Another important lobster season

If Mother Nature cooperates, we are days away from the opening of the province’s – and the country’s – largest lobster fishery.

If the weather – specifically the wind – isn’t on the side of the industry on Monday, we’ll have to see when things get underway for the LFA 34 and 33 openings in southwestern Nova Scotia and along the province’s south shore.

While the weather is always an uncertainty as a season approaches, one thing that is certain is the importance of the lobster fishery. When it comes down to it – and despite having a diversified economy – the lobster fishery truly is the engine that drives the economy in southwestern Nova Scotia.

Over a six-month season that opens the last Monday of November and ends on the last day of May, it directly employs thousands of people on boats and there are countless businesses and plants onshore that relay on the fishery – whether it be for employment, to sell goods and services or to reap the benefits of money circulating through the local economy.

Directly or indirectly, you’d be hard-pressed here to find anyone or any business not touched by the fishery somehow.

If the entire province does not recognize or appreciate how much the fishery contributes to Nova Scotia’s overall rural economy, it should take notice. The last lobster season in LFAs 34 and 33 saw a total landed preliminary value of $498.2 million.

There is no question, western Nova Scotia does its part.

People who make their livelihood on the water are not “just” fishermen or fisherwomen. This is a noble and important livelihood and it is hard, gruelling work. Fishers are at the mercy of the cold, the ocean, the early mornings, the long nights, the back-breaking work and the catches they haul up.

They spend weeks, if not months, preparing for the season and when the season is underway they come home tired and sometimes beaten up by the work they’ve done.

Tragically, sometimes they don’t come home at all. The opening of the season, with boats heavily loaded with traps and gear, is the riskiest part of the season. With that in mind numerous assets will be on the water and in the sky ensuring the opening runs as smoothly and safely as it can. And prior to the season the issue of safety was reinforced through man overboard and safety demonstrations at wharves.

Fishers, of course, are ultimately responsible for their safety – and captains for the safety of their crews. While accidents can and will occur, please take the necessary steps to ensure you are all safe.

We want everyone to have a prosperous season but mostly importantly we want everyone to come home.

Around the opening of the season there are countless visual reminders of how much our fishers mean to our communities – whether it be the buoys decorating the Lobster Pot Tree in the Municipality of Barrington, or the family members and strangers who will bundle up and gather on wharves and shorelines prior to 6 a.m. to give the lobster fleet a fitting send-off and to show their gratitude, their support and their love.

Every year the Tri-County Vanguard compiles a Lobster Outlook that looks at various aspects of the lobster fishery. This year’s Lobster Outlook includes 24 pages devoted to the industry.

Throughout the pages of the outlook you will see countless headlines on countless stories.

But if we were to pick the headlines that we think are most important to this fishery it would be these: Thank you to everyone on the boats.

Have a good season.

Be safe and come back home.