Listening and Learning on our West Coast
When we think about where we are going as a team on the West Coast, we often think of it as an evolution. But the truth is, it’s a learning experience of betterment. How we can listen, learn and support better.
It is why we’re very grateful and fortunate to be able to expand our scope of focus in 2024, in collaboration with communities and Nations along our unique coast to better enhance our relationship with our local waters.
Through the generous support of the Power To Give Foundation, we’ve been able to visit some of the most spectacular places in the world, that just so happen to be on our West Coast. Over the past two years, Swim Drink Fish has conducted feasibility studies in Galiano Island on the Penelakut territory, Tofino on the unceded traditional territory of the Tla-o-qui-aht First Nation of the Nuu-chah-nulth peoples, and in Bella Bella on the unceded traditional territory of the Haíɫzaqv People of the Heiltsuk Territory and the traditional keepers of their land.
Over the past couple of years, our conversations and focus on these regions have been partly because of the already ongoing and important work by Galiano Conservancy Association and Penelakut Tribe, Maaqutusiis Hahoulthee Stewardship Society, and Heiltsuk Integrated Resource Department. As members of the Healing the West Coast Collective under Power To Give, fellow partner groups, such as Clayoquot Action, Power To Be and Salmon Coast Field Station, have been instrumental in helping introduce us to these regions with knowledge of our work on recreational water quality.
Next, what was realized was the evolution part of our journey. Our community-based water monitoring practices and methods have always been geared towards recreational water quality guidelines. But now, thanks to many conversations, we have the ability to take our practices and methods of community-based water monitoring and focus them on monitoring shellfish.
When it comes to shellfish harvesting in Canada, the regulating body is the Canadian Shellfish Sanitation Program (CSSP), and to say it’s wrapped in a cloak of confusing bureaucracy would be an understatement.
Here come the acronyms if you need to practice the alphabet.
The CSSP is the responsibility of three different ministries; Fisheries and Oceans (DFO), Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC), and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA). DFO is the ultimate authority that decides to put up the no harvesting signs, but ECCC and CFIA execute the monitoring for water quality associated with bacteria and marine biotoxins, respectively. Each of the latter two both recommend closures to DFO.
Over the years of our work in advocating for swimmable, drinkable and fishable waters, we’ve gained a decent understanding of navigating government departments, and it’s been clear that the people in each of these areas are some of the most passionate advocates of our lands and waters. Unfortunately, it’s the siloed systems of government that create unnecessary red tape too often. What we’re learning, much like our work on wild salmon, is that shellfish harvesting is falling victim to this.
It is for this reason that we’re excited to announce that Swim Drink Fish is making a new foray into shellfish monitoring, with our same old community-based water monitoring programing, but emphasizing the fishable in our mission. We’re beyond fortunate and grateful to be doing this alongside our partners, Galiano Conservancy Association and IMERSS (Galiano Island), Maaqutusiis Hahoulthee Stewardship Society and Clayoquot Biosphere Trust (Tofino), and Heiltsuk Integrated Resource Management Department (Bella Bella).
Our support to ongoing work by these teams will be helping supply lab equipment, resources and training –– with the goal of filling in bacteriological water quality gaps ECCC is facing, and advocacy work with the ultimate goal of reopening shellfish harvesting areas that for far too long have been closed to communities that have been stewards of our lands and waters long before any of us started thinking about this stuff.
Tsleil-Waututh First Nation in Burrard Inlet and Pauquachin First Nation in the Saanich Inlet are two examples of marine units that are leading the way in this type of work. Anu Rao and her team at Tsleil-Waututh First Nation have done remarkable work of bringing attention to Burrard Inlet and the need to restore the inlet through treaty, lands and resources. While the Pauquachin Marine Unit led by Octavio Cruz and his team have been leading the charge in calling for a Healthy Shellfish Initiative thanks to their work to try and reopen Coles Bay shellfish harvesting in the Saanich Inlet. As members of the Burrard Inlet Water Quality Roundtable, SDF has been fortunate to absorb immense levels of knowledge from the team in Tsleil-Waututh First Nation, and SDF is starting out in working relationship with Pauquachin Marine Unit to continue to learn about the efforts to restore their watershed.
As both Nations say, “When the tide is out, the table is set.” It is our duty as settlers of an erosive colonial system to start taking meaningful and responsible actions toward true reconciliation. So we will continue to listen, learn and support.
