The speakers at a two day conference in St. Andrews did not, precisely, speak with one voice. However, the fishermen, whale-watch and sea kayak operators, Department of Fisheries and Oceans scientists and managers, environmentalists, Indigenous people and others left the Summit of the Bay II pledging to repair environmental damage and build a better future in this region for the next seven generations.
      The Peskotomuhkati Nation at Skutik organized the event at the Huntsman Marine Science Centre, following on the success of last year's inaugural Summit of the Bay. About 120 people registered. Chief Hugh Akagi, in remarks on the second day, noted with approval that he did not hear cellphones or people talking. "It means you're listening," he said.
      They listened to each other, asked questions from their differing perspectives and answered them in a respectful manner, exploring how to mesh traditional wisdom with modern science to return Passamaquoddy Bay and the Skutik or St. Croix River to the "paradise" they once were, to quote Akagi's word.
      Different speakers described removing the Milltown dam at Salmon Falls, which the New Brunswick Power Corp. completed this year, as a step towards greater days ahead.
      Matt Abbott, marine conservation director with the Conservation Council of New Brunswick, detailed the drop in alewives, or gaspereau, from close to three million in 1987 to fewer than 1,000 in 2002 as a result of the Maine government's decision to close fishways at the Grand Falls and Woodland dams as a result of pressure from sport fishing interests upriver concerned about smallmouth bass, an exotic species introduced to the St. Croix in the 19th century. Maine opened the fishways in 2013, and NB Power removed the Milltown dam a decade later, so the official estimate of the alewife run this year reached 800,000.
      He warned that there is talk already of catching St. Croix alewives for bait, but he cautioned that the stock is nowhere near this big -- yet. Akagi said in a conversation during a break that he considers the alewife to be in recovery but not ready for commercial fishing.
      Noel D'Entrement, Fisheries and Oceans Canada's area director for Southwest New Brunswick, stated, "Just to set the record straight, nobody in DFO is talking about harvesting gaspereau on the Skutik." The prospect of fishing alewives commercially from the St. Croix could well become a topic of discussion in the future.
      Abbott and other speakers cited Moses Perley, a New Brunswick colonial official who warned in the 1850s that dams and other human activity could destroy St. Croix fish runs. The Union dam built below Salmon Falls in 1825 had no fishway. Abbott recited the history of how sawdust from long extinct mills, plus industrial pollution, sewage and other insults, poisoned the river so that by the 1960s the stench peeled paint from houses in St. Stephen.
      As Moses Perley predicted in the 1850s, the number of fish dropped. The salmon disappeared altogether, and the alewives dropped from an estimated 80 to 100 million in the 19th century to about 900 in 150 years. "Those predictions came true, and people knew. It was obvious what was happening, and we let it happen," Abbott said.
      Concerning alewives and smallmouth bass, Abbott said, "People upriver, I think, forgot that the alewives belong to them, and it had only been a couple of hundred years at most, probably a hundred or 150, but people who felt connection to the place upriver had lost of the memory of the fish and thought the fish that belonged there were hurting the invasive fisheries."
      As for the estimated 800,000 alewives coming up the St. Croix this year, he said, "That's so much more than 900. It's so much less than 80 million."
      Fisheries and Oceans research scientist Fred Page said that the Peskotomuhkati have been here for 14,000 years. "Well, the Bay of Fundy didn't exist 14,000 years ago. It was ice. So there have been big-scale changes from where we are today." Geologists say the bay started to emerge 13,000 years when the sea level was 70 metres higher than today, he stated. With climate change, people can look for a 50 centimetre variation in the next 100 years. "And the First Nations have seen all of this," he said, adding, "They've learned how to adapt and respect the nature and continue to live in it."
      "Historically, it probably looks like things will likely be less stable than perhaps it has been in the past," Page said, explaining that science can help distinguish human impact from natural variation, allowing society to take appropriate action rather than "make false accusation as to cause and effect."
      Fisheries and Oceans scientist Jack Fife said the daily weather report is, in fact, more trustworthy than oceanographic forecasts. As an example, he asked rhetorically whether a one degree change in temperature, or taking out a dam, has more impact locally.

Community values and changes in fisheries
     The late Art MacKay did the research and proposed that Canada set up its first national marine park in the West Isles 40 years ago, according to Seascape Kayak Tours operator Bruce Smith. "How much more science do we need?" he asked, adding, "With the science we have, with the wisdom we have, how do we get that to DFO and make a decision that's going to be very, very unpopular? It's very, very hard, but we're doing it because it's the right reason to do it."
