A groundbreaking co-management decision by four First Nations and Fisheries and Oceans Canada will protect 17 crab harvesting sites on B.C.’s central coast for Indigenous food, social and ceremonial purposes starting April 1. 

After 14 years of collecting data and aligning Indigenous knowledge and fisheries science, the federal department and the Kitasoo/Xai’xais, Heiltsuk, Nuxalk and Wuikinuxv nations decided to close the commercial and recreational fisheries in those areas indefinitely. The decision was the first made as part of a collaborative governance framework that will guide future management decisions for several species in the region over the coming years.   

“There’s a lot riding on this type of decision-making,” Danielle Shaw, chief councillor of the Wuikinuxv Nation, said in an interview. “If we can build a foundation from a more collaborative way of management, then it can really be a turning point for management of a lot of species across the country.”

Steven Groves, a senior executive with Fisheries and Oceans Canada, told The Narwhal the closures are indicative of the new way the government is working with Indigenous communities. He said decisions were previously made on a more reactionary basis.

“What’s unique about this [decision] is how it came together, through a process formalized with the First Nations — it wasn’t about the outcome,” he said in an interview, adding that the department has collaborative relationships with other nations.

While the process paves the way for more collaborative fisheries management, the outcome is welcomed by the four nations, which have been unable to harvest enough crabs for their communities for over a decade. 

Seasonal sport and commercial fishing left Indigenous communities with no harvestable crabs

Catching Dungeness crabs — a delicacy by most people’s standards — is easy. The scuttling bottom feeders are partial to the likes of raw chicken, fish guts and cat food. Drop a few baited traps in a choice location, wait a few hours and you’ll likely pull in a hefty catch. On a species level, Dungeness crab populations in B.C. are healthy — abundant even.

But for three or four months every year, transient recreational fishers flocked to the central coast and, together with a handful of commercial operators, harvested so many crabs that for the rest of the year, local Indigenous communities were left with the dregs — depleted populations and crabs under the legal size limit for harvesting. 

A Nuxalk guardian watchman measures a Dungeness crab as part of a monitoring survey. In the past, the majority of the harvestable crabs in the waters off B.C.’s central coast would be snagged by commercial and recreational fishers, leaving little for local Indigenous communities. Photo: Tristan Blaine

“Those other nine months, there was nothing left to harvest,” Mike Reid, aquatics manager with the Heiltsuk Nation, said in an interview. 

Reid said it got so bad that Heiltsuk harvesters, himself included, stopped collecting crabs. After nine months, the populations would recover and the whole process would start over again.

In Wuikinuxv territory, it was a similar story. 

Shaw said community members couldn’t even feed their families from a crab harvesting site right across the harbour from the village in Rivers Inlet. She said it still hasn’t fully sunk in that this decision has been formalized. 

“This is something that we’ve been working on for so long, that it still doesn’t feel real to me that we’ve reached this huge milestone.”

Crab pilot program grew from fisheries reconciliation agreement

In 2017, a decade after the Indigenous communities first flagged the problem to Fisheries and Oceans Canada, the department agreed to set up a pilot program to make decisions about crab fisheries with the nations as part of its commitment to a fisheries reconciliation agreement. The agreement facilitates collaborative governance and decision-making between nations and the federal government.  

The pilot program was structured to ensure equal contributions from each of the nations and Fisheries and Oceans Canada. A technical working group of fisheries managers from the nations and Fisheries and Oceans Canada compiled data and made recommendations to a steering committee made up of senior management from the federal department and each of the nations. A final decision was jointly made by chief councillors and government executives. Every decision or recommendation made by each level of the collaborative group had to have consensus before it proceeded. This framework will be applied to co-management decisions about other species in the coming years. 

Nuxalk guardian watchmen Charles Saunders and John Sampson prepare a crab trap for surveys near Bella Coola, B.C. Indigenous-led science led to recommendations to close the crab fisheries in 17 locations on the central coast. Photo: Tristan Blaine

Groves said a notable part of the process is that the recommendations to close the crab fisheries were made based on Indigenous-led science.  

