Cooler heads need to prevail in lobster disputes

Letter of the law and community fishing traditions appear to be clashing on the lobster grounds off Ecum Secum. One thing’s for certain — things need to calm down, and soon, in an escalating dispute between two area families that’s already resulted in charges being laid for assault causing bodily harm, mischief causing danger to life (after a ramming at sea) and uttering threats.

There have also been allegations of an attempted ramming and anonymous telephoned death threats. A DFO vessel and the coast guard were off Ecum Secum on Thursday in response to “civil disobedience and local unrest,” a DFO spokesman said. No trouble was reported that day.

Under DFO rules, lobster licences for a specific Lobster Fishing Area (LFA) can be legally fished anywhere within that zone. LFA zones can be quite large.

Traditionally, however, many fishing communities expect lobster fishers to use licences in the locales that they’ve been fished before.

The two viewpoints are not necessarily compatible.

In the case now boiling on the Eastern Shore, before the season opened, Tanya Chambers of Ecum Secum purchased the LFA 32 lobster licence and the boat of a fisherman who’d been operating out of Three Fathom Harbour.

Ecum Secum and Three Fathom Harbour are more than 140 kilometres apart by road, but both are within LFA 32, a big zone stretching from the Halifax County-Guysborough County border to roughly around Lawrencetown near Dartmouth. The Chambers family also holds a lobster licence for LFA 31B, the adjoining zone to the northeast of LFA 32.

The Chambers chose — legally, by DFO rules — to fish their just-purchased licence in the northern section of LFA 32, near Ecum Secum. But at least one other family in neighbouring Marie Joseph apparently took exception to that arrangement — based on a more traditional view.

The result has been a series of confrontations, on and off the water.

It’s understandable when people’s livelihoods are at stake that conflicts will arise over access to a valuable shared resource. Many lobster fishers have expensive licences and gear that they need to make payments on. Seasons only last so long.

But vigilantism is never the answer. It leads to people getting hurt and sometimes killed. DFO, which must be aware its LFA rules and community lobster fishing traditions can be incompatible, should be looking for possible methods to defuse resulting tensions. What’s been happening in Ecum Secum is surely not the only situation of its kind.

It’s a complicated matter, as fishing patterns vary up and down the coast, and from fisher to fisher, but surely there’s no downside to conducting a thorough review of lobster licensing requirements, including consulting all stakeholders, in hopes of finding ways to further avoid such conflicts. Meanwhile, at the very least, a community meeting that included representatives from DFO and the RCMP could be held to try to cool down tempers and reasonably discuss workable solutions that everyone can live with.

Ultimately, people must find a way to fish alongside one another peacefully.