Harbour haul
While casual observers may question the choice of eating mackerel caught out of Halifax Harbour, others have no issue with it and are eagerly hauling in their fill.
There’s nothing fishy about eating mackerel from Halifax Harbour for local fishing enthusiasts.
Through the warm summer months, schools of the fish surge along the Nova Scotia coastline, offering a potential bonanza for those who enjoy catching them.
Bedford resident Marc Sauve and his sons Zachary, 15, and Christopher, 10, were steadily hauling in mackerel on Monday morning at the Mill Cove jetty in the Bedford Basin.
While they weren’t keeping the smaller fish they hooked, Sauve, a standup comedian who owns a company called Funny Fundraisers, said they have no qualms about cooking up a fish supper.
“Everything in moderation, as we’ve figured out,” he said while helping his sons take hooks out
of mackerel jaws and toss the silver-sided fish back into the water. “It’s not like we’re eating this fish every day from the harbour. I plan on doing it a couple more times this year.”
Sauve and his sons just started fishing here this year, although they’ve lived in the area for nine. While on a walk earlier this summer, he saw a veritable village of fishers plying the waters and got to talking with them. He then got some gear for himself and his sons and gave it a try.
“I think the first day we came down here we probably caught about a dozen like, Bam! Right away.”
They were hooked.
“That day, I went home and looked up how to clean them and how to prepare them and came back and I think we took five decent-sized (mackerel) home that night. I filleted them up and cooked them with olive oil, garlic,
parsley and paprika and cooked it with some rice and vegetables and the kids loved it. It was delicious.”
While casual observers may question the choice of eating mackerel caught out of the harbour, others see no issue with it.
Boris Worm, a marine research scientist and biology professor at Dalhousie University, said he’d eat it although he cautioned that that is his personal opinion, not something he has determined through research.
“Mackerel are passing through our waters these days, and as such I would not expect them to spend a whole lot of time in the harbour,” he said via email. “They are moving around quite a bit in contrast to, say, shellfish, which stay in place and tend to accumulate pollutants. Hence I would personally not have any concerns about eating mackerel from the harbour.”