Tensions resurface in Nova Scotia elver fishery
The profitable baby eel fishery is underway in the Maritimes, after illegal fishing and violence led to its cancellation last year.
But despite changes put in place by the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans, the 2025 season has reignited the debate over who should be allowed to fish and how it should be managed.
Since the season opened March 22, Mi’kmaw harvesters with three First Nations that set their own rules outside of the DFO have been flocking to rivers throughout Nova Scotia, including band members from Sipekne’katik.
Tuesday night, about a dozen arrived to cast their nets on the Fitzroy River in Hubbards.
“These guys that are going to be fishing here, they’re the front lines for rights holders,” said Cheryl Maloney, a band member who came out in support of the Indigenous harvest.
“And they’ve been self-regulating, self-managing themselves. They’ve been working in groups,” she said.
Elvers migrate from open ocean through tributaries to grow to adult size in freshwater.
The tiny glass eels only emerge from muddy river beds at night.
Once they’re caught, the elvers are sold primarily to China, fetching $1,500 or more per kilogram.
“It just feels great being out here, you know, with my community,” said 18-year-old Sipekne’katik fisher Tegan Maloney, “fishing to support our family and our right to do that. “
Rampant poaching and violence forced the Department of Fisheries and Oceans to shut the lucrative fishery down last year and cut it short in 2023.
To try to regain control this year, Ottawa introduced new rules for licensing and reallocated quota from commercial harvesters to new Mi’kmaw participants.
Eight Mi’kmaq First Nations came up with their own elver harvest plans and allocated quota to individual Mi’kmaw harvesters.
Those bands then negotiated with the DFO for access to specific rivers.
But three other First Nations — including Sipekne’katik — didn’t like the deal. The band chief sent a letter to the department rejecting its plan, asserting that their treaty right to fish supersedes federal regulations.
When Ottawa’s new rules were put in place, the then-minister of fisheries, oceans and the Canadian Coast Guard, Diane Leboutillier, said the government was “delivering on its promise to have an orderly and sustainable elver fishery this year.”
But there have been confrontations, including the April 11 arrest of a 46-year-old Millbrook man by RCMP for allegedly obstructing fisheries officers who were conducting an inspection on the Tangier River.
Video posted on Facebook shows the man facedown on the ground being cuffed.
Daniel Francis posted images online of bloodied abrasions on his head.
In an interview with Global News, Francis says “there was no dialogue from DFO” when they started removing his fyke net. He’s been charged with assaulting a peace officer and obstructing a peace officer, but says he’s innocent. Francis plans to represent himself in court.
Along with tension between DFO and Indigenous fishers, there are also licensed commercial harvesters who feel caught in the middle.
The same night harvesters from Sipekne’katik were in Hubbards, veteran elver fisher Mark Weldon came to the same river to check his nets.
“There seems to be a lack of political will to police it properly,” Weldon said. “I like the peaceful process, but I still don’t like how they’re interfering with my ability to make a living. Especially after last year, right?”
He says he’s called the DFO’s tipline to report unlicensed fishers, but says oftentimes, officers don’t show up.
Weldon says it’s a ballot box issue for him in the federal election.
“It’s my livelihood. I got to make a living. And I’m not going away…. I’ll be the last man standing.”
Weldon went somewhere else to dip his nets in another river that night.
But wherever he goes, he can’t catch as much as he used to.
When the federal government cut quotas to distribute to First Nations, his employer, Atlantic Elver Fishery, lost half its total allowable catch.
But commercial fishers weren’t compensated by Ottawa in return.
That move has prompted long-time harvester Mitchell Feigenbaum to seek damages on behalf of his company, South Shore Trading, in a lawsuit filed in the Court of King’s Bench in New Brunswick against federal officials.
The statement of claim names three fisheries ministers — Joanne Thompson, Lebouthillier and Joyce Murray — along with 10 DFO bureaucrats as defendants.
The claim alleges that DFO officials had told commercial elver licence holders they would be able to sell their licences to First Nations participants in what’s known as a “willing buyer/willing seller” approach.
It claims officials “engaged in widespread and persistent neglect of their duties with the intent to undermine the Maritime Elver Fishery.”
“During the last 10 years, we took incredible steps forward to introduce the fishery to the First Nations, to train them, to educate them,” Feigenbaum told Global News. “We made all these commitments because the government assured us repeatedly that their preferred policy for dealing with reallocation would be to use a market-based approach.”
“My partners and I bought an eel farm, an eel licence, an eel quota with locations, for millions of dollars to get into this business,” he added, “So yeah, I was pretty upset, not that they took that quota, but that they provided literally no compensation. “
The federal government has 40 days to file its defence.
The DFO wouldn’t comment on the lawsuit, only writing in an email, “As the Department is a named party and this matter is now before the courts, it would be inappropriate for DFO to comment.”
Last month, a federal judge ruled the DFO failed to properly consult commercial harvesters when it took quota for redistribution among First Nations in 2023.
Ottawa is reviewing that decision.
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