[0:00:00.0]

 

GK: I’m gonna have you both (noise in background) just . . . we’ll get you situated. Just say your names.

 

FM: Freda Smith McKie.

 

EM: Edwin McKie.

 

GK: And tell me where you’re coming from today.

 

FM: From Souris, Prince Edward Island.

 

EM: Souris, PEI.

 

GK: Souris, PEI. And can you tell me a little bit about why you come to the Maine Fishermen’s Forum and your own fishing history?

 

EM: I like to come down to get informed, I like to annoy the enemy. When I go home and people start talking about things they have no, absolutely no idea about, and you, you come back, well-armed, with good information and uh, you can settle things. Really annoys the enemy.

 

GK: Who’s the enemy?

 

EM: Anyone that wants to argue with you (laughs).

 

GK: That’s great, that’s great. Yeah, I mean, in, so, you’re obviously, are you a l—your occupation is?

 

EM: Fishing and farming. We have a PH in fishing and F in philosophy (laughs).

 

[0:01:05:2]

 

GK: And do you (laughs) . . . Jokester (laughs). And, so, when you come, do you feel um, cause I, when I was up in Lubec was kinda the first time I had really heard about the Canadian-American lobstermen bit of strife that can happen up there. Do you, what do you think about, like who’s the enemy [inaudible]?

 

EM: Well we have, we have friends on both sides of the situation, right? I think that if, if there was more uhm, if they mingled more, they, more of them came here, more of the people from here went there, it’d find they have a lot in common and ehm, we when it all settles, gets down, when everyone’s tryna have a, everyone’s just wants to make enough money to pay taxes, that’s . . . both in Canada and the United States. It’s no fun not paying taxes.

 

[0:02:00:0]

 

GK: It’s no fun paying them and it’s no fun not paying them.

 

EM: Not . . . Oh, way less fun not paying taxes.

 

GK: (Sighs.) So, and what’s some of your own, um, what’s your history, like, when did you start fishing?

 

EM: I started fishing with my father in ’81, or in 1971, and I bought my own boat and license and lobster gear in 1973. And I’ve been fishing ever since.

 

GK: Well. And Freda, what’s your uh, occupation on, in all this?

 

FM: I lobster fish with Edwin since 1982.

 

GK: Wow!

 

FM: When I moved to PEI.

 

GK: On the fishing vessel, you tell me the name of the boat?

 

EM: Well this, this one’s the, we’ve, Undaunted.

 

GK: And what was the boat that you started on with Edwin?

 

FM: It was . . .

 

EM: Warlock.

 

FM: The Warlock, wasn’t it? The first year? We’ve been through quite a few boats since then (laughs).

 

EM: We tend to keep the name the last while

 

FM: Yeah

 

GK: I like the Undaunted.

 

0:02:59.7

 

EM: It annoys the enemy (laughs).

 

GK: I don’t know who’s, I still don’t really know who the enemy is, whenever (laughs).

 

FM: To him, it’s every other fishermen is the enemy (laughs).

 

GK: Every other fisherman in PEI.

 

FM: Basically, yeah. Yeah.

 

GK: So, and I’ve heard that you have had some students come and visit you from, from here.

 

EM: It started it with the Maine Fishermen’s Association, with their program to help educate some of the younger people and Patrice brought them to PEI and we farmed them out. They home-stayed and went fishing with the people on our end of the island, and then we moved them to the West end of the island, to, to experience both, both uh, the ways things work in different areas. So it was a real, uh, I thought the people that home-stayed them really enjoyed having them and uhm, hearing the different, hearing different perspectives. And I, I really hoped, I think, I think the young people gained a lot from their trips to PEI.

 

0:03:59.1

 

EM: And last year, we had students from the Skippers’ Program come up and uh, were hoping to do the same thing this summer, we hope to get them into the high school in Souris because the, the kids in fishing communities once they can lift a trap, they wanna get out of that high school. And uh, if they, there’s ways to make it more interesting for them in high school and uh, they could definitely do better.

 

FM: And the program they have here seems great. And we’ve, and the principal in Souris seems really interested when we spoke with her, so she’s interested in learning more and maybe being able to do something at home.

 

GK: Yeah, the Sk—that’s great, and it seems like it’s a similar cult—you’re facing a similar cultural.

