o

TIDES

. a today at Charlotte- a.m. and 1:35 p.m. ustico at 8:44 am. Sum-

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 21, 1965

vy

perce

IN THE early part of the current century, and

. before, fishing ports throughout the Maritimes bristled with the masts and:spars of dozens of © schooners, which were the mainstay of the fishing

GONE ARE the days of the .smell_of __pitch mixed with the odor of fresh fish, along with the ‘ -eripple of taut sails and the winds howling through | tthe rigging. The modern fisherman now goes to_ |

the banks on well equipped steel draggers for ers of the Sea.”

Wood And Sail Give Way to Steel and Oil

industry during their day. The schooners, their stacks of dories on deck and tubs of baited lines hold a pecmaieet pact in ‘the history

The Guardix

“Covers Prince Edward Island Like The Dew”

PAGE 1-A

ne

wih

__Stern trawling and powered by huge diesel engines and instead of manhandling his gear the nets and lines are handled with powerful electric winches which has done much to improve the lot of “Toil-

MAY FIRST DEADLINE

° -Lobstering preparations

e oe “moving at feverish pace = By- J.W. LAVERS |. Upwards fo 200 boats will fish held-to su,p ply the live = As if keeping pace with the out of the Georgetown. area: lobster-in-the-shell markets»

eqming of spring the George- which includes those from Low- tan waterfrort activities and er Montague, Panmure Island; ldBSler fishing preparations are Sturgeon: and New Port. On the

the large Canadian and ‘as an cities Prices to the fisherman aes

i asing daily, as fishermen p> jigoan dn for the May 1, fishing grounds off Georgetown risen greatly over the years but opening of the lobster fishing Harbor the bottom will be liter- the fishermapy® costs have season ally covered with traps. Long seemed io ily as well Waring the long winteremonths ines of ro : : : pe are run; anchored but lob certainly th men have been busy over- at each end and ‘buoyed. Those a mug

ng their boat engines, care-

nay

checking over their rope, )4re co referred to as thay beading bows. building and rig- tra ad to them are at- ry ging traps and panting buoys. at regular inter-

Teday in many yards in t TéWn may be seen piles of traps in ygrious stage p truction, and the ‘wh ane. filling up with thou: traps piled there wher he readily accessible fishermen have run thé on the fishing grounds

The cost of building a lobs' trap and placing it in the wa- tees which includes rope and, afichors and buevs. had cli- 9ed frém about one dollar to a pre- sent cost of between five and séven dollars. per trap.

Boats which have been turned betiom-up for the winter are new being scraped and painted and receiving general repairs. They are then turned over °od efigines installed. Gangs of fish- ermen assist one’ another in the launhing of the boats. It is then that the welcome spring sound of engines running fill the air as the fishermen sail their beats over the harbor waters to test the engines and stefring Rear.

SPEED ESSENTIAL

ing recent years the touzh afd dependable marine engine haS to a large extent been re- placed by car engines as a means of powering fishing beats, as speed is esséntial in madern day lobster fishing as it

s called dog traw increasingly pop Phese attac

‘a k bac ‘ashore The best kne inc grounds are Pam Reef: Boughton Isla The Middle Ground: sen Ground and Launc’ Many changes — ha place in the fishing i this area and where ster canning factories ote cated on Panmure I Boughton Island longer there 4 tory is

er-

f his

the live lobsters,

as markets. These are arg- slands,

seems it is in most modern day activities. The great majority of bokts are manned by two men atid to aid in hauling aboard the traps a trap hauler is used.

e

er lobsters and command a bet- ter price by about five or _ six cents. They are shipped in trucks to lobster pounds located mainly in New Brunswick and there

ties of herring whic

; worth seeing, even to those who

: neighborhood . of ”

prices were never higher | ana it looks like this trend will continue;’’ was how ‘ Fisheries

, Minister Leo Rossiter summed

up the 1964 fisheries on Prince Edward Island.

Prices to fishermen were high- jer last year than in 1963 and while there was a- seven _ per cent increase in the poundage of landings, the price to fishermen was up by about 25 per cent.

