Introduce bounty to harvest 10% of harps; use carcasses for pet food like kangaroos in Australia; immediately boost DFO science This picture shows the dozens of arctic cod found in the stomach of harp seal harvested earlier this month near Nunavut.  The Atlantic Seal Task Team is accepting advice on priorities for DFO’s seal science; how to involve the fishing industry in science projects; and how to better communicate scientific findings.  I emailed the following letter to the task team earlier this week.  Email your input to: DFO.SealTaskTeam-Groupedetravailduphoque.MPO@dfo-mpo.gc.ca Monday, Feb. 15th, 2021 Atlantic Seal Science Task Team Dear Sir/Madam,   I wish to contribute input to the work of the Atlantic Seal Science Task Team related to DFO’s science activities and programs regarding seals, and the role of the animals in the ecosystem in Atlantic Canada and Quebec. To begin, I want to refer to the February, 1990 Independent Review of the State of the Northe...

  The opposite of roar is gasp, and the Gasping Twenties could certainly work to this point out of the gate, in terms of the unexpected.   You know you’ve been through a ringer of a year when, lying in bed on a late December night, thunder and lightning is mistaken for either an alien invasion or a monster tsunami ripping in from the Grand Banks, and neither scenario staves off sleep.   Turnaround Twenties has a better ring to it. When all is said and done, wouldn’t it be nice to look back at the decade ahead as a time when Newfoundland and Labrador finally got its act together? That’s not how it’s shaping up. The last act of the House of Assembly before settling down to a winter’s sleep was to unlock some pensions so people can tap into them early to pay for today. No word on tomorrow, and what they'll live on then. The sky really has fallen, and Chicken Little is dozing on the couch with government’s teat in its mouth. Just wait until the tap’s cut off — the place will ...

                                             OCI's operation in South Dildo, Trinity Bay. Ocean Choice International’s plan to build a controversial wharf and cold-storage facility in the middle of the harbour in Long Pond, Conception Bay South, would leave a $7-million white elephant in South Dildo, Trinity Bay where Ottawa has recently rebuilt a commercial deep-water wharf.   OCI also owns a processing plant and cold-storage facility at the South Dildo property, which is said to have plenty of room for expansion, and has been a brown industrial site since the early 1960s — home to such operations as Carino, Woodman’s Sea Products, and FPI. DFO’s Small Craft Harbours has spent roughly $7 million to overhaul the South Dildo wharf since 2015, and OCI’s growing operation was an obvious factor in that decision. That raises the question why OCI isn't sticking with South Di...

An edited version of the following letter was published in today’s Telegram Dear editor, With a loss of about $50 billion in hydro returns, Newfoundland and Labrador’s sacrifice for “preserving Canadian unity” has been an economic anchor around the province’s neck, and our own union with Canada has cost us billions more as a result of a federally mismanaged fishery that holds us down like a bag of rocks. Between the anchor and the rocks, this place is doomed. The time is now, before bankruptcy finally does us in, to reset our economic relationship with Canada, or, in event of a failure to negotiate a new deal, to seriously consider leaving the federation. To be clear, I am not a separatist, but separation, as with all options, must be considered as a means to finally float our ship of state.   Former Premier and Chief Justice of the Newfoundland Supreme Court, Clyde Wells, told the CBC recently that one of the reasons this province is once again knocking ...

The Greatest Hunt in the World Captain Abram Kean was the most successful seal hunter in Newfoundland history. In 1922, American writer and explorer George Allan England traveled with Kean aboard his sealing ship, the  Terra Nova , publishing a book of his account two years later. Vikings of the Ice  (the title was later changed to  The Greatest Hunt in the World)  is the only eye-witness account ever written of the daily life aboard a wooden-wall, or sealing vessel. On signing on “The hardships some of these men suffer even before they reach St. John’s and ‘sign on’ would kill the average American. For days before the sailing of the fleet, hundreds of them pile into St. John’s. Some walk all the way from home and some travel on the partly snowed-in, irregular streak of rust that Newfoundland calls a railroad. Many of them walk forty or fifty miles to reach even this rust, braving blizzards that scourge and flay. They carry their pitiably meager e...

HEADLINE :  Snip, snip By Ryan Cleary The Fighting Newfoundlander Published in The Independent newspaper,  Jan. 25, 2008   I already miss John Crosbie, and he hasn’t even had his “knockers” removed yet. That’s his word, not mine. I can’t imagine Crosbie without the sizeable knockers he walks around with.   A mortal Newfoundlander would have to use a wheelbarrow.   I can tell you this: he wouldn’t have had much of a career without his knockers.   He definitely wouldn’t have been able to pour Sheila Copps that shot of tequila before he asked her to lay own and love him again. But then the problem with feminists is that they have no sense of humour. (Crosbie’s words again, not mine).   They don’t know when to just “quiet down, baby.” I come today not to bury Crosbie, but to indirectly praise him, and give “the old curmudgeon,” which is what he called his one-time column in the pages of this newspaper, a coupl...