 

FM: Same thing, yeah. Fishing community. Yeah.

 

EM: Fishing and farming communities’ the same, they, they just assume [inaudible] looking out the window of high school, you know, the second day of May, it’s uh.

 

FM: High schools need to start teaching these things that will give them a career fishing or farming and.

 

[0:05:02.7]

 

GK: And what, what are some of the . . . you know, in your time, fishing in Prince Edward Island, do you have similar concern as the fishermen here in Maine, or, what are some of the issue that you’re facing?

 

EM: One of the, one of the, one of the things that we’re facing is the, the education system. We’re not teaching kids economics and people, we’ve, we in Canada, we have a lot of kids who get out of school and go to the, the oil fields and make a lot of money and uh, they’ll, they’ll work all winter long and they’ll come home with this 60,000 dollar-half done truck that’s only 25%, 10% paid for, you know, there’s absolutely no, it’s no good to make money unless you know what to do with it. And it’s like catching lobsters, you only need 100 pounds of lobster a day to live on as long as everyone else is getting 75 (laughs).

 

[0:05:54.7]

 

GK: Yeah well and I heard you have some specific sort of, you’re the, you’re the, you make your own traps, is that right? Is that you?

 

EM: Everyone in Atlantic Canada, er, in PEI makes their own traps.

 

GK: Really? Really?

 

FM: We all fish wooden traps.

 

GK: Is that regulated?

 

EM: No.

 

FM: No.

 

EM: No, but it’s just a, you just build your own traps. And I think even if we were, wire and we’ve tried wire, we’ve built our own wire traps, but uh . . . it’s just something you do.

 

FM: Part of it is because we only fish two months of the year, so you have the rest of the year to build your traps and all winter long what else do you do? The strait is frozen over and work on your boats, work on your traps, work on your nets.

 

GK: And that, those, those regulations the uh, does it change province to province when you can lobster, or what?

 

EM: There’s seasons, there’s different seasons and I f—I forget the number, it varies in, in Atlantic Canada. But the majority of them are open in May and June and we have a big, that’s the best time, that’s when the lobst—lobsters should, are really the best. The harder shelled.

 

GK: And so those are in PEI, it’s just two months?

 

EM: Yep. Fifty days if it doesn’t blow.

 

FM: There’s part of PEI the season’s middle of August.

 

EM: Yeah.

 

FM: ‘Til the middle of October, still two months, but a different, just a small area of PEI.

 

GK: And so, and those are the months, I mean, is there government, is there subsidy or is it just . . .

 

EM: Some people [inaudible]. We’ve, in uh, in the 70s and 80s we used to start scallop fishing in April and then we’d go lobster fishing and during lobster fishing we’d put dragging gear on and we’d catch flounders and the first of July we’d, we’d be catching hake and codfish and flounders. Around the end of July, the mackerel showed up and we’d out a mackerel seine on and we’d mackerel sein until the gillnet herring open, and you’d go for, maybe three weeks gillnet herring, you’d go back.

 

0:07:59.1

 

Uh, dragging groundfish and then you’d, around the middle of October you’d get scallop, you’d put the scallop gear in the boat and you’d scallop until it got too cold and some kind of, around Christmas we’d stop scalloping. And then, but then the, the scallop stopped. Went down some and the mackerel stopped coming in big enough and in enough . . . to purse seine and the herring fishery got to be no fun, so, we moved into other, other things to keep, keep ourselves busy. Gotta be busy, you know, idle hands is the devil’s workshop (laughs).

 

FM: But there is uhm, there’s an unemployment insurance program that a lot of fisherman draw on unemployment insurance all winter.

 

GK: Oh, wow. Yeah. That’s good that they can do that.

 

EM: No (laughs).

 

FM: Yes. Yes and no. Yes and no.

 

EM: Makes it.

 

FM: In some cases, there is no other option, you know. They need something to make it through. I other cases, there is jobs to be had but they won’t do them.

 

GK: Yeah. How do you two stay o—what are your occupations, is that your farming time?

 

EM: We.

 

FM: We blueberry farm.

 

GK: Wow!

 

EM: So we, we grow blueberries and we harvest blueberries and we cut wood and then clear land for more blueberries and then go to fishing meetings.