Lobsters were the biggest re- Venue producer last year with 7,822,820 pounds landed, having '@ value to fishermen-of $4,210,- | 000. Pountiaze is about 4000000 higher than in 1963 and value is

— $1,000,000 higher.

|

| valued at -$365,000.

The oyster harvest of 2.801,- - pounds was valued at $370.- 697. This was higher “in value jthan the approximate 3,009,000 | pounds landed jn 1963 which. was

Clams, scallops, euahisies and

; other shetifish brought a harvest | of 775,113 pounds, valued at $88,

887 = : Pelagic fish and esturaial fish.

| such as herring and ma:i?rel

were landed in the pound>ge

8,177,026 . and had: Value o!< $263 461. Ground-

| fish Taped Passed the 21.000.000-

mark and “had a value of $702,- 621:

“Looking to the future, Mr.

* Rossiter said it is the intention

of his department “‘to develop

and expand exploitation—of—fish

of |ment of larger, more powerful _-..,4Nq_more_ expensively _ equipped

|

' promoting

stocks other than lobster prin- cipally the off-shore stocks of groundfish and pelagic fish.’ He added ‘Exploitation of these Stocks will require the develop-

off shore boats.” In outlining,.the reasons for greater exploitation of off-shore fish stocks, Mr. Ros- — siter said ‘it will be noted in

ipresent and in past statistics

- thatthe _province's—lobster. fish- |

ery provided a heavy percentage | of the landed value of the total fishery. Even in 1962, when a substantial off-shore fishery was jbeginning to take shape, the - lobster - nevertheless provided about 69 per cent of the landed

tors contributing to the wealth

the Grand Banks are active as

the Gulf of St. Lawrenre.

4

FALSE IMPRESSION

“It is this high proportion of value from lobsters, however, | = which sometimes give rise to a | false impression as to the po- tential to be realized from the fishery resources available to the industry of this province. This is why it is sometimes nec- essary to point out that any an- alysis of past or present fisher- ies statistics does not give; a true indication’ of the fishery po- tential of the province?

“Situated as it is in the south- ern portion of the Gulf o St. Lawrence ~ basin; ~some ~97,000 square miles of area, this. pro- vinee-has-a-rich-potential in the exploitation of off-shore. stocks. This is but another pari of the prolifie fishery of the Western North Atlantic,” a resource which has supported*commercial fishing activities years be-" fore Jacques Cartier ever came to our coa’t. A great many fac- |

‘e

of the great fishery resource of well in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. |

In spite of the research activi- '

the last decade or two, in the of the groundfish

ties of many eminent contribu- tors it is, doubtful if any ade- exploitation

made of the fishery resource of | nouncements that this resource ‘is being taxed. The validity” of “One notes the increase within ‘these pronouncements is some-|

FISHERIES MINISTER ROSSITER times called into question, how- factars,

eve, in the light of- periodic

percentages of older and larger

Minister forecasts rising prosperity for fisheries

= ‘since it involves

d

exists. as to the extent of the vast resource of the pelazic fish- ery. t “Referring again to the lob- ster fishery, one must take nole of the fact that while this tre- mendously. valuable resource is

a Saenas for which be grate-

it nevertheless Goes carry

all it a certain danger AREAS IGNORED

“For those capable of captur ing high earnings from thi: fishery there is the tendency tc ‘ignore other areas of fisheries activity. Since it is an activity peculiar to small boats, -and vast numbers of cumberscme traps to he transported to and from fishing ; grounds, it tends to spread it- self over “a great number of landing and processing points

“In the work o: exploitinz oth- er fishery resources such as the

groundfish or pelazi- fish © this dispersion of effort. works against the necessary accumu’

ation of—larce volumes cf pro- duct upon which to found mo- dern processing. ‘

Anothe- danger which could be mentioned is that the con- ‘sumption of this expensive pro- duct could very seriously dimuin- ‘ish in any period o economic recession, ‘seriously jeopardizing 70 per cent of the.valwe of our fishery

‘In order 4o protect our fish- eries economy from some of the detrimental effects of such it is a principal aim of the province to develop and ex-

quate assessment has yet been resource, and the periodic pro-*heavy landings showing large pand the off-shore fishery.”

