The Hawke Box closed area.

The fishing boats in for the winter at Mary's harbour.

The great weather continues and we have met so many people already. Everyone is making us feel so welcome and yesterday, we were invited for a lovely lunch, and then were were given the full use of an office space.

Everyone seems to be taking advantage of the good weather and is out having fun. At the weekend, there is a dog sledding race that we are hoping to catch as this will be a good chance to meet a lot of people and will be good to see.

Yesterday evening we attended the Gilbert Bay marine protected area meeting. This provided me with a great background to what is going on in this area with the MPA. This area is to protect the Golden cod in the area and it was great to see what has been going on in this area with the science, and the schools education. I also got a t shirt with the Golden Cod on it too, which will certainly be useful for my next research trip to Tanzania at the end of the month!

Crab pots in the winter sun

The Hawke box closed area is a large area offshore along southeastern Labrador, that is closed to trawling, for shrimp, but allows crab pot fishing. Crab fishers wanted this area closed and submitted a proposal in 2002. Since this time, this area has been allowed to remain undisturbed from trawling on the seabed and in the wintertime, is completely undisturbed until the crab fishers go out for the season again. Meanwhile, other areas are trawled for shrimp year round. The crab fishery has very little by catch, the extra species that are not targeted, and any caught are thrown back. As such, the crab pot fishery has less impact on the environment. This fishery closure is important as it is supported by, and established by the support and guidance of the fishers that use and live in the area. This closure is providing food, and conservation.

The main reason we have come here, is to capture this information from the fishers themselves, who are, and have been involved with this closure from the beginning and to document what is happening in this area from this fishers perspective.