s on your mind!
Pictures: Otesha giving a performance at the Sointula Community Hall in June, LOS At Vancouver Island MusicFest in July
We’re looking for your feedback!
CLICK HERE to tell us what oceans issues are most important to you.
LEK Section
In over 50 interviews with coastal residents I have yet to meet anyone who takes our marine environment for granted. All of the interviews, used for documenting local ecological knowledge (LEK), have been informative and interesting.
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| Kilbella Bay. Below: Vern Sampson, marking LEK info on the charts. |
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Photo of Kilbella Bay by Vern Sampson
We rolled out a couple of charts of the Dean Channel area on their kitchen table after a sumptuous meal of barbequed ling cod with a (secret recipe) special crab topping and home grown vegetables from their garden.
I could barely keep up with my notes as Randy and Tracy enthusiastically extolled the scenic grandeur, the history and the diverse abundance of marine life in all the areas in which they had traveled.
Randy told me “Cascade Inlet was our clients’ favourite place – absolutely fantastic scenery, waterfalls, rainbows, salmon and bears, always the bears!”
Tracy mentioned the colourful wildflowers in spring in the Elcho River estuary, and as she is an accomplished amateur photographer, she has a fine collection of photographs from the region.
They pointed out rivers where there used to be an abundance of Eulachon spawning in the early nineties and grew concerned when the runs diminished more each year.
We spent about two hours documenting all the areas and ecological points of interest that they valued in their marine environment, the changes they have witnessed and came to the conclusion that, having recently sold both our boats, that it was definitely time again for each of us to acquire new boats and make more journeys up, “north of Caution.”
When I solicited comments on some of the issues that Living Oceans Society is working on, such as open net cage salmon farms, I soon found out that both Randy and Tracy were among the 88% of my interviewees who were opposed to current salmon farming methods on the B.C. coast. Of all the interviews I have done, I have only found 2% (actually 1 out of 48) who were in support of fish farming and 8% had little or no knowledge of the issues and essentially had no comment. When asked if closed containment systems for salmon aquaculture, which separates the farmed salmon from the wild salmon’s marine environment, would be acceptable, 90 % said yes.
Most of the people I have interviewed feel that while there is a lot of work being done toward marine conservation there is much more work left to do, such as further protecting marine habitat, transitioning open net cage salmon farms to closed containment systems and keeping the moratorium on large oil tankers in place. The Local Ecological Knowledge Project always maintains a high degree of confidentiality concerning the documentation of people’s knowledge and comments.
Randy and Tracy’s interview is the exception to the confidentiality rule: not only did they give generously of their time and knowledge for our records, but they also allowed us to share some of their interview with you!
If you are interested in setting up an interview, or want some more information about Living Oceans Society’s local knowledge project, you can contact me at 250-973-6580 or vsampson@livingoceans.org.
Coastal Voices - Susan Hamilton
For this edition of Coastal Voices, we had a chance to talk with Susan Hamilton, a Sointula resident since 1974 who spent twenty-five years in the fishing industry, working as part of the crew on seine boats as well as on her own gillnetter. Sue Hamilton is now the grounds keeper at Bere Point camp site and continues to be a part of the fishing industry with her work mending gillnets.
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| Sue mending gillnets at Bere Point. |
SH: I was a single mom and I didn’t want to have a latch-key kid and I decided this was probably a great place to raise a kid. It was [also] the hippy, back-to-the-land movement. I’d been up the summer of ’73 visiting a friend, moved up in January of ’74, and started [on a fishing boat as a cook] ’74.
CV: What were your first impressions of fishing?
SH: It was like entering a whole new strange and wondrous world. [When I began in 1974] I was still a vegetarian and to go fishing was really kind of strange. I was hooked that first week. We were in the Pig Ranch and one set that we got, there were over sixty spring salmon, and these were big fish. When you get a good set the energy of the boat just changes and everybody’s high and excited.
CV: So you were hooked from the very first trip, and the rest is history?
SH: There was something about that energy that just turned me on, I really liked it, and the team-work that happened in order for the boat to function; everybody had to work together as one. There’s a certain energy or synchronicity when that happens.
CV: It must be amazing to be in such a close relationship with the ocean.
SH: It’s just magic, working on the water is magic. There were times when [you’d be] doing something and you’d look out the window and see this great big tail coming out [of the water]. This magic just kind of reached into your work life.
CV: What is your hope for the future of this coast?
SH: Fundamentally, I hope that as a society we start moving away from what has become a sort of multi-national thinking where bigger is better and we start paying attention to rebuilding small communities that have been the life blood of the coast. I’d really like people to understand that we’ve lost the momentum of the seventies where enhancement was the policy of the fisheries and by this going by the way side, we are not paying attention to one of our most renewable protein resources: the salmon.