In general, Mr. Rossiter said

fish. It might properly be as- the outlook for fisheries in the serted that even less knowledge province is “very good.”’ He said

FISHING FACTS FOR 1965

~ | walue of our sea fishery.

' Research at Island oyster hatchery drawing interest -

By CARMAN SMITH

The eves of a number of coun- tries are watching with inter- est the research work being car- ried out by a small group of peo- plie at the Ellersiie ‘iological Station in Prince County.

The work. under the watchful eve of Roy Drinnan, investiga-

‘is much more importnt to Ca-

nada than to any other country due to being situated so north. “As a result of this,’ he said, ‘‘we are faced with the pro- blem of obtaining baby oyst- ers’’. :

The hatchery’s main project now_is to develop the oyster

tor in charge for the Fisheries | past the larvae stage. Mr. Drim-

Research Board of Canada, is contained mostly in a_ hatch- ery whick was officially open- ed last year

The principle aim of the sta- tion is to provide’ data for -an imcrease in shellfish production, Other projects include t_ ef- diseases and. contro] of eel- grass.

The biologists and technicians are experimenting primarily

jhave witnessed it many times, with oysters at the moment and

'

of 2 proclamation

as the dozens of boats head, out of the harbour to the fishing grounds with the hopes of each | fisherman for a good run riding as it were * ‘on the crest of each wave.”

Mr. Drinnan said recently. “for once in its life Canada has a first. This is-the -first federal | ‘eommercia! scale _ hatchery every built and the first one with the facilities this one has” He added that the hatchery

Seafood month set for October

Special recognition is to be given to the Canadian fishing in- dustry and the resource on

sinesS which it is built during the cur-

rent year. This will result from by Fishe ting Oct “HJ. Robichaud ‘d jing October, 1965.

| Fish'n §

“i ans,

bei ng @ as well Hispersed foré ich Canadian

Pel I Ss at 0 the wite arkets to products

Some 90,08 Canadian fis men engage part or full time in the fisheries. Total landed value

reached up to $125 million. and*

the market value of products approximates $250 million. Aside from those directly en- gaged in the industry! many more thousands benefit from the subsidiary employment

ter which the fisheries provide in

the packaging, transportation yer allied industries catch about 150 ies of figh and h are processed d im a wide variety facts. These go to coun- all over the globe and Can- ada is one of the world’s three leading exporters of fish

New impetus was given to

ally quite expensive anf add modernization of the fishing in- considerable to, the fisherman's dustry as a result of the Nation

costs

The opening day is a sight ference held in Ottawa

al Fisheries Development Con- last

year and rapid expansion is now taking place in construction of new fishing vessels, introduction of ney ing techniques and imprg nt of fish handling

a copy of the

ATION nada is richly

s, in her in- f streams, and in waters, with a great variety and copious quan- tities of fish and shellfish;

AND WHEREAS these val- uable resources have played a *major-gole inthe discovery of our nation and its subsequent ex- ploration ‘and development from coast to coast:

AND WHEREAS the rich har- vests from our waters continue to make an important contribu- tion to the livelihood of many thousands of our people and to the nutritional well- being of our nation as a whole

AND WHEREAS- Canada ts one of the world’s greatest ex- porters of fish products and thus our fisheries are of signifi- cant value in feeding many of the world’s missions outside our own borders:

THEREFORE it is eminently fitting that this important re- source, and the industry built

on it, should be accorded special recognition ; IN PURSUANCE 1 have the honour to declare Oc- ‘tober. 1965, as National Fish ’ : Seafood Month, and ! heartily encourage all our people to give recognition to this event by, en- joving the fruits of} our waters and in other suitable ways H.J. ROBICHAUD Minister of Fisheries of Canada

her. Atlantic ;

OF WHICH |

nan pointed out tthat this is the most difficult stage in the oys- ter rearing process because the larvae are so delicate. He said that something like 30 to

‘40 million oyster spat were re-

leased in the Bideford River ad- joining the station last year

| fect of silt in estuaries, shellfish | but mostly all of them had died. , He felt reasonably sure that

the silt in the river had smothe- red them and he was quick to point out that the natural oyster spat had fared out no better. FIRST IN WORLD

With these experiments being carried out now, Mr. Drinnan hopes to grow oysers, under supervision, to the bedding stage where ‘‘they will be able to look after themselves’. He added ‘‘there is a_ possibility we'll be the first country to de- velop commercial scale rearing of oysters.”