 

FM: And then build traps and nets.

 

GK: And do you catch and freeze your bait? I heard that’s a—

 

EM: We . . . We had. We didn’t last year. But uh, the just, it’s no good to spend too much money catching your own bait when the, when the bait, when there’s mackerel close we catch our own bait and freeze it.

 

FM: There’s a freezer plant in Souris that you bring your tubs of bait in and they box ’em up and freeze ’em. So you pay a certain amount per pound, not very much, for them to box it up and then so much per pound and they store it for you until the next year. Whenever you need it, you just call them, go pick it up.

 

EM: It’s the—

 

FM: It’s one of the best things that’s happened, really, to the fishery.

 

[0:10:03.9]

 

GK: Yeah, when did that, when did they . . .

 

EM: The harbor authority in Souris build that freezer probably in the . . . 10 or 15 years ago.

 

FM: Yeah.

 

EM: As a service to the, to the local fishermen.

 

FM: Yeah. It, it makes money as well. Like, it’s a business.

 

GK: Yeah.

 

FM: But, people come from all over PEI to freeze their bait there. Blueberries, people who farm blueberries freeze blueberries there and it’s used for all sorts of.

 

GK: That’s amazing.

 

FM: Mmhm.

 

GK: Yeah. And so how many people are you, how many fishermen are there on PEI, do you have a number for that?

 

EM: It’s about 1,100 lobster fishing licenses in PEI.

 

GK: Oh wow.

 

EM: Eleven to about. It always used to be . . . 12 to 1,300 but there’s been a few buybacks and.

 

GK: Do you see a lot of younger people being interested?

 

EM: There has been, there has been in the last while. All these young people, there’s lots of them interested. I mean, they all wanna go fishing. By the time they’re in grade school (laughs).

 

[0:11:00.9]

 

FM: It’s different in PEI, though, there’s only a certain number of fishermen and there’s so many licenses and to become a lobster fisherman you have to buy an existing license. There will never be more licenses. So it’s different than it is here, where—

 

EM: Student licenses.

 

FM: Yeah, student licenses and stuff.

 

GC: The apprentice program.

 

FM: That’s it.

 

EM: Yeah.

 

FM: There’s this many and that’s.

 

GK: So are there more than uhm, cause you said there used to be like 12 or 1,300 so.

 

EM: Yeah no there was a, there was, there was some government buy, the government did initiated some buybacks and bought some licenses back to bring the number down.

 

GK: And that’s for, it will be forever?

 

EM: That’s where it will be forever, yeah.

 

GK: 1,100?

 

EM: Sa—and I’m guessing, it could be 1,160

 

GK: Okay, okay.

 

EM: It could be. Yeah.

 

GK: So when you say, uhm, you know, you had the student come and you were going East and West PEI, are they, are they pretty distinct? Is, I’ve, I’ve never been up there in terms of, you wanted people to see both sides.

 

0:12:02.4

 

EM: Well there’s uh, the ti—the West end of the province is a co-operative, uh, it’s a big co-op community and they have the fishing co-op there, that almost everyone in the harbor sells, puts their lobsters through the co-op. And they, they really work close together in that, the, the men usually the co-op is, was created to take the, take uh, Patrice and all the people through the plants and, and uh explain everything to them. Where we have private plants on the East end, it’s not that easy to get a bigger group in. Now, they did take our plant, the plant we deal with took uhm, took the s-, the group last summer, but it was only a few of them and they got this, get to look at the fish processing, but it’s not really, you’re not doing justice to a trip to PEI during the fishing season unless you go to Tignish, the west end of PEI.

 

[0:12:55.9]

 

GK: Because that’s where that co-op is and that’s . . .

 

EM: Exactly, yeah.

 

GK: Yeah, yeah.

 

EM: And it’s a, it’s a real tight-knit community and it, it just is, it’s just an example of what people can get if they work together.

 

GK: Is that where you live, or you.

 

EM: No unfortunately we, we’re at the property end (laughs).

 

FM: [Inaudible] Eastern PEI.

 

EM: We don’t have the co-op. We don’t have that cooperative spirit. We had a co-op and we couldn’t, the people in the community just didn’t support that, that whole idea and they didn’t, they didn’t have the vision to see the long-term gains that could have by owning your own plant and, and dealing.

