When Digital Journal first reported on the massive marine animal and fish die-off in the Bay of Fundy in December 2016, hundreds of thousands of marine animals, including fish, crabs, scallops lobsters, starfish, and other creatures had turned up on the beaches of southwest Nova Scotia.
The Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) Southwest Nova Scotia (SWNS) was involved with the investigation of the die-off and every possible reason behind the massive pile of dead sea creatures was examined, and nothing seemed to come up on the DFO’s radar.
Storm run-off and human-made pollution were also investigated but there are few farms facing the bay and municipal waste water and sewage systems proved to not be a source of contamination. At the time of the December investigation, Kent Smedbol, manager of population ecology for DFO SWNS pointed out that St. Mary’s Bay “basically empties and refills once a day, so if it was a one-off event it might have already washed out of the bay.”
Was a rubber duck race really the cause of the deaths?
This Digital Journal writer made a lot of friends in Nova Scotia while covering the fish die-off, and one of them, Jennifer Thibodeau shared a post on my Facebook page today from a group called We Can Save the Bay of Fundy. The post highlighted two more large fish kills in the Nova Scotia, and as the story said, that is now three too many.
Besides the massive kill that took place in December that encompassed an area from Annapolis to Yarmouth, there was the mutilated fish brought up in gill nets earlier this month in the Minas Basin area. Now everyone is looking at Nova Scotia Power (NSP) as being the culprit in these latest fish kills.
Nova Scotia Power spokesman David Rodenhiser confirmed in a statement that the fish were being drawn into the company’s power-generating turbine “when we increased water flow through the White Rock hydroelectric station Sunday afternoon to boost flow (for the event),” he said, adding that they’ve not experienced this before either, reports CBC News.
He was referring to the charity rubber ducky race held in conjunction with the Apple Blossom Festival, a long-running annual agricultural and heritage celebration in the Annapolis Valley.
The latest fish kill, which started last week on the Gaspereau River has turned out to be massive, and it is believed the cause of the deaths of so many spawning fish is caused by NSP’s turbine at White Rock, writes Darren Porter.
The Council of Canadians has taken up the torch, hoping provincial and federal authorities will do something to stop the needless and unnecessary killing of marine life for the sake of electricity generation. Ann Pohl, a spokesperson for the Kent County (New Brunswick) chapter of the Council of Canadians says, “Annapolis Valley, Sipekne’katik, and other Mi’kmaq leaders are alarmed by this neglect of stewardship for the shared waters.”
She goes on to say, “The Council of Canadians’ appeals, to both provincial and federal leaders to do their job of conservation and protection, have been ignored. All the federal and provincial governments seem to care about is using the Bay’s waters to generate electricity for export to the U.S.”
This journalist shares in the belief that all of us must accept responsibility for our environment and take a stand against the unnecessary slaughter of marine life. This is not conservation and it’s time to take action in making Nova Scotia Power take responsibility for the wanton killing of thousands of fish.
As Dennis Porter says it best: “We are the first line of environmental defense, we are the oceans monitors, people hold up fake experts that comment from the safety of an office building blindly. Wake up, and get out to see this stuff for yourselves before you make a false claim about fishermen.”
