Troy Doucet said he was inundated with disappointment as he investigated a fish slaughter on the Tusket River on Monday that he estimates are more than 100,000 fish.
“We’re like a small group of fishermen and we don’t care about Nova Scotia Power,” Doucet said in a telephone interview Tuesday.
“And it’s not just Nova Scotia Power; DFO, in my opinion, I don’t care.”
Doucet is the co-chair of the Yarmouth-Shelburne Gaspereau Advisory Committee. He said that although the discovery of the dead gaspereau began circulating on social media on Monday, he believes that the slaughter probably took place about a week ago and that the fish are now coming to the surface and are spilling out of the river. .
The fish are located near a Nova Scotia Power plant, just down the river from the company’s hydroelectric dam, about a 15-minute drive from Yarmouth.
Need for effective passage of fish
Doucet said he believes the fish tried to use the fish scale in the dam. When that didn’t work out for as many as there were, they looked for another way, luring them to the power plant, he said.
The problem with this, Doucet said, is that the fish scale at the plant is designed for salmon and does not work for gaspereau.
“The angle of the ramps, the pressure of the passing water, the height to enter the boxes, will not work for gaspereau.”
Although a net has been added to the area to try to prevent the fish from entering the pond, Doucet said he believes the fish were able to get over it when the water level was high, leaving them there. to die when the river level dropped with the tides. .
“If we had a gaspereau ladder here, we wouldn’t have this slaughter of fish.”
The passage of fish has been a constant problem in the river, Doucet said. Despite efforts to improve the scale of fish in the dam and install a suitable scale for the power plant, it has not happened.
‘It’s BS’
What the area needs, he said, is an effective fish pass.
“You can define the passage of fish as two fish going up the ladder. This is not an effective fish passage.”
Troy Doucet is frustrated that the DFO did not inform him of the fish’s death when the department first learned of it a week ago. (Submitted by Troy Doucet)
In a statement, a Nova Scotia Power spokesman said protecting the environment, fish and fish habitat are “very important” to the company.
“We are working closely with DFO to assess the situation. The operations of our Tusket hydraulic system have worked as they normally would, keeping water levels at the proper level throughout the fish migration season.”
A DFO spokesman told CBC in a statement that the department is monitoring and assessing the situation and working with Nova Scotia Power on the passage of the fish into the Tusket River system.
The spokesman said the department first heard reports of fish deaths on May 17.
Doucet said he was not happy that, as co-chair of the advisory committee, he had not been told about the murder when the DFO learned of it.
“It shows where I am, where we are, on this advisory committee,” he said. “We thought the DFO was possibly there to hear some of our concerns. Staying in the dark and not receiving notifications tells me it’s BS.”
The season has been shortened in recent years due to concerns about fish stocks.
Fishing has been reduced from five days a week to three. And although the season legally opens on March 15, Doucet said everyone agreed to wait until early April to start fishing to further help the populations. The season closed on Monday.
While Doucet acknowledges that the shares were “in a mess” three or four years ago, he said it looks like things are changing.
“The last two years, especially this year, the volume of fish in this river is the largest I’ve seen in the 32 years I’ve been in the game.”
But these gains don’t mean much without an effective passage of fish. Aaron Leblanc used to fish in the river before moving to another out of concern for the passage of fish and Nova Scotia Power’s ongoing work on the dam, which is years behind schedule and millions of dollars above budget.
Doucet said the most recent fish count of the year estimates that about a million fish have gone up the river.
“This is the fish of a whole season”
Losing 100,000 fish will have important implications, Leblanc said.
“These are fish for a whole season and they haven’t spawned yet,” Leblanc said.
“We’ve reduced our fishing efforts over the last three or four years to try to help the fish population. Seeing something like that breaks your heart.”
Gaspereau are caught with water nets or net nets.
The Tusket River has 27 commercial mesh network licensees and about 60 commercial immersion network licensees. Primarily a bait fishery, the species has become valuable not only to the fishermen who catch them, but also to the wider fishing industry.
Doucet estimates the gaspereau fishery is worth more than $ 2 million, but said its value extends to the lucrative lobster fishery, which is turning to fish as a bait option at a time when other species , such as mackerel and herring, face stock. own challenges.
“Fresh bait is not available as abundant as in the past,” Doucet said.
“So put a good fresh product (bait) in a lobster pot, they’re generating a higher catch, which provides a lot more money in that regard.”