Climate change leading to obstruction of Cape Breton harbours, fishers say

Fishery officials in northern Cape Breton say the increasing need for harbour dredging is a clear sign that climate change is starting to come with a cost.

Mark Timmons, a fisherman and whale watching tour operator out of Inverness County, said the harbour in Pleasant Bay was just dredged last year. But he said boats can't get in or out this year.

He said the harbour channel is about 95 per cent plugged. He said it is no coincidence that there's no big ice in the Gulf of St. Lawrence this year.

"Typically, on this west of the island we get storms and wind," he told Information Morning Cape Breton.

"That's what we're known for and the ice will calm the waters and calm the erosion as well, but it's amazing how much silt or sand has been pushed into the harbour."

Timmons said the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans has agreed to perform emergency dredging and the work should be done before lobster fishing season opens in May.

Osborne Burke, general manager of Victoria Co-op Fisheries and a member of regional and national advisory committees for small craft harbours, said climate change means dredging is increasingly needed to get fishing boats out on the water.

"Sometimes we would do that occasionally, but it wouldn't be as often as it appears to be now," he said.

"You have these severe storms and you have the lack of ice cover and you get a lot of sand and gravel moving in very quickly and infilling the channel entrance."

Without the cover of sea ice, the ocean churns up the bottom, not only plugging up harbours, but also affecting fish and shellfish and infrastructure such as wharfs inside the harbours, Burke said.

Not all of the harbours around Cape Breton have been affected by the lack of ice.

Dredging just finished last week in Bay St. Lawrence in northern Victoria County, but fisherman and harbour authority president John Buchanan said sediment there comes every year from runoff in the mountains around the harbour.

Still, those in the fishing industry say they are seeing the impacts of climate change. Burke said DFO needs to beef up its budget to account for the increasing need to dredge harbours.

"Fishermen need access to get in safely and get out safely ... so it's an ongoing challenge," he said. "There's not enough dollars."

No one from DFO was available for comment last week.