The Dark Side of Canada’s Fight Over Lobster

Nighttime provides ideal cover for acts of sabotage in the sleepy fishing villages along the southern shores of Nova Scotia.

Slashed buoys, stolen lobster crates, mysterious fires. These are just some of the acts of vandalism on the wharves where lobster fishers have been locked in battle for more than three decades.

Lobstermen have a simple way of framing the dispute: Think of the ocean’s bounty like a pie. They are asking who should get a piece, and what is the fairest way to divide it between the white Canadians who built the commercial lobster industry, and the Indigenous people who were historically left out.

The federal government, which regulates fisheries, has been reluctant to settle the politically fraught issue, alienating warring fishermen on both sides.

The conflict has created deep ruptures within fishing communities. Criminals have entered the equation, the authorities say, profiting from the illegal fishing and trading of lobsters.

The dispute raises thorny questions about Indigenous rights, economic equity, the conservation of resources and the future of Canada’s lobster industry.

A Bullet Meant as a Warning

Stormy weather muffled the sound of a bullet piercing Geoffrey Jobert’s house.

He woke up, he said, to the damage in November at his home in Clare, a community on the southwest shore of Nova Scotia, along the coast of St. Mary’s Bay, where the waters are especially rich with lobster.

“It’s a warning shot,” Mr. Jobert said of the bullet that ended up tearing into a wall just above an armchair.

Mr. Jobert, 30, operates a family-owned seafood distributor that packs live lobster for export.

He believes he was targeted for ignoring repeated orders over the last year to do business with people in the lobster industry whom he believed had ties to criminals. He said he had received threatening text messages, followed by an in-person visit by two men.

The police have charged the two men with several crimes in connection to his case, including extortion and criminal harassment.

The episode involving Mr. Jobert is part of what the authorities say is a pattern of violence that has rocked the area: unsolved arsons, including of a historic sawmill in June and the torching of a police car one month later, as well as shootings into the homes of other fishermen.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police said a criminal organization, with a core group of less than 10 locals, was largely behind the violence.

Their scheme, the authorities say, focuses on buying lobsters that Indigenous fishermen catch in the summer. Harvesting lobsters during the summer is illegal because that’s when they reproduce, but Indigenous fisherman have special permission because of historical treaty rights.

But strict rules prohibit them from selling their haul.

The lobsters eventually wind up in restaurants and stores across the province. Lobster fishers who refuse to cooperate with the criminal group have become targets, the authorities said.

“I was expecting a small, little, quaint village, but I’ve got big city problems,” said Sgt. Jeff LeBlanc of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, who became the local commander in Clare in 2020.

The lobster battle has embroiled Indigenous lobstermen from the Sipekne’katik First Nation after they set up a commercial fishery in Clare to assert what they say are ancestral rights to catch — and sell — lobster all year long.

“We have a right to be here,” said Shelley Paul, a lobster fisher from the Sipekne’katik group, which has also sued Canada’s government over the summer lobster rules.

But criminals posing as lobster dealers, according to locals, started doing business with some of the Indigenous fishermen.

A maritime fishing union, helped by private detectives, has traced illicit lobster shipments — mostly conducted at night — to local businesses, according to a lawsuit filed by the union against several firms.

The union also says government officials have not done enough to target the illicit trade.

“This organized crime group has seen an opportunity and a door opened to possibly exploit and fund their criminal organization with the trade and sale of that seafood, which can be very profitable,” Sgt. LeBlanc said.

But policing unauthorized fishing is a top priority, said Debbie Buott-Matheson, a spokeswoman for Canada’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans. “Enforcement activity is not always visible,” she said.

Jean-Claude Comeau, a machinist who runs a marine hydraulic company in Clare, said the tension in the community had become suffocating.

“Somebody’s going to get killed,” Mr. Comeau said. “I’m surprised it hasn’t happened.”

Old Problems, New Players

Nova Scotia, a province of just over one million people, is Canada’s top seafood producer, with annual exports valued at 2.6 billion Canadian dollars, or $1.8 billion, largely because of lobsters.

In the 1700s, the Mi’kmaq, an Indigenous group on Canada’s east coast, signed treaties with the British colonial government promising them rights to hunt and fish. For the seasonally nomadic Mi’kmaq, that meant hunting inland during the winter, and moving to the coast to fish in the summer.

Canada did not recognize those rights for decades as various fisheries and regulations were established, including the banning of lobster harvesting during the summer.

The summertime restrictions were successfully challenged in the 1990s in Canada’s highest court by a Mi’kmaq fisherman who had appealed illegal fishing charges.

The Canadian supreme court, in 1999, ruled that treaty rights allowed Indigenous people to fish during the summer and earn a moderate livelihood. But the court never defined what a moderate livelihood meant, leaving that up to the federal government.

The government, however, has only gone as far as granting individual lobster licenses to Indigenous groups allowing them to catch lobsters in the summer, while limiting commercial sales to lobsters harvested during the legally permitted fishing season from November to May.

The piecemeal approach angered Indigenous fisherman who cite ancestral rights to make a living selling summer lobsters, while the non-Indigenous were unhappy because they claim that summer fishing was depleting lobster stocks and hurting their livelihood.

“The government of Canada has basically walked on tippy toes around Indigenous folks from the very beginning,” said Ken Coates, a historian who has studied Indigenous fishing rights. “They have been very, very cautious about enforcing much on the First Nations.”

The Sipekne’katik First Nation opened its commercial fishery in Clare in 2020, pointing to the treaties that predated the formation of Canada to claim a right to catch and sell lobster throughout the year.

Chaos ensued. Commercial fishermen dumped lobster caught by Sipekne’katik back into the ocean. Lobster pounds where they stored their catch were set on fire. The Indigenous fishermen accused their white counterparts of being racist.

But in Clare, some lobster fishers and others involved in the industry say evidence gathered by private investigators strongly suggests that the tribe’s fishery is not following some standard regulations and procedures.

“I can’t really make myself believe that all of that activity is actually legitimate,” said Morley Knight, an industry consultant and a former senior official in the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans. “If it was, then why do it under the cover of darkness?”

Michelle Glasgow, the chief of the Sipekne’katik group, and the reserve’s lawyers declined to provide responses to written questions.

“The commercial fishermen are sitting back watching their livelihoods be taken out of the water, out of season, and the Canadian government is not doing anything about it,” said Ruth Inniss, a fisheries adviser for the Maritime Fishermen’s Union.

Drama in the Bay

David Pictou, a Mi’kmaq fisherman from Acadia First Nation in Yarmouth, a port town on Nova Scotia’s southern tip, remembers fights breaking out just about every day between white and Indigenous fishers following the Supreme Court ruling.

He believes his tribe has a right to make a living fishing lobster in the summer. But he also wants to avoid the turmoil that has unfolded in St. Mary’s Bay.

“We’re not really involved in the bay, because we know how much drama is up that way,” he said.

Instead, he built a small saltwater tank house in 2019 on his reserve and sells summer lobster he buys from a handful of Indigenous fishermen from his community.

Standing outside the tank house, Mr. Pictou said he knows he could be charged for selling illegally harvested lobsters — but does not care.

“All we’re asking for is let us exercise our treaty right the way we want,” Mr. Pictou said. “I’ve hidden nothing for years because I’m just tired of it.”