Rusty scallop boats and shiny lobster trucks

DIGBY, NOVA SCOTIA
Targeted fish: scallop, lobster, herring, dogfish
Methods of fishing: side dragger (trawl), onshore and offshore traps
Footwear: Dunlop, Viking, and Baffin rubber boots
Favorite local saying: “They’re all a-gone uphill.” (fishing north in the Bay of Fundy); “So you ain’t a Bluenoser?”
Local food: fried scallops
Drink of choice: Alexander Keith’s IPA or red
Local entertainment: Hard telling. Judging by stickers on fishermens’ trucks, watching NASCAR racing.
Select Local Fishing Boats: Chief Charles Paul, Marianne Louise II, Greyhound, Maybe 99, Royal Fundy, Secret Sea, Artemis, Thundercat, Surchin IV, Elva G, Undaunted, Chief William Saulis, Fundy Retreiver

While waiting for a Brazilian visa application to bump its way through the Brazilian-American beaureacratic pinball machine, and since the constant wind hitting the southern Newfoundland continued to keep the boats at bay, I decided to spend a few days exploring the fishing scene in Nova Scota. The province has an interesting way of controlling fishng effort for lobster, while still keeping fresh “bugs” heading to market. A rotating schedule ensures that some part of the province is open at any particular date. After glancing at the chart of openings, I pointed my sails towards Digby, which lies on Nova Scotia´s west coast.

Digby, it turns out, is a beautiful town founded (in the conceited Anglo-American sense) by Loyalists who were booted from New England around the time of Paul Revere. If a person was ever inclined to buy a authentic five-bedroom Victorian-style house with an expansive yard and ocean view to match, this may be the only place to get the wntire package for less than Sarah Palin’s October wardrobe.

More than its lobster, Digby’s true claim to fame is its scallop fleet, which was once the largest of its kind in the world. A glance at the town’s boardwalk shows that tourism now plays a big role in the local economy, but just behind the flashy signs lies a struggling region. Somehow, though, Digby seems to be struggling in an amazingly elegant way.

The scallop fleet is comprised of side draggers, meaning that they drag their trawl off one side of the boat (usually the starboard it seems) rather than astern. To me, side dragging isn’t an intuitive thing for a boat to do. It seems to be asking for trouble. In my perspective, it also ensures an awkward-looking, asymmetrical boat. This is of course all irrelevant when the scallops are plentiful and the price is high.

These days, the scallop population is in a rut (fishermen maintain that scallops have always had huge natural oscillations in regional populations), and the state of the fishery is evidenced by the impressive amount of rust visible on the draggers. Shortly after inquiring, I was offered the chance to take a fill in job on one of the draggers. A great chance to really see the fishery. If I wanted to go, the boat was leaving at two in the morning (that night), and coming back after a week or so.

A blend of tides, temperment, and testosterone make late night departures common in the fisheries. This didn´t worry me a bit. The volume of rust covering the deck of the boat did. I decided to pass up the opportunity.

In my pass through Digby, I witnessed two other fisheries- targeting lobster and dogfish- and these may well exhibit the range of profitability in the world of fisheries. Roughly a dozen lobster boats steamed to and from the Digby docks. The boats were incredible hulks of modern design, half as wide abeam as they were long. Sternless 50 foot boats that stretch 25 foot abeam seemed like their decks were made for pickup basketball, not marine travel. I’m more accustomed to the smaller and much more sleek and unassuming Maine lobster boats. A small efficient boat like those built for Maine’s craggy coast just wouldn’t cut it in a fishery which offers huge rewards for being able to set 400 traps in one trip. There certainly were lots of big, new trucks near where these lobster boats tie up.

A few miles out of town, half-way down a long, thin peninsula known as Digby Neck, I ran into an 50 year old deckhand stripping rusty hooks from old groundline, spilling out of a cracked plastic bucket. He explained to me that he longlined for dogfish in the Bay of Fundy. Sometimes the sharks were “uphill” (up the bay), sometimes the were “downhill”, but the price was always the same- 11 cents per pound. Not really enough to pay for gas and lunch. Pick one or the other. Once in a while you lucked out and caught a halibut for dinner, he said. I immediately felt spoiled, but perhaps I shouldn´t have. Digby is yet another place where people fish for more than just a way to pay the bills. What else would you do, and where else could be better?