Long lost fishing gear is finally seeing the light of day.
On the shores of Irvines Landing, volunteers pulled out 2,834 pounds of materials from Pender Harbour, filling a 30-yard shipping container from Salish Soils. Among the haul were herring nets and gill nets, tires, styrofoam, rope, batteries, sea cucumbers and crabs. (The critters were released back into the water.)
On March 19 and 20, the Pender Harbour and Area Residents Association (PHARA), SeaWolf Diving and the Ocean Legacy Foundation partnered to retrieve debris from the bottom of the harbour near the Skardon Islands, Whiskey Slough and Irvines Landing. Ninety per cent of the haul was able to be recycled.
Peter Robson, the president of the Pender Harbour and Area Residents Association, said they first had the idea to launch a harbour clean up four years ago and had volunteer divers sign up, but Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) required commercial divers in order to grant permission.
The idea stalled for a few years, before Rob Alliston of SeaWolf Diving and the Ocean Legacy Foundation joined in and took the lead. PHARA sponsored the event and made sure the volunteers were taken care of. Robson said it took more than a month to have the application approved, after divers searched for debris, documented the locations of old nets and prepared the plan. The commercial divers and crew volunteered their time but clean up events can be costly, considering the necessary equipment, fuel and time.
The retrieved materials were taken to the future site of the Pender Ocean Discovery Centre in Irvines Landing. There, they were sorted, cleaned and then transported for recycling by the Ocean Legacy Foundation. “Picking them up is one thing,” Robson said of the nets. “We don’t want to fill up our landfills.”
“People have a different attitude now about pollution and throwing things into the water,” Robson said. “People think that the residents’ association is all about this Dock Management Plan, but this is one way of showing that we do care a lot about our environment. The docks themselves are only a tiny part of the total area of the harbour.”
Marine life, Robson noted, has been returning to the waters of Pender Harbour, with sightings of whales, dolphins, herring and more becoming more frequent in the area. After the clean up, Robson said, “If you’re underwater, you can see the difference.”
Robson hopes to make the clean up an annual event and is looking into grant funding. “I’m just really proud of the effort that the community has put in,” he said. “It was just a really great team effort.”