 

GK: What are the, and what’s the processing . . . because as far as I understand it, you got a lot more processing going on than we.

 

EM: Yes.

 

GK: In, in Canada in general.

 

EM: Yeah.

 

GK: So, what, what are they processing and who are they shipping it to?

 

EM: It’s, it’s processed into numerous products and it’s shipped all over the world.

 

GK: And it’s lobster primarily?

 

EM: Primarily lobster, yeah.

 

GK: Yeah.

 

[0:13:59.9]

 

FM: And a big part of it I think is, well, we’re, our distance from markets, but also we catch, we all fish in two months. So we catch a lot of lobsters in a short time. We can’t get that, there’s not a big enough live market.

 

EM: And we’re ca—we’re catching them at, at the time when the temperature’s rising all the time and we don’t have, we have the warmest water north of the Carolinas, so it’s, it’s extremely hard to keep lobsters in cool water to uhm, to keep them alive. Our, like our uh, we, we, with these, if we get rain, we get to . . . flat, the province is very flat and if you get an inch of rain it runs into the rivers, and the rivers drain into the harbors, and the salinity in the water in the harbor change enough that if we had lobsters floating in our harbor, they’d, we’d lose them, so it’s, it’s a little different. We gotta, we have to put them on the truck as soon as we come in and kiss them goodbye. It’s—

 

[0:14:59.5]

 

GK: Wow.

 

EM: It’s . . .

 

GK: You don’t have the pound, like we’ve got these pounds and—

 

EM: No.

 

FM: No.

 

EM: Yeah.

 

FM: No.

 

GK: People will sunk their . . .

 

EM: We don’t have the deep water close to shore.

 

FM: It just wouldn’t work.

 

EM: It’s a different . . . there are people making it work on small scale, but to do large scale and keep all these lobsters it’d be a, it’d be a challenge.

 

GK: Are there changes on the horizon, do you think, for the fishing industry in PEI?

 

EM: If I had it my way there’d be lots of changes (laughs).

 

GK: What would they be? You’re . . . yeah.

 

EM: What I’d like to see is raise the carapace size and, and . . . there’s ways to make things better, but anyway, this everyone doesn’t think the same way.

 

GK: Well what, what do you think, I mean, just in general, could be better, like what are, is it, do you think it needs more regulation, less regulation.

 

EM: We’re, we’re probably regulated uh, have enough regulations, that’s a . . . but we could uh.

 

[0:16:00.4]

 

EM: We could do different things. Lobster handling, I’d like to see it mandatory that every fisherman’s helper has a quality control, goes through the quality control program and understands how to handle a lobster and be careful. Just be a little carefuler on the boats. It all, it all starts . . . Like the, the quality of the lobster starts going downhill from the time the rope gets tight in the hauler until it gets to the marketplace. It’s no good to expect the … we can’t expect the, the people that are dealing with our product to pay use more until we give them better from our end. Uhm, everyone doesn’t really see it that way.

 

GK: That makes sense. And you get into, I mean if you’re, if you’re fishing two months of the year, you, that volume, it’s like, you’re probably just . . . Are people exhausted? You know? Are you going after fishing as much as you possibly can?

 

[0:17:00.6]

 

EM: We, we fish like.

 

GK: In those two months?

 

EM: We fish.

 

FM: Every day.

 

EM: Every day.

 

FM: Not . . . Uhm, most harbors don’t fish Sundays. But, other than that every, every trap, every day.

 

GK: Wow

 

GC: How many traps do you have?

 

EM: 272 or 3, or—

 

FM: 3.

 

EM: Yeah it’s whatever, however many tags cover the Bay (laughs). I don’t know.

 

FM: Yeah. And that’s regulated, the number of traps, the—

 

GC: So you have a lot of regulations.

 

FM: Yes.

 

GC: I mean, it sounds like you have a season, and—

 

EM: Yeah.

 

FM: Yes.

 

GC: Minimum size, and trap limits and—

 

FM: Yeah.

 

EM: Yes.

 

FM: Yes, but it’s worked, because the catches are good. Yeah. So now we need to work on the quality being good.

 

EM: Be sure that every lobster that comes out of the water gets the best return. That’d be the . . .