Shaw said the nations worked hard to figure out which locations should be off-limits to recreational and commercial fisheries. The goal was to identify areas that can’t sustain commercial and recreational fisheries while also meeting food, social and ceremonial needs. 

10 years of Indigenous-led science proved what First Nations already knew

It wasn’t easy to get to this point. 

In 2007, First Nations sounded the alarm about declining crab populations on the central coast and started pressuring Fisheries and Oceans Canada to take action. But it wasn’t enough to tell the department what Indigenous fishers were observing — they had to prove it, according to Reid. He said Fisheries and Oceans Canada told the Indigenous communities to provide hard evidence to back up their claims and showed them how to collect the data. The Central Coast Indigenous Resource Alliance, a partnership between the four nations, started working with researchers to survey the territories in earnest. 

The four nations closed 10 crab fishing sites under Indigenous law and monitored an additional 10 open sites for comparison. The results were clear: crabs at the closed sites were bigger and there were more of them, whereas populations at sites open to commercial and recreational harvesting were severely depleted. The study was published in the journal Global Ecology and Conservation and presented to the department in the hopes it would prompt action. 

But even that was not enough. The nations needed to show Fisheries and Oceans Canada that the declines were directly impacting the harvest of crabs for food, social and ceremonial purposes.

Keith Windsor, a Nuxalk guardian watchman, holds a Dungeness crab caught as part of a monitoring survey on the central coast of B.C. Monitoring the moulting of massive crabs like this tells Windsor how productive an area is and how much fishing pressure the area experiences. Photo: Tristan Blaine

To acquire data on historical abundance, members of the communities, including Elders with a lifetime of experience on the ocean, collaborated with conservation scientists on a series of interviews. Natalie Ban, an associate professor of environmental studies at the University of Victoria, was the lead author of the resulting report. She emphasized that while her name is on the study, the work was led by the nations themselves.

“It’s unfortunate that this was needed because I [was] just repackaging their stories, yet that somehow has more credibility with policymakers and the likes of DFO than hearing stories from First Nations,” Ban said in an interview.

Of the 38 people Ban and her colleague, Lauren Eckert, interviewed, more than 80 per cent said they observed a severe decline in abundance at crab harvesting sites in their respective territories.

“At the scale of the Dungeness crab fishery, it’s probably not much of a concern, but at the scale of each of the individual nations, it’s a huge concern,” Ban said.

Sandie Hankewich, left, and Ernie Mason have been surveying Dungeness crab in Kitasoo/Xai’xais territory for more than a decade. These surveys paired with Indigenous Knowledge of the territory give each central coast nation the data needed to make important management decisions. Photo: Tristan Blaine

The researchers then tried to determine how many crabs each nation needed for food, social and ceremonial purposes, which Ban said made her uncomfortable. She explained that the academic and policy approach to putting numbers on need can set a dangerous precedent.

“It’s a tricky thing to have to do, and potentially fraught with all sorts of issues, because it’s setting the lowest of the low bars of people being able to meet their need for food and maybe some potlatches or some trading, but that’s not what we should be striving for.”

The estimated need was around 160,000 crabs per year between the four communities, plus more for feasts and ceremonies — a far cry from what the nations were able to catch.  

Coastal First Nations solidarity was catalyst for government cooperation

As this data was being gathered, the communities were still unable to access crabs in their own territories. Shaw said the four nations were almost ready to give up on the process in 2016, frustrated by what she said was Fisheries and Oceans Canada’s lack of decisive action despite years of data collection and discussions.

“We were kind of at a point where we were like, we’re just not even going to engage any further if we can’t do so in a more productive way,” she said.

Then she and other Indigenous representatives had a meeting with the fisheries department in Vancouver. Douglas Neasloss, stewardship director for the Kitasoo/Xai’xais Nation, was on the phone from Klemtu. Neasloss had stayed in his community to monitor the activity of a commercial crab fisherman operating in an area closed under Indigenous law.

Neasloss told the department if it didn’t act immediately, Kitasoo/Xai’xais guardians were going to evict the commercial fisher from the territory and, if necessary, pull all of his crab traps.

