Great Lakes fishery documentary documents the changes and challenges facing the industry

CBC News

· Posted: Mar 01, 2025 4:00 AM EST | Last Updated: March 1

A new documentary disposable escaped connected YouTube celebrates a Great Lakes manufacture that the filmmaker says often flies nether the radar, adjacent among those who unrecorded connected the lakes.

Last Boat connected the Lake features radical progressive successful the Great Lakes commercialized fishery, North America's largest freshwater commercialized sportfishing fleet.

Dalhousie University researcher, Hannah Harrison, began researching the fishery aft moving to Canada from Alaska to bash post-doctoral studies astatine the University of Guelph.

She said she made the movie due to the fact that she realized galore Ontarians don't cognize astir the industry.

"I had this acquisition of visiting Port Dover," said Harrison, who is an adjunct prof successful Dalhousie's Marine Affairs Program.

"And I retrieve listening to radical eating food adjacent and they're commenting, 'Oh, I wonderment wherever they get their food from.' And I thought that was truthful absorbing due to the fact that you could astir spot from wherever we were sitting where the tiny vessel harbour was wherever each of these commercialized boats were parked."

Changing ecosystem

The movie takes viewers to respective ports on the lakes, including Port Dover and the Saugeen Ojibwe Nation, and speaks to fishers astir the changing quality of the manufacture and of the Great Lakes ecosystem.

It touches connected everything from the maturation of invasive taxon specified arsenic zebra mussels to the effects of stocking the lakes with non-native taxon and the interaction of shoreline improvement connected situation and entree to water.

The fishers besides talk of the challenges facing those who anticipation to get into the industry, and their concerns astir its future.

And Indigenous fishers sermon the racism and deficiency of knowing they look from non-Indigenous fishers erstwhile it comes to their pact rights.

"There are a batch of individuals retired determination that arsenic soon arsenic they spot a nett spell up successful Colpoy's Bay are retired determination damaging the nets, cutting disconnected the nett markers, and fundamentally calling the Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry due to the fact that they don't privation nets wrong the bay due to the fact that that is wherever they similar to spell and food for their introduced salmon," Saugeen fisher Ryan Lauzon says successful the documentary.

"We've had, certainly, vessels that were chopped escaped … disconnected their moorings.  … All those kinds of things hap connected a regular basis."

Harrison grew up successful a sportfishing household successful Alaska, and was ever funny successful the societal broadside of fisheries, she said.

Fisheries successful Alaska, she said, were riddled with struggle betwixt recreational anglers, commercialized fishers and radical who were described arsenic 'personal usage fishers.'

She realized that a batch of the problems facing fisheries had thing to bash with the fish, she added.

So erstwhile she moved to Canada successful 2019 , she became excited by the imaginable of studying the Great Lakes commercialized fishery, thing she knew astir thing about.

And she was surprised, she said, to observe that astir nary 1 had done immoderate erstwhile societal subject probe connected it.

Harrison decided to crook her probe into a film, rather than simply penning much technological papers, in bid to assistance mean Ontarians larn much astir the fishery.

"Though surely we'll bash that arsenic well," she said of the paper-writing.

The movie closes with a bid of actions radical tin instrumentality to enactment the Great Lakes fishery, including supporting nationalist ownership of vessel ramps, docks and different sportfishing infrastructure and educating themselves astir Indigenous people's sportfishing rights.