But will gov't
Life of sea threatened
• Few will take issue with the principles enunciated by federal environment minister Jeanne Suave when she addressed the Federation of Associations on the Canadian Environment this April. Some extracts from her address are printed here. They beg the question of how ready the government will be to translate them into action when the need arises. The minister claims that the Arctic Waters Pollution Act was an example of 'unilateral action' that was a 'shocker' to some nations. Yet, more recently, Canada's dropping of her claim for damages against the U.S. following a 1972 spill of 2,940 gallons of Iranian crude oil at Cherry Point, Wash., hardly is grounds for future optimism.
To wreck the environment, you need only wreck the sea. And that is not as difficult as it might seem. You need only destroy a millimetre or so of the surface — the aquatic topsoil, so to speak — where the plankton, the essential first building block of aquatic life lives. If we destroy this layer, the sea may continue, but we will not. It will be a dead sea — and as far as we are concerned, a dead planet. As the sea goes, so goes mankind. Coastal states — and 90 percent of the world's people live in such states — can no longer sit patiently on the beach watching their fisheries swept clean by vacuum cleaner armadas, and their waters polluted by uncontrolled traffic.
It is no longer reasonable to expect that coastal states will be content to assume that everything is as it should be offshore; to assume that the traffic will move safely; that collisions won't happen; that the captain knows his job; that the radar on the ship works; that its hull won't split in two on a stormy day.
Nor can coastal states be expected to live on the hope, rather than the expectation, that if there is a catastrophe, the flag state involved will pick up the bill for the repair.
Canada is only one of a multitude of coastal nations determined to be more activist in managing the resources and the waters off their shores. Ours is the second longest coastline in the world — over 50,000 miles. But you don't need a long coast to lie awake nights worrying about pollution. Think for a minute about the people of a small, Caribbean state who depend on the tourist industry for sustenance, an industry based on clean, inviting, unfouled beaches.
Raising these concerns does not make the coastal states popular. It is environmentalist talk and it puts a pall on the party. The concern of coastal states runs head on, for one thing, into the interests of large shipping powers and nations who operate huge fishing fleets. It collides also with traditionalists who are thunderstruck at the very idea of relinquishing the time honored doctrine of the freedom of the seas, as enunciated by Grotius centuries ago in a world almost totally different from ours.
When a sailing ship went down offshore, the tragedy was human and real. But the tragedy was strictly limited in its reach. Today, the traces lingers.
Sometimes the traces can be
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180 miles long which, by the way, was the length of the oil slick left by a ship called Irish Stardust, which ran aground very briefly in Queen Charlotte Strait a couple of years ago. The cleanup bill was over a quarter of a million dollars.
The basis of resistance to coastal state demands — and the resistance, I must say, is diminishing — is an unreasonable fear about the future. It is a fear that by controlling traffic, you stop traffic — that by husbanding the fisheries wisely, you cut off fishing supplies.
Nevertheless, the revolution of values must come at sea as elsewhere. Grotius is out of date. Freedom of the seas makes about as much sense today as freedom of the skies. Yet those who pronounce this fairly obvious truth should not be surprised to
hear themselves criticized for upsetting cherished and precious institutions — for spoiling a good thing.
To stay with the sea for a moment, there have been cases where world action has not come soon enough, and nations have had to act alone. Canada has taken such unilateral action. One example is the Arctic Waters Pollution Act.
Reluctantly, but with conviction and with firmness, we passed this act which, among other things, asserts our right to control many aspects of the way shipping moves and is conducted in the Arctic. This act was not greeted with universal enthusiasm internationally. Indeed, it was in some ways a shocker. But the stakes for Canada, and indeed for the world, are far too great for us to be deterred.
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Fishermen must have priority, says UFAWU
The UFAWU Fraser River District Council has told the federal transport ministry it favors a traffic control system on the Fraser River but recommends that traffic be regulated or curtailed while there is heavy fishing in the areas bounded by the Port Mann bridge and Sand-heads light.
The MoT is contemplating establishment of a traffic system on the river and council chairman Edgar Birch expressed his views to marine services regional director H.O. Buchanan in a letter May 9.
The district council represents the majority of Fraser River net fishermen.
"As you know, fishermen are one of the first users of the river for commercial purposes," Birch wrote, "and even though the river is used now in a multipurpose way, fishing remains one of the prime industries.
"Today's modern fishery is geared to take the available stocks in a very short time, usually a one or two-day period. Because of this, and because of the short fishing openings make it harder and harder to compete and be able to make a living, it is
most important to us that the fishery be conducted without undue interuptions, such as having to lift nets to avoid shipping or having one's gear destroyed."
The regulation of curtailment of other river traffic during periods of heavy fishing effort should be conducted by the MoT and the Fisheries and Marine Service, Birch suggested.
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4   THE FISHERMAN — MAY 16, 1975