During a tense meeting between Fisheries and Oceans Canada and four B.C. central coast First Nations, Douglas Neasloss, stewardship director for the Kitasoo/Xai’xais Nation, threatened to pull a commercial fisher’s crab traps if the fisheries department didn’t intervene. Photo: California Department of Fish and Wildlife / Flickr

“Then he hung up and the room was just quiet,” Shaw said. “Everyone kind of looked around like, ‘Whoa, OK, stuff is very real right now.’ ” 

She and the other nations’ representatives at the table pulled out their phones and called to tell their respective guardian coordinators to get boats ready to head to Klemtu in solidarity.

In the end, Neasloss presented the commercial operator with a notice and the fisher voluntarily pulled his traps, so no further action was required — but Shaw said it made the department realize it had to change the way it worked with First Nations and was a catalyst for setting up the pilot project.

“It was a real turning point for DFO … to see how things were functioning at a nation management level, and to see that we’re not messing around anymore,” Shaw said.

The fisheries department was unable to comment on these events prior to publication. 

Indigenous guardians will monitor the closures as nations start work on salmon management

Fisheries and Oceans Canada has already informed commercial harvesters of the new closures, but monitoring recreational fishers will be more challenging. Shaw said Wuikinuxv guardians will be on the water to make sure no one is dropping traps in closed areas.

The other nations also have guardian programs to monitor activity on the water and the fisheries department said it will be working closely with its sport fishing advisory board to get the message out. Additionally, recreational fishers can download the Fishing BC app, which provides up-to-date information about regulations, including closures. 

Members of the Coastal Guardian Watchmen inspect their crab traps near Bella Bella, B.C. The watchmen patrol Heiltsuk territory regularly and will ensure no recreational or commercial crab harvesting is taking place in off-limits areas. Photo: Louise Whitehouse / The Narwhal

As for future management decisions, Reid said plans are underway for a similarly structured group to discuss conservation priorities for wild salmon, many populations of which face extinction.

“It’s a little bit sad, I guess, that we’re jumping into that process when salmon have actually crashed,” he said.

Shaw agreed and sighed. “Salmon is going to be a bit of a different beast altogether, but it’s in desperate need so it’s the highest priority.”

Editor’s note: Lauren Eckert is a member of The Narwhal’s board of directors. As per The Narwhal’s editorial independence policy, our news judgments are made independently of our board of directors, who are not involved in day-to-day news operations.

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In mid-November, a storm pounded B.C.’s central coast, 120-kilometre-per-hour winds whipping the waves into a frenzy. The newly operational Coastal Nations Coast Guard Auxiliary dispatch centre in Bella Bella started receiving a flurry of calls for help from several vessels in distress. 

“We had one vessel towing another vessel and he had to cut his tow loose. And we were told there was a person in the water,” Robert Johnson, Heiltsuk coordinator for the auxiliary, told The Narwhal.

Johnson said one boat sank and another was smashed against the government wharf in Bella Bella. But thanks to the coordinated efforts of the auxiliary, RCMP and Canadian Coast Guard, the rescues were completed safely.

B.C.’s coastal First Nations have lived, worked and thrived on the rugged west coast for millennia. Five nations — Ahousaht, Heiltsuk, Gitxaala, Nisga’a and Kitasoo — are now using intimate knowledge of the coast to save lives as Canada’s first Indigenous coast guard auxiliary. 

While the auxiliary is focused on search and rescue, its mission of enabling communities to safely and efficiently respond to marine emergencies is a step toward the formation of an Indigenous marine response centre, which the Heiltsuk have been calling on governments to support since the Nathan E. Stewart, an articulated tugboat, ran aground and sank in 2016, spilling 110,000 litres of diesel into the Seaforth Channel near Bella Bella.

“We live on the coast, we live on the water and we will respond to any call for help.”

For Johnson, the auxiliary program is one part of a larger goal to protect the coast. 

“I see it as a first step in bridging some gaps between government agencies and First Nations,” he said. “There’s a lot of gaps in there that need to be filled.”

