2004 Trawl Gear Workshop
Daily Travel Log
by
Rachel Gallant, Fisheries Specialist
Northeast Consortium
Monday || Tuesday || Wednesday || Thursday || Friday || Saturday || Sunday
Getting to Newfoundland isn't exactly easy, but what worthwhile endeavor ever is? On this bright morning, 21 of us from Rhode Island to Down East made our way to Boston's Logan airport for the early bird flight to Halifax, Nova Scotia and then on to St. John's. Have you ever traveled with 15 fishermen in a 30-seater plane? Let's just say it's not too hard to eves-drop.
Around me were excited voices as we flew over Cape Ann, Gloucester, Penobscot Bay, and Acadia, but most thrilling to the fishermen was being over their home turf…the deep blue sea. Most air travelers point out landmarks, but not my companions. “There's an otter trawl!” “That must be Jimmy!” “Isn't that a closed area?” “Look at all them boats…we must be in Canada!” “No, there's North Haven; they're lobstering.” These men weren't quite yet like ‘kids in a candy shop,' but they knew they were on their way!
As we touched down in Halifax I asked, “Where's all the suburbia?” For miles around the airport there was nothing but wetlands and woods. Could we only be a two hour flight from home?
On the leg to St. John's, I sat between two natives, one a librarian who was quick to kindly inform me that I should be saying “NewfoundLAND” not “NEWfoundland.” She insisted that I go see the gannets at St. Mary's Bird Sanctuary, migrating seabirds that nest on the southern cliffs of the St. John's Peninsula.
On the other side of me, a man was watching a video of trapeze artists in his cam-corder. I had to ask. Turns out his 11 th grade daughter was on a co-ed gymnastics team from Newfoundland and he was coming home from a competition on the main land. A trapeze artist friend had let the girls have a try. He said that Newfoundland tends to not produce the very best gymnasts, because they only practice four hours each day, but they have a lot of fun nonetheless.
My first impression of St. John's, and it stayed true throughout the week, was that it is well kept and the people are much more friendly than any other place I can think of. I didn't see any mega-mansions, nor did I see shanties. Socialism was quite apparent; the people were taken care of and seemed happy with a slightly more simple lifestyle than what we are used to (and demand?) in the States.
Our hotel was half-way up the really steep Signal Hill that kept the city and harbor secluded from the ocean. After a dinner in town at a place that advertised “traditional Newfoundland cuisine” (i.e. cod tongue ), shopping for breakfast, and a trek back up the hill, I was ready for the pillow!
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The group met at 8:30 AM to car pool over to Memorial University, or 6:00 AM at home. There is only one other place in the world with a ½ hour time zone difference. Do you know where it is?
I guess I was feeling eager. I was up by 4:30 (Eastern Time) and went for a jog to explore this week's home. St. John's is not just the friendliest place I've ever been, it's also the windiest! Continuing up Signal Hill from the hotel was a bear, but I was rewarded with discovering Dead Man's Pond and George's Pond. I stopped in awe at a look-out at Cuckhold's Cove and looked down at least 300 feet to the crashing waves below. Had a Viking ship once harbored there?
We didn't lose any cars on our first trip to the university, but that was only because Pingguo had worked at the flume tank for several years and knew St. John's like the back of his hand. Once at the tank, we were greeted by coffee and donuts…oh, and by the workshop facilitators who were all quite friendly (could you guess?).
Glenn Blackwood, Director of the Center for Sustainable Aquatic Resources sat us down in the theater-style seating in front of the flume tank to give us a sincere welcome to the world's largest flume tank of its kind. It's quite impressive at 8 meters wide, 4 meters deep, and 22 meters long. It circulates 1.7 million liters of water.
Scale models of fishing gear are built right at the Center and lowered into the tank for testing. The water and ground plane move while the gear stays fixed, which is the opposite of how fishing really works, but the effects on the nets are the same. The water is fresh, so they must include buoyancy conversion factors into the projects.
The fishermen were starting to itch with excitement, going right up to the glass planes for a closer view. Mike was hunkered down there for practically the whole morning!
The tank was built in 1988 with the idea that fishing gear needed to catch more fish. With the crash of the local cod industry, the tide has turned, such that now the research is driven by the need to avoid bycatch and be more selective, catching only target fish stocks that are in healthy conditions. They also work on minimizing seabed impacts of gear. Education and training is a large component of the Center's mission, which was clear by how professional and organized the coming week would prove. Glen explained the hydrodynamic variables that they could measure like wing-end spread and head rope height.