‘The great advantage of hatch- ery developed oysters is that the production, quality and bac- teriological problems can be controlled. Already from the experiments carried out, Mr.

far \%

‘

ROY DRINNAN

Drinnan stated “‘it appears like we will be able to double the growth rate of oysters’.

Many problems ‘have _ been encountered in these initial ex- periments and one of them was the growing of the oyster from ‘the egg to thé larvae stage

Originally the larvae were placed in polyethylene tanks containing standard concrete covered veneer separators on which they were expected to

One of the records logical §

kept at the Ellerslie Bio-

Station is of temperature and salinity tests

taken in fhe*’Bideford River adjoining the station.

Settle. They settled «on the se- parators alright but had the ten-

surfaces only and in groups. |WATER STERILIZED

The water in these tanks is |pumped into the hatchery from ithe Bideford River through a clarifier — a machine which op- lerates similar to a milk separa- _ jtor and removes all the silt’ from the water — and then is | sterliized by an ultra - violet |light process.

Following the original exper- ‘iment oyster -shell chips, com- mercially produced for poultry, 'were then tried but the larvae }would not settle on them. | The next attempt scallop shell chips and this ex- periment so far has proven the |most successful of the lot with the larvae settling evenly on the ichips. The next experiment will be with natural oyster shell chips. Mr..Drinnan said

“We are trying to grow~ the oysters all the way.on the shell’’, he said. He felt that growing them for commercial use could prove economical.

OTHERS INTERESTED

Other countries, as mentioned earlier, are starting to move to- wards this type of research and England is sending over two bio- logists this summer to gain knowledge and experience on this program. Afterwards. they will proceed to

his -department— -wiil ‘continue

! its efforts to improve facilities

of the various landings through

, the installation of water supply

facilities and ice-making ma-

| chinery.

The main fisheries problem,

| according to Mr. Rossiter, is in

getting sufficient volume of high quality fish. He said there‘is a deficiency in European markets for filletted fish. “‘This is one phase of fisheries that will be thoroughly reviewed in the near future,” he said.

The expansion of . productive capacity in fisheries has been stimulated by various measures in the fisheries depzrtment. In the educational field with the co-operation of the - provincial education department and the federal department of labor, courses were established in the technology of: gear and in navi-

| gation which have proven of

great value to fishermen

In the experimenta! field,

‘work is continually being con-

dency of staying on horizontal +.

was with,

ducted in various types of equip- ment and in new fishing techni- que.

Another important factor in fisheries erpansion has been the role of the provincia! fisher- men's Joan board. This board makes Joans to companies and fishermen for the purchase of boats and engines. Terms are granted up to five years in the case of small boats and for long- er terms in the case of boats built to Canadian Steamship Re- gulations.

where a commercial -scale hat- chery is being erected. Other countries where interest is zgrow- ing are France and the U.S. Due to the climate, Canada has the advantage of growing unique species of oyster in that it can be kept in cold storage for at least three or four months. This is something no lother species of oyster can do. Asked about the connection between harbour pollution § in Summerside and the fretile oys- ter, beds in Bedeque Bay and what might occur if the problem was cleared up, Mr. Drinnan stated there was a real possib-

ility that the oyster industry ¢ would suffer a substantial _ set- back

He added that RBedeque Bay is unique in the growing of oys- ters and felt this stemmed from the Summerside .harbour pollu-

North Wales tion.

STATION STAFF MEMBERS RECORD TESTS

readings in a book as chief technician Stanley E. Vass (right) consults the meter used for the tests.

During the

winter a hole has to be drilled through

the ice before the tests can be made. The’ thick- ness‘of the ice is also measured during the tests and on this day the-ice measured 12 inches if thickness:

These tests provide background information for the biologists and technicians involved. in oyster recearch at the station. Here, K. R. Oatway (left) | maintenance supervisor at the station records the