U.S. Border Patrol stopping Canadian fishers off Maine

Increased scrutiny from U.S. vessels reported in valuable, disputed fishing grounds

As tensions rise between the United States and Canada, a new clash has surfaced in the cool waters off the northeast tip of Maine, which are rich with lobster, scallops and cod.

For more than a decade, American and Canadian fishermen largely have had a friendly but competitive relationship in an oval-shaped region of the Bay of Fundy known as the grey zone. This summer that camaraderie has been threatened, Canadian fishermen claim, as officers with the U.S. Border Patrol have started to wade into the area, pull up aside their vessels and ask about their citizenship.

“We don’t want this to be a great international incident, but it’s kind of curious,” said Laurence Cook, the chair of the lobster committee at the Grand Manan Fishermen’s Association in New Brunswick. “They say it’s routine patrolling, but it is the first routine patrolling in 25 years.”

At least 10 Canadian fishing boats have been stopped by U.S. immigration authorities within the past two weeks, Cook said, the latest escalation in a more than 300-year disagreement between the countries. Both countries claim the island, which is about 15 kilometres off Maine and home to two full-time residents (both Canadian), puffins, rocks and not much else, and say they have the right to patrol its boundaries.

Canada has responded with its own show of force. Last Sunday and Monday, a roughly 30-metre-long Canadian Coast Guard vessel appeared in the disputed grey zone and began patrolling the area.

Canada’s Foreign Affairs Department said that it had heard about two stops in late June involving Border Patrol officers and had asked the U.S. government for an explanation.

“Canada continues to investigate these incidents that occurred in Canadian waters,” said John Babcock, a spokesperson for Global Affairs Canada. “Canada’s sovereignty over the Machias Seal Island and the surrounding waters is long-standing and has a strong founda- tion in international law.”

The U.S. State Department did not respond to a request for comment. The Border Patrol described the encounters in the Atlantic as “regular patrol operations to enforce immigration laws.”

“The U.S. Border Patrol does not board Canadian vessels in the grey zone without consent or probable cause, and agents only conduct interviews as a vessel runs parallel to it,” said Stephanie Malin, a spokesperson for Customs and Border Protection, which operates the border agency.

Cook said that he heard from boat captains that the Border Patrol had searched at least two Canadian vessels in June. No one was arrested and nothing was confiscated, he said.

“I wouldn’t call it unprecedented or say that the fishermen were harassed,” said John Drouin, 53, a member of the Maine Lobster Advisory Council who lives in the coastal town of Cutler, about 16 kilometres from Machias Seal Island. “They have had a strong presence in the area for a good solid month.”

To get to the grey zone, fishermen in the United States depart from a port like Cutler, and those in Canada take off from Grand Manan Island in New Brunswick. But once they are in the same waters, it becomes nearly impossible to determine at a glance whether the fishing boats are Canadian or American. Drouin said he thinks something else is at play: competition.

For hundreds of years, lobstermen in the United States have sailed the chilly waters off New England during the summer, lowering and raising traps along the ocean floor. Their counterparts in Canada mostly stayed off in the distance, setting cages during the winter around the coast of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland.

That changed in 2002. Fishermen from Grand Manan Island got approval from the Canadian government to fish year-round in the grey zone, setting up direct competition with Mainers. It is the only lobster region in Canada near the shore that remains open all year. Now, about 50 Canadians and 50 Americans fish the area together.

As Canada’s presence increased in the area, Drouin said, so did Canadian fishing patrol boats, watching Americans operate their lobster traps.