The auxiliary has been in the works for four years as part of Canada’s Oceans Protection Plan, a $1.5-billion investment supporting initiatives that protect the country’s coastlines. The auxiliary is on call 24 hours a day, every day of the year. When deployed, members will complete rescue missions in tandem with the Canadian Coast Guard and other responders. 

The program also involves training Indigenous members at a facility in Bamfield, on Vancouver Island, and in their home territories, and providing nations with equipment such as navigation systems, communications tools, first aid kits, survival suits and tow lines.

Dark and stormy nights are common on B.C.’s wild west coast. Members of the Coastal Nations Coast Guard Auxiliary have intimate knowledge of the geography, which allows them to expertly respond to emergencies on the water. Photo: Andrew Szeto / Coastal Nations Coast Guard Auxiliary

Many of the nations involved in the auxiliary have participated in rescue operations as first responders for decades. Members are still responding to emergencies in their own boats, but Conrad Cowan, executive director of the auxiliary, said two dedicated search and rescue boats will soon be sent to communities, and he is working on getting funding for another three. 

“We live on the coast, we live on the water and we will respond to any call for help,” said Johnson, who’s been a responder for more than a decade. “But now that we’ve got the coast guard auxiliary, we’re able to respond with equipment that we’ve never had before.”

Coordinating rescue efforts requires building trust

In 2015, Ahousaht fishermen spotted a distress flare sent from a Tofino-based whale watching vessel that capsized. The fishermen and other community members responded quickly, using knowledge of the currents, tides and weather. Their efforts led to the rescue of 21 people, but tragically six people died. 

Roger Girouard, assistant commissioner for the Canadian Coast Guard, said the coast guard was involved that day, but the coordination of rescue efforts by First Nations and federal authorities was “lacking.” 

“I’ll use that word bluntly — and honestly,” he said. “From that point on, we’ve been looking at how to be better together on the water.”

The Canadian Coast Guard is providing training for members of the Indigenous auxiliary, but Roger Girouard, assistant commissioner for the coast guard, said his team is learning just as much from the trainees. Photo: Andrew Szeto / Coastal Nations Coast Guard Auxiliary

The first step, he said, was building relationships with the First Nations along the coast.

“I remember going out to visit Chief Greg Louie in Ahousaht to thank him for his community’s efforts in that incident, but also to apologize that we had not learned how to be better connected with his community or indeed, in a number of places around the coast,” Girouard said. “So we struck out to improve those relationships one by one.”

He said he and his team travelled the coast, asking each community what it would like to see and what it wanted its relationship with the coast guard to be. The answer took time to form, but he said it became clear that an Indigenous-led auxiliary was a good place to start.

“In the grand scheme of things, it’s not an expensive program, but the return on the investment in terms of ability, confidence on the water and a sense of self-reliance for these very isolated communities is what really makes it magic.”    

Coast guard training is a two-way street

The coast guard has had volunteer auxiliaries across Canada since 1978. Its members respond to about a quarter of all marine search and rescue events. The Indigenous auxiliary is unique in that it is accessing funding for equipment through the Oceans Protection Plan, while other auxiliaries require members to provide their own gear. Cowan said the annual operational funding they receive from the Canada Coast Guard, however, is on par with other auxiliaries. 

Girouard added that the training the Canadian Coast Guard is providing Indigenous members doesn’t look the same as typical auxiliary training.

“We don’t show them how to drive a boat — we know they know that. We don’t teach them their geography, they already know that too. What we bring to the table is skills that they haven’t got.” 

Members of the Coastal Nations Coast Guard Auxiliary participate in a search and rescue training exercise near Bamfield, B.C. Photo: Andrew Szeto / Coastal Nations Coast Guard Auxiliary

Members have been provided with courses like advanced marine first aid, swiftwater rescue and COVID-19 protocols for frontline workers. Members are also taught well-established search and rescue techniques and protocols. Girouard said the volunteers are also teaching his staff. 

“My team is learning as much from these Indigenous mariners as they are from us. It’s growing this really lovely community, where you know how to read a current or you know what the birds are telling you about the weather.” 

