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Melvin and Laverne Jackman have a cottage in Hardy’s Cove on Hermitage Bay. The couple’s 50 years there are filled with memories of hunting, fishing and all the joys of living close to nature. But in the last few years, the fishing has slowed. Where there was once plenty of salmon, trout, scallops, herring, cod and halibut, it seems that only herring and scallops remain. “Man, I could just go out and catch supper,” Melvin told me. “Don’t get me wrong; I love scallops and smoked herring, but something isn’t right.”
Of late, he’s noticed a trend: he’s spending less time catching dinner and more time cleaning up garbage left behind by the aquaculture operations that have moved into Hermitage Bay. And when he isn’t doing the back-breaking work of picking up plastic refuse and nets, he’s trying to talk to industry and government to pressure them to clean up this mess. He hasn’t received much help from either.
On my first trip to Newfoundland’s southern coast in April 2024, the amount of garbage shocked me. This rugged, seemingly isolated and pristine coastline, with its deep horseshoe coves lined with sandy beaches, was defaced by white plastic feed bags, blue barrels, rope, buoys and other refuse. It caught me completely by surprise.
Now it’s August and I’m back and better prepared. I’ve come with a film crew to record and reveal to the public the shameful jumble of plastic piping, nets and other refuse from the open net-pen aquaculture industry. Melvin assures me will see a ton of it in a place known as “the Locker”—several tons in fact.
The Locker is a nickname given to a tiny cove near the outport of Gaultois. Gaultois is the only one of seven towns on Long Island in Bay d’Espoir that refused to relocate when the government of Newfoundland and Labrador undertook a controversial resettlement program in the mid-20th century. It was once famous for cod fishing and whaling, and the Locker may, in fact, be where boats were kept between the seasons.
Melvin’s son Chris kindly offered to help transport and guide our crew, so we set out in two boats. Melvin didn’t say much, other than a terse “Just wait till you see this.”
It didn’t take long. Once in the cove we saw a massive, rusted net wheel that was once used to retrieve the fishing nets. There were also black plastic bags—thousands of them. Discarded buoys lined the shore and bobbed in the water. Three or four old abandoned wooden boats were beached along the far side of the bank. Beside them was a large, red plastic box. To the left was a net tossed up onshore, likely from a sea cage. We rounded a bend, and that’s when we saw them—the big, black sea cages.
They covered much of the shoreline and were spread out everywhere in the cove. What a mess! Two larger cages had come apart and sprawled straight out from shore, where one end was tied or had become entangled.
As we observed and filmed, I thought back to a discussion I had with a resident in Burgeo last spring. We had discovered hundreds of feet of black feeder tube in Hardy’s Cove, between two active sea cages. Why couldn’t the boats from the still-operating sites have picked up the tubing? “You mean in the Cove?” the Burgeo resident asked. “Yes,” I replied. “Yeah,” he said, “aquaculture folks say that was there before they came, so they don’t clean it up.”
Similarly, there are two active open net-pen salmon aquaculture sites within a kilometre of the entrance to the Locker. Aquaculture barges go back and forth throughout the day and could have easily towed the plastic away. Yet the garbage from the industry is left to fester and pollute the coastline.
Certainly, the lack of responsibility for their own garbage speaks volumes about whether this industry is green, blue or low carbon. More importantly, if an aquaculture company treats its own work area like this, what else is the industry hiding? Why such poor stewardship? Do residents simply not see it, or do they see it and feel scared to denounce an industry they think brings economic benefits?
Where are the regulatory agencies?
Provincial regulations do exist for this type of scenario: Section 4.3 of the Aquaculture Act, Removal and Restoration. We asked the fisheries minister about enforcing these, but were left only more puzzled by the responses.
We filed three complaints on August 28, one with Environment and Climate Change Canada, the second with Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO), and a third with Newfoundland and Labrador’s Resource Enforcement Division. Our complaints were acknowledged; however, no updates or actions have yet been offered or undertaken.
Plastic debris originating from marine aquaculture can strangle and kill marine life, break down into microplastics, negatively impact recreational and cultural experiences, and become ingested by marine organisms. Many of those same marine species are targeted by commercial fisheries and end up on dinner plates.
As seafood consumption increases with population growth and higher protein intake, production from marine aquaculture is projected to grow further still—to more than double by 2050. Pollution, including plastic debris, from aquaculture practices is also expected to increase.
Companies’ increased access to public resources, like the ocean, should be conditional upon their operations being safe and respectful of the environment. Garbage disposal comes down to cost and integrity. Marine plastics are discarded carelessly because the cost of recycling is greater than the cost of replacement. This way of doing business must be addressed if we are to avoid dumping grounds like the Locker.
Thankfully, there is some hope. DFO began funding projects to remove abandoned, lost and discarded fishing gear from the water. One group, Atlantic Healthy Oceans Initiative in Newfoundland, announced in August 2024 that they had received federal government funding to continue their work on the southern coast.
Open net-pen salmon farming is like an iceberg: two-faceted, with one visible side and another hidden from view. What we see from the surface can seem benign, but danger lurks below. Sea cage escapes, sea lice, disease and pathogens are significant threats to the survival of salmon. Research from Newfoundland and Labrador shows that farmed salmon escape frequently and spawn with wild salmon in rivers along parts of the south coast. Wild Atlantic salmon from small or depressed populations are particularly vulnerable to negative effects from interbreeding. A 2024 study by DFO focused on the wild salmon collapse in the Conne River, which empties into Bay d’Espoir. The researchers determined that salmon farms were a significant contributing factor.
That these dangers are out of sight perhaps makes it easier to ignore their terrible consequences. Then why are the visible impacts of salmon farming, like the plastic pollution in the Locker, unaddressed? Most troubling, to me, is that the aquaculture industry seems uninterested in presenting a greener image. Cleaning up the discarded gear would be an easy and meaningful start.
Instead, it reveals a side of the industry that is hidden behind the catchy mottos: “Rooted in nature,” or “Leading the blue revolution,” or “A connection as deep as the ocean.” The piles of garbage lining the once-pristine bays of south Newfoundland suggest a different motto: “We simply don’t care.”
Thankfully there are those, like ASF, that do. We’ll continue to fight to prevent further expansion of an industry that cares little about wild Atlantic salmon or the marine environment. So little, in fact, that even the proper disposal of their own plastic garbage seems beneath them.
Andrew Clarke is the director of ASF’s campaign against the expansion of Atlantic salmon open net-pen aquaculture along Newfoundland’s south coast.