 

GK: What is your uhm, when you look at the regulations in Maine and the way people fish in Maine, do you have like thoughts about it?

 

EM: Oh, it’s working for them, I like to leave them alone. We, we find other ways to annoy them (laughs).

 

FM: It’s just different.

 

EM: Yeah.

 

FM: Yeah, it works for them.

 

GK: It’s totally different, it’s really . . . yeah.

 

FM: Yeah, it’s worked for them.

 

EM: Yeah.

 

[0:18:00.2]

 

GK: And I didn’t realize that uhm, about water temperature in PEI, I had no idea.

 

FM: Mmhm.

 

GK: That it was that warm.

 

EM: We start off it’s like, it’s zero. And uh, it just, it comes up like.

 

FM: So zero Celsius.

 

EM: Yeah.

 

GK: Zero Celsius.

 

FM: Yeah.

 

GK: Yeah.

 

EM: We’d uh, I should’ve brought my computer, you’d, you’d, you’d get a look at their ice report, like the whole Gulf of St Lawrence is ice covered right now.

 

GK: Wow.

 

EM: You could literally.

 

FM: By the 1st of May, that’s gone . . . hopefully.

 

EM: There’s people, people farming mussels today on uh, in the estuaries with the ten-wheeler trucks out on the ice and, and tractors, big tractors to lift and they’re load, they’re filling these [inaudible] tanks with mussels and loading ten-wheeler trucks and driving them off the ice to the mussel flats.

 

GK: How deep is that water that they’re taking the mussels out of there?

 

EM: Uh, I’m, I’m gonna guess about 20 feet, or 20 to 30 feet.

 

[0:19:01.7]

 

GK: Oh okay.

 

EM: It’s not real deep.

 

GK: Yeah. Wow. Have you seen changes, I mean, that, up that far north in terms of ice cover or freezing? Or has it been pretty steady?

 

EM: Winter in PEI is in cold. Don’t every come in February (laughs).

 

GK: I [inaudible].

 

FM: Nothing more than year-to-year changes, but not . . . not that it’s gotten less ice or—

 

EM: No.

 

FM: Like, this year has more ice than we’ve had in a number of years, so.

 

GK: Yeah, we.

 

FM: Just depends on the year.

 

GK: We’re having more ice everywhere this year.

 

EM: Yeah.

 

FM: Yes (laughs).

 

GK: I have free [inaudible].

 

FM: I just went for a walk, there’s a lot of ice (laughs).

 

GK: Oh, I know. No, I uhm, yeah we have, the joke this year is just, once it hits 20, everything below that is just “cold.”

 

EM: Yeah.

 

GK: And you just have no more, nowhere to go. Colder or cold.

 

EM: Yeah.

 

GK: I know. Uhm, I, I’m excited, I think we have an interview at 3:00.

 

EM: Mmhm.

 

GK: But I’m excited to, uhm, what time is it now?

 

[0:20:00.5]

 

EM: Quarter after.

 

FM: 2:48.

 

GK: Oh great, okay. I would like to hear when you, what some of your experiences were just talking to the students when they came up and things that they might have, like, perceptions that they had that surprised you, or things that they saw . . . Val told me a little bit about what it was like for them.

 

FM: Yeah.

 

EM: Yeah.

 

FM: I just loved seeing especially, I can’t think of his name, the one young guy, but he was just excited by everything. Because everything is different, our traps are different, just a little bit, but he was just (coughing and mumbling in background) so excited.

 

EM: He never, he never.

 

FM: By learning everything and how we do it and—

 

EM: He never stopped and uh, for the whole day and we got ashore and everyone come into Souris or something and he came, he just never slowed down.

 

FM: And they had arrived in PEI at 2:00 in the morning and we go out fishing at 4:00, so (laughs) . . . And he just never stopped and was just happy to learn every.

 

EM: Zach, I think his name was.

 

[0:21:00.0]

 

FM: Zach, that was it. Learn everything and see it all, which is, it’s great to see.

 

EM: Yeah. And it was the things that he, that I don’t know what now, but at different times he’d say, “Yeah well, I could do that!”

 

FM: Mmhm.

 

EM: “I can make them changes.”

 

GK: What was some of those changes?

