SIPEKNE’KATIK FIRST NATION, N.S. — Sipekne’katik First Nation fishers in Nova Scotia are transitioning from their food social and ceremonial fishery to its treaty fishery Monday morning.
Chief Mike Sack says Indigenous fishers are exercising their treaty rights. The fishery is not authorized by DFO and some say that makes it illegal.
"We have close to 15 to 20 boats that that will be going out and I guess 50 traps boat," says Chief Sack.
He says the band has given notice to federal Fisheries Minister Bernadette Jordan.
“From talking with Ms. Jordan the other day I think that there will be a lot of DFO on the water and taking out people's traps and such, and infringing on our rights,” says Sack.
Dalhousie University professor Megan Bailey has been heading up a study into the viability of a summer fishery in St. Mary’s Bay.
On Tuesday, she and First Nations fishers pulled traps to check on the quality and quantity of lobsters.
Bailey says she found that 99 per cent of the catch were hard-shelled and only one was an egg-bearing female.
"To say you can’t fish in the summer it’s just clearly wrong," says Bailey.
"We do fish in the summer, we fish in LFA 27 in July, and Cape Breton. Maine fishes all summer. There are even LFA's open in New Brunswick right now, so it is not true that fishing in the summer is absolutely off-limits."
“If it was appropriate to fish in St. Mary’s Bay right now, why would the Acadian community not have participated in that over the last 200 years and why would they wait for bad weather conditions in December to do it?" says Colin Sproul, president of the Bay of Fundy Inshore Fisherman's Association.
Sproul says the treaty fishery is regulated by the Sipekne’katik First Nation and it is not authorized by DFO. He says Minister Jordan addressed the idea of a treaty fishery this spring.
"I think it’s important to point out that when Chief Sack says that he has the right to regulate his own fishery, that’s false by the definition of the Supreme Court in the Marshall Decision," Sproul says.
A point Chief Sack disagrees with, part of the reason his community will be on the water Monday morning.
