Relevant?
Indeed, being from NS originally, I can understand the anger of the legal lobster fishermen. Some further facts seem relevant.
Until very strict regulation of seasons, sizes, quotas, and licensing came in several decades ago and was actually enforced, the fishery and lobster population were in severe decline, due to the usual over-harvesting and indiscriminate retentions. The regulation of this fishery has been a rare example of unmitigated success in producing a sustainable and consistently profitable industry. Permitting any harvesting outside the correct seasons, areas, and quotas is bound to be a potential or very real disaster for the industry and local economies.
Apparently, according to historians/anthropologists who have researched this, the indigenous people of the Maritimes never fished for or ate lobster prior to the advent of a European fishery. They considered them dirty scavengers, in essence, and not fit for consumption. For whatever reason, they generally never even participated in the fishery, for sustenance or otherwise, after the colonists established it. They did harvest eels (the subject of the Marshall case) and other inshore fish and crustaceans. So, is it not kind of a stretch to label it as a traditional fishery? It may have gotten lumped in under the wide wording of the treaties, but was not likely intended to be included by either side.
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