 

EM: Well I don’t know, I guess maybe our hauler systems and . . . like, we don’t lift traps. The, we have hydraulics and booms and yeah. We call it.

 

GK: You don’t lift them at all. Wow.

 

EM: No, no, we call it the sis—

 

GK: You don’t.

 

GC: Wow.

 

EM: The sissy boom. The, the trap comes up (laughs).

 

EM: I didn’t think I was gonna get one until I started getting old age pension. I was gonna wait till the, let the pension paid for it, but I broke down and I got one a year ago.

 

GK: You’ll last longer, probably, so (laughs). And are the, uhm, are those wooden traps heavier than wire traps?

 

GC: Yeah.

 

FM: Yes.

 

EM: I think they’re a little more awkward too, they’re, the, like the wire trap you can catch it any [inaudible].

 

[0:21:57.8]

 

GC: So are they the rounded . . .

 

EM: No, we’re not [inaudible].

 

FM: We’re not there [inaudible].

 

GC: Okay.

 

EM: Not, not quite that backward (laughs).

 

FM: Used to be, yeah (laughs).

 

GK: I think I saw some photos, they’re beaut—they’re really pleasant to look at.

 

GC: I’ve never seen a photo.

 

FM: Yeah. Yeah, ours are square, similar shape and everything. Just mostly wood frame.

 

GC: Mmhm.

 

FM: Compared to the traps here. And we did try the wire ones, but they would not work.

 

GK: Do you just find that these fish better?

 

FM: Yep.

 

EM: The wooden ones.

 

FM: The wooden ones fish better in the beginning of the season.

 

GK: Mmhm.

 

EM: When the water’s colder.

 

FM: And we could find no reason for it, and anyone down here that Edwin knew, we could find no reason for it. But, we tried for years (noise in background) and gave up.

 

GC: Wow.

 

GK: Wow, so when you were trying you were just finding that the wire traps, they just weren’t getting the catch that you had.

 

FM: Yep.

 

GK: Before.

 

EM: We’re doing keeping up. We never took, put it all wire. We only had like half . . . It’s uh.

 

GC: They’re really cool.

 

GK: It’s kinda wild.

 

EM: It’s uh.

 

GK: Right? To, to think (coughing in background) that that’s—

 

FM: Yeah it doesn’t make sense that they wouldn’t work as well as they do here, but . . .

 

GC: Do you think it might have to do with, maybe the scent that the wood might be giving off?

 

EM: Don’t know.

 

GC: In the water or something like that?

 

FM: I’m not sure.

 

EM: Just seem when the water is cold they didn’t do quite as good. They would still do like.

 

GC: Yeah.

 

EM: good, but I mean, I don’t like being the seven—the guy with 75 pounds, I wanna be the guy with 100 (laughs).

 

FM: And once then water warmed up, by June.

 

EM: Yeah.

 

FM: They were even, it was fine. It was just the first several weeks that they.

 

GK: Wow.

 

EM: Yeah.

 

FM: They got . . . So whether the really cold water . . . I don’t know, but there’s something.

 

GK: And are you facing uh, I’ve heard some, a little bit about, uhm herring in Canada being in a similar, Atlantic herring having quotas . . . similar to here, is this not what . . . I don’t know what.

 

EM: Oh, the herring?

 

GK: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yep.

 

EM: The herring where we are, the stock is poor but it seems quite good in Nova Scotia. So it’s.

 

GK: So you’re not, it’s not a concern for you right now.

 

EM: Not right now.

 

GK: That dropping off for, for bait.

 

[0:23:59.2]

 

EM: Not right now, but you never should say things like that, right (laughs)?

 

GK: You’re suspicious! Er . . . superstitious!

 

EM: Sup—

 

GK: Superstitious.

 

FM: Yeah (laughs).

 

GK: I know. I, I uhm . . . Yeah, I think I had heard about you catching and freezing bait

 

EM: Yeah.

 

GK: From Val.

 

FM: Mmhm.

 

EM: Yeah.

 

GK: And I was, and just the, just the, how different it sounded when she was talking about the way that you fish.

 

EM: See when you, when you, when you’re fishing 270 traps you have a little bit extra time in the day to set a herring net that you don’t have here. And uhm, [inaudible] that makes a difference.

