P.E.I. Shellfish Association president, several board members resign

Efforts are underway to organize a meeting to elect new board members to the Prince Edward Island Shellfish Association.

Association president Brenda Campbell and four other directors resigned last week.

Campbell stepped down Thursday, one day in advance of a special meeting membership had petitioned for to seek her resignation.

Association member Kenneth Arsenault was one of those pushing for the special meeting, a process that started around the end of June. He said Friday’s meeting was cancelled after Campbell voluntarily resigned.

According to Arsenault, members were concerned over inactivity at the associationrun Bideford River biological station. He said there had been no one hired to work at the station this year. Spat, collected last year to be used to seed public grounds this year, is still floating in cages, untended, he reported. As well, the collection of spat that would normally occur around mid-July did not happen this year. He suggested it might be necessary next year to purchase seed for the public grounds.

“The operation has been going every year, and this year it’s non-existent, so far,” said Arsenault. “We need that seed spread to keep up with the harvesting from the public fishery.”

For her part, Campbell blames the provincial government for withholding funding to the association and wonders if some of that is payback to the association for filing a judicial review over the dropping of the add-a-species moratorium. She said the province continues to dispute the numbers the association spent on enhancement last year.

“It was such a good-news story,” she said of the enhancement work. “There is no logical reason why anybody would ever let this industry flail around or blow in the wind as we have (seen) in the last six months.”