Mi'kmaq out-of-season lobster fishery not a conservation risk - yet

I have been trying understand the two sides in the lobster fishing dispute that has been raging for some time now in southwestern Nova Scotia.

At first blush, it's pretty straightforward. Members of the Sipekne'katik Mi'kmaq nation have set up a self-regulated Indigenous-owned lobster fishery off the coast of St. Mary's Bay to take advantage of treaty rights that allow them to fish for a "moderate living" even outside of the season rules that constrain commercial non-Indigenous fishermen.

Those commercial fishermen - having already seen the cod industry in the region decimated - see the move as a threat to their own pretty moderate livings, arguing that the rules on when lobster can be caught were put in place to protect the sustainability of lobster stocks, and that by flouting those rules, the Mi'kmaq are putting the whole industry in the area at risk. There have also been claims that the new operation has been flouting the rules over the minimum size of lobsters that can be harvested, and that pregnant females with eggs are being taken, although I am not sure if this has ever been proven. This has led to some heated, occasionally violent, confrontations, and even vandalized equipment and arson.

I don't think anyone condones the violence, and I don't think the commercial fishermen are necessarily guilty of racism, as they are often accused (I think they would have the same reaction to any group that threatens their turf and their own precarious livelihoods). But do they have a point?

Well, at least two credible sources I have found (a professor at Dalhousie University's Marine Affairs program, and the director of the School of the Environment at St. Mary's University) suggest not. The Mi'kmaq group has been granted 7 licences of 350 traps, while the commercial fleet numbers nearly a thousand licenses of 350 traps (yes, this is big business!). So, it can be argued that, at the moment at any rate, the Mi'kmaq operation, representing less than 1% of the total, is very unlikely to have an appreciable impact on the industry as a whole. And the really big players in the industry are the offshore commercial fisheries that, thus far, the Indigenous operators have not even touched (it requires a much bigger investment in ships and equipment for one thing).

At least that's the situation at the moment. If more Indigenous fisheries start to catch lobsters out of season - and at least one other First Nations group has already announced plans to launch its own self-regulated lobster fishery - then more regulation may well need needed.