      Page responded, "If the community values don't give two monkey's tosses about the area you're interested in, it's the community that has to speak up," adding that the community must "take ownership of what it wants and go through the process to figure out what their values are."
      Fisheries and Oceans is working on protecting marine areas by 2030, according to D'Entremont. "We could mark a whole bunch of circles on a map and say, 'We're done.' That would lead to conflict and friction between everybody," he stated.
      They talked of other local issues, for example, creosoted timbers left following the removal of the dam that created the flowage on the Canoose River, which drains into the Canadian side of the St. Croix.
      D'Entremont, speaking on the history of modern fishing, said that in 1826 Americans invented the purse seine, "probably the most efficient piece of fishing gear we have out there." Canada banned it in 1891 but allowed it back in the 1940s. In 1950, the St. Andrews Biological Station donated a post war sonar device to the herring fleet, revolutionizing the purse seine fishery. By the 1960s there were 200 weirs and more than 30 seiners catching herring in the Bay of Fundy. "People in the department were saying we've got to slow this down," D'Entremont said, adding, "The feeling at the time was that you could not put a dent in them. That didn't work out, because in the 1970s the herring collapsed, but in the late '80s it started to come back."
      Grand Manan lobster and scallop fisherman Timothy Wilcox started hook and line fishing with his father in law. "When the fisheries started to drop, what we noted is that we were the first ones to be sent home," not the miles of gillnets. "We were the ones doing the most damage is what it seemed," he stated. He later got into aquaculture and, in the mid 1990s, bought his father in law's lobster licence for $7,500. The same licence would fetch $650,000 to $750,000 today, he said.
      His son Joel Wilcox, who spoke on the same panel, fishes lobster but more recently broadened into whale-watching. "We usually go look for humpbacks, and the humpbacks are always chasing the herring," he said, adding that the herring appear to be moving to deeper and cooler water farther offshore. He moved into tourism partly because of the "slow decline" he sees in fisheries.
      Matthew Lambert of Grand Manan, the third member of the panel, grew up fishing lobster and became a commercial diver, but he and his wife Heather now operate Lambert Family Adventures. "It gives you an opportunity to share what little bit you know with other people and making people aware of our decisions as humans and how that affects our oceans as well," he said. Lambert recalled showing people North Atlantic right whales, many of which have since left for the Gulf of St. Lawrence due to "herring stocks and that kind of stuff."
      Lobster catches "exploded" about 15 years ago and prices, driven by demand in Asia, remain "exceptionally high," according to Lambert. However, a person can no longer make a living catching groundfish, and the herring are declining. Grand Manan depends too much on lobster. "If we don't have some good science and realize what's going on in the lobster fishery, because we really don't know much, I mean, if it collapses, Area 38, Grand Manan area, will be devastated," he stated.
      Passamaquoddy Bay, the Bay of Fundy and Gulf of Maine form part of a much larger system, according to Fisheries and Oceans scientist Marc Trudel, who spoke on acoustic telemetry ? tagging fish with devices that send out signals that receivers pick up ? to track migrating fish. Eels return to the St. Croix from the Sargasso Sea and tagged alewives from this area have been gone as far as Chesapeake Bay, he explained. Sturgeon from the Quoddy region have reached Quebec City. Hotspots for white shark include Head Harbour Passage and Cobscook Bay.
      Trudel explained that migrating fish bring nutrients from other regions and link ecosystems but also link people from different areas. The fish move through different political/legal jurisdictions along their journeys, complicating life for people charged with looking after them.
      Several speakers repeated what seems to be a truism that fisheries departments manage people, not fish. "We haven't got the power yet to tell fish where they can and can't go," D'Entremont stated.
      The program included other panelists from the Peskotomuhkati Nation at Skutik, Eastern Charlotte Waterways, the University of New Brunswick and others. Briana Cowie, working her last day as executive director of Eastern Charlotte Waterways, spoke against what she calls a "misunderstood mindset of scarcity" in modern society. "I think of abundance in this world. There is abundance. I don't think it's particularly given around in a particularly equal manner, and I think that the abundance that we have needs to be better protected and cared for," she said.
      Climate change will force society to look at new models to keep coastal communities healthy, according to Rob Stephenson, recently retired Fisheries and Oceans Canada research scientist. "I think climate change, it has a dark side, but the upside of it is it will enforce us to change, so why not embrace that and try to prepare?" he asked.
      Bruce Smith brought what he described as a Peskotomuhkati skin scraper he found after landing his kayak on Campobello Island. He invited everybody to hold it "and feel the power in that, and it's really going to take you back to paradise."