The Center gave the rest of the week to us; we had the run of the place. We were instructed to make this week as useful to us as possible, to see models of how different types of gear work in the water, and how performance can change with different conditions.
After a full day, we were ready to do some exploring of the Tuesday night night-life that St. John's offers. Good times.
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Today opened up with more coffee and donuts at the flume tank….oh, and a great discussion lead by Dr. Paul Winger about how fish behave in relation to towed fishing gear. We talked about the major factors that determine avoidance and herding behavior in the pre-vessel zone, between the trawl doors and trawl mouth, and inside the net. These include fish density and endurance, vessel speed, propeller pitch, and vibration of the trawl warps.
This was one of the more academic parts of the workshop, but the fishermen were totally enthralled. Several told me that this was one of their favorite sessions. We all enjoyed hearing about Dr. Winger's graduate work. He found that Atlantic cod tend to increase their swimming speed and dive toward the seafloor in response to vessel noise. We all laughed at his story of how he tracked the cod. He covered transducers with bait and used underwater cameras to make sure that only cod were swallowing them. He had to use some scare tactics to keep other species from getting to the bait. The cod naturally regurgitated the tracking systems 30-60 days later.
The rest of the day was spent covering the finer points of trawl door theory, design, and operation. It was pretty cool to see the participants (fishermen, scientists, and managers) interacting in this relaxed atmosphere. All too often, when people with a stake in fisheries get in the same room, the finger pointing can start up pretty fast. Here, we saw each other learning and outgrowing misperceptions. You could see light bulbs going off. One scientist/manager said that he's been fruitlessly asking questions for two years about how trawl door orientation can be standardized for groundfish surveys. He didn't get a full answer today, but he felt that he's finally going down the right path.
Needing some fresh air in the late in the afternoon, Olivia, Phil, Jim O'Grady and I took a little road trip to the north, doing a loop through Logy Bay, Torbay, Pouch Cove, and Bauline. We drove through rolling hills that were fairly wooded with scrubby conifers. The winding roads opened up to startling views of the coasts. Steep and rugged cliffs of shale and sandstone. Glacial till dominated the top layers of rock. We saw why Newfoundland is called “The Rock.” The most recent glaciers stripped the land of all top soil, so the people were dependant on the sea for survival. We found funny wooden boxes at the ends of the driveways and figured they were to prevent animals from getting in the trash. Pretty clever.
Turns out we missed a mini field trip to a fishing gear and equipment manufacturer in St. John's, but we took in plenty of other wonders. No iceberg sightings yet though.
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Today opened up with more coffee and donuts at the flume tank….oh, and a special guest speaker by a local legend, Dr. Jon Lein. This professor has spent a lifetime working with fishermen, scientists, and managers world wide and is now the Chair of the Minister's Advisory Committee on Oceans, the Canadian equivalent to the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy.
He explained how fishing is an economically trivial industry in Newfoundland relative to oil and tourism, but it defines their culture. He spurred a lively discussion about the differences between the U.S. and Canada in terms of ocean management and cultural values of ocean resources. Anyone who can keep a discussion of fisheries policy on an up-beat note truly amazes me. He had many stories about how local fishermen gained control of their lives when they turned from finger pointing towards being honest and pro-active. Dr. Lein encouraged our fishermen to be out ahead of problems, using community networks and their own talent and resources to find solutions.
Another highlight of today was a bridge tour at the Center for Marine Simulation. What? We walked there from the flume tank through the Marine Institute building. One moment we were surrounded be lockers and backpack-laden students and the next, we were climbing the stairs to a ship's bridge. Once inside, we found that we were navigating ourselves into St. John's Harbor. There was our hotel on Signal Hill!
I'm glad that we all had sturdy sea legs. The ship's location, weather, and sea conditions were set in a near by control room and we had to learn how to maneuver into port. The Center can simulate many types of vessels and conditions. We could have been anywhere in the world; I was really hoping they would transplant us to Buenas Aires!
Before heading in town for dinner, Pingguo, Ricco, Jim O'Grady, Olivia, and I drove to the fort at the top of Signal Hill, so named for the location of the first wireless communication with Europe. We thought we had experienced wind in our lives before now. Woah.