 

GK: Yeah I mean, and I just think about when you look at the, at the Maine fishermen and, and how much money, I mean there’s a lot of money going into the boats and a lot of money going into the bait, and from the perspective of, I’m sure your expenses are lower, uhm, just by default, you’re only—

 

EM: Yeah.

 

[0:25:03.1]

 

GK: —fishing for two months.

 

FM: Mmhm.

 

GK: you have less traps. Uhm, and just, you know, do you, I don’t know, what, do you have any thoughts about (laughs)?

 

EM: Well it doesn’t, like it does, it’s no good to make money unless some of that sticks to your fingers. And uh, that’s basically where our trap limit comes in and our seasons come in, if you can catch the same amount of lobsters in two months, you’re burning less fuel, you’re using less bait and, uhm.

 

GK: Are you going?

 

EM: Paying more taxes (laughs).

 

GK: Yeah you live in Canada (laughs).

 

GK: Yeah. Do you have, uh how far offshore you’re going, I mean, typically to set your traps?

 

EM: We’ve, for the last, we’ve been going ab- between 12 and 15 miles uhm, for a long time now.

 

GK: I don’t think we have a map—

 

GC: No we don’t.

 

GK: —that goes that high.

 

GC: No (laughs).

 

[0:26:00.2]

 

GC: We have maps for the whole of the Maine coast, but we—

 

EM: Yeah.

 

GC: —stop at the border.

 

FM: Didn’t expect us.

 

GK: So 12 to 15.

 

EM: Yeah.

 

FM: Mmhm. So we’d be between Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island is where we are.

 

GC: Yeah.

 

FM: Between Cape Bratton and Prince Edward Island.

 

GK: Is that still, uh, this is gonna be super tense, that’s not still the Bay of Fundy?

 

EM: No.

 

FM: No.

 

EM: It’s . . .

 

GK: ‘Cause that’s way down here.

 

EM: Yeah.

 

GK: Oh, it’s up.

 

EM: Yeah.

 

FM: Yeah. It’s Northumberland.

 

GK: Got it.

 

FM: Strait. So Nova Scotia, and then PEI kind of . . . is here, the Gulf of St Lawrence (coughing in background) and we are between the two.

 

GK: Oh wow, okay.

 

FM: But at the eastern end of it, so Cape Breton.

 

GK: And, I’m, is that, is that kind of the typical place that everyone goes, or there are a lot of different territories.

 

EM: There’s a lot of . . . No, there’s.

 

FM: All the way around the island.

 

EM: All around. Just . . . There’s uh people just seem to go to the same place they always did and—

 

GK: So is, was your fa—family a fi—fishing family?

 

EM: My father did, yeah.

 

GK: Did you inherited some of that territory, or.

 

EM: No, we.

 

FM: No, he had his own fishing fleet that fished.

 

GK: Oh wow.

 

EM: Yeah.

 

FM: He was still fishing when Edwin started, so.

 

GK: Oh wow.

 

EM: Yeah.

 

GK: Not lobstering.

 

EM: Yeah.

 

FM: Yep.

 

GK: Oh he was.

 

EM: Yeah.

 

FM: Yep. Yeah, he had his own, Edwin bought one off someone else that retired.

 

GK: Yeah.

 

EM: Yeah my father started lobstering when he was about 14.

 

GK: Wow.

 

EM: And he lived to be 80, fished for 60 years or, no, would’ve fished for  . . .

 

FM: 50? Fifty-some years? Yeah?

 

EM: Fifty, fifty-some years. I’m catching up (laughs).

 

GK: Yeah how mu—what year was this for you?

 

EM: ’73, so that would, would that be . . . 46, is it, this year?

 

GK: ’73?! You guys look like you’re about 55!

 

FM: No, he started fishing in ’73 (laughs).

 

GK: Oh, ok!

 

FM: Yeah. He isn’t 73.

 

GK: I was like, “You cannot be 73 years old.”

 

FM: Yeah, no, no he started fishing in ’73.

 

EM: Yeah, yeah.

 

GK: (Laughs.) Alright. Well I see the, there are folks here.

 

EM: You get another victim (laughs)?

 

GK: Chomping at the bit. But thank you so much.

 

[0:27:54.8]