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Today was the fishermen's best opportunity to test out gear. Both Pingguo and fisherman Jim Ruhle has trawl models they had brought with them that were used in either collaborative research projects or commercial fishing back at home.
I knew that today would be my only opportunity to go see the nesting gannets, so I hijacked Oliva and headed to Rent-a-Wreck. We knew that on Saturday, our group would tour the northern end of the peninsula, so after a jaunt to Cape Spear, the easternmost point in North America, we turned south towards St. Mary's Bird Sanctuary.
We drove and drove through hilly, rugged terrain. Though the island was just greening up, there was no lack of color. It was simply beautiful. We'd sometimes drive for ½ an hour without a sign of civilization. It took a few hours to get to the sanctuary. We were sure that we would stumble across a diner open for lunch, but no luck. We finally came to the town of Salmonier, which had perhaps the sparsest grocery store in Canada and a little convenience store. How do these people eat? It seems that they all must make the several hour trek back to St. John's if they want any of our modern conveniences.
The visitor's center at the sanctuary opens tomorrow for the season, but fortunately there happened to be two people there, so they let us look around for free. That was a good thing, since we hadn't passed an ATM machine in a while. After touring the museum, we walked the ½ mile path over rolling grassy plateaus, avoiding a couple sheep, towards the sea cliffs. There they were. Swarms of birds.
The path ended at a point where thousands of gannets were just yards away. We were suddenly in the middle of a National Geographic special. Brooding, nest building, swooping around overhead and making a lot of racket. There were also several other types of birds there that made these south-facing cliffs home for the summer.
We sat in awe for a long time and by the time we made it back to the visitor center, the other people had left. I put my hand in my pocket and was relieved to find the car keys still there. It was just birds, sheep, Olivia, and me for miles.
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Five nights of discovering the cultural and social amenities of St. John's wasn't enough to keep most of us from enjoying our road trip today, although I think we all took cat naps.
The Marine Institute staff took us first to a fire safety training facility. Emergencies are simulated in a large room with a 12 foot pool. People from around the world came here to practice escaping from sinking helicopters, burning ships, and oil platforms. Ricco got inspired to try out an escape slide that ended at a life raft in the pool. Who let go of his leash? We have digital photos to prove that although he didn't land in the water, he needs a bit more practice. We got outside to tour a model ship hull and off-shore oil rig without further incident.
One of the ways Canada has tried to control fishing effort in Newfoundland is to limit the vessel size to 65 feet. As a result, most fishermen have boats with the capacity and horse power of 100 foot vessels, all packed into 64.9. The boats look pretty funny, over-stuffed and top-heavy.
The highlight for the day, besides seeing icebergs, was going to a small fishing town with a lot of these not-so-small boats. We got to tour a multi-million dollar boat that had just come home from the manufacturer on Tuesday. The crew was readying it for it's first crab fishing trip on Monday. The boat had all the latest bells and whistles; there were Bibles at every turn! The captain's wife had a nice snack spread laid out for us in the galley too.
I had gone all week without trying a Newfoundland specialty, French fries covered in gravy, but it was fate that I not to miss out. We stopped at a Chinese-Canadian restaurant, which was probably the only place outside of St. John's that could handle a party of 25. Craving a normal burger and fries, I ordered a “hot hamburger.” What came was a blanket of turkey gravy covering fries, turkey stuffing (called “dressing”), frozen vegetable medley, and a very well done burger in between two slices of white bread. Good thing I'm not Atkins dieting!
In the afternoon, we stopped at a fish pier where some locals were off loading crab, and we got to talk with them a little bit. A gentle rain was starting, but we stopped at local beach anyway. One of the fishermen's wives who joined us for the week gets bonus points for sticking her feet in the water. The rest of us stood chilled in our parkas and fleece.
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What a full week. There was some free time in the morning, so I took one last jog, heading to the other side of St. John's Harbor and to Ft. Amherst light house. I discovered the beginning of a trans-Canada hiking trail, but that will have to wait for another day. I needed to pull myself back up Signal Hill one last time and head home.
My travel companions will all go their separate ways once we get back to Logan, but we all seem much better off for having spent this time together, for learning, sharing, debating, and laughing with each other. We have a much better idea of the shoes that each of us fill and I think that we'll get to common ground faster the next time we meet.
Good bye to the gannets! Goodbye to “The Rock!”
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