Cowan agreed. “These are seasoned mariners. They know their waters very, very well — the tides, the ebbs and the flows, the spots that are foggy or not foggy.” 

Cowan, who has spent the past 17 years on the frontlines of search and rescue, including for the air force, said it would take him a very long time to achieve members’ existing skill sets, if he could at all.

“There’s one more person alive because of this work that we’ve been doing.”

But the training is valuable nonetheless and Girouard said it’s already paying off. 

On what he describes as a “classic dark and stormy night,” a broken radio call came in. An Indigenous responder quickly used his combined knowledge of the territory and the skills he had learned during training to run a search pattern, a systematic search method designed to increase the chances of finding a person in the water.  

“Lo and behold, 30 minutes into a search pattern, he came across a guy clinging to a log and got him out alive.”

For Girouard, that’s the payoff. 

“There’s one more person alive because of this work that we’ve been doing.”

Plans for a Heiltsuk marine response centre are moving forward 

For the First Nations along the coast, protecting the environment is as much a priority as saving lives. 

Heiltsuk volunteers were the first responders to the site of the Nathan E. Stewart, and four years later, the disaster is still impacting the community.

“We still can’t harvest our food out there,” said Johnson, who was one of the first on scene and one of the last to leave.

An independent report commissioned by the Heiltsuk Tribal Council following the disaster noted a slow response time, inadequate equipment and poor communication. The Heiltsuk have proposed to establish an Indigenous marine response centre near Bella Bella, which would be able to respond to a spill anywhere in Heiltsuk territory in less than five hours. The centre would be equipped with a fleet of rapid response vessels and spill-response equipment. 

Girouard acknowledged that protecting the environment is a priority for Indigenous and colonial governments alike. 

“We’re talking about life and limb,” Girouard said. “But of course, the other thing that nations are really keen to do is protect the shoreline. They want to protect fin and feather. They want to protect the breadbasket. And so it’s a conversation that is as alive as search and rescue.”

He said he wasn’t able to speak specifically to plans for an Indigenous-led spill response centre because discussions between the Heiltsuk and federal and provincial governments are still underway, but he supports the idea.

“It’s no secret that for the last few years, we’ve been doing a lot of spill planning work with the First Nations up and down the coast,” he said. “We believe we need to start deploying more equipment, which Canada is investing in, and that equipment shouldn’t just sit in Victoria or Prince Rupert.”

In an emailed statement, the B.C. Ministry of Environment and Climate Change Strategy said it has been involved in planning with the Heiltsuk Nation and the federal government. 

“We welcome the proposal by the Heiltsuk Nation to improve spill response in the central coast and better involve Indigenous communities in a robust marine response regime.”

The Narwhal reached out to Transport Canada and Environment and Climate Change Canada, but agencies referred questions to the Canadian Coast Guard. 

Johnson, who is part of a strategic planning team for the development of the centre, said plans are coming together and they’re in the process of looking for land where they can build the response centre.

In the proposal, Chief Councillor Marilyn Slett and Hereditary Chief Harvey Humchitt stress the need for community-based capacity.

“Indigenous communities have shown that we are and will continue to be the first responders to marine incidents in our waters. The time has come to meaningfully develop our capacity to properly address emergencies in our territories as they arise.”

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The water is like glass and the salmon are jumping on a Wednesday morning in September as I head out on a boat with the Heiltsuk Coastal Guardian Watchmen.

We’re on the water no longer than five minutes when we stop at a shallow and guardian Walter Campbell pulls out a fishing rod.

“My dad showed me this spot,” he said. “I grew up on the water.”

The mission is to catch 10 rock fish to use for bait in crab traps. It takes no longer than 15 minutes for Campbell to reel them in.

The bait will help attract invasive European green crabs into traps set by the guardians in an attempt to stem the tide of the voracious creatures.

The Narwhal’s editor-in-chief Emma Gilchrist watches Walter Campbell, a member of the Heiltsuk Coastal Guardian Watchmen, fish in Heiltsuk territory while filmmaker Jayce Hawkins of Approach Media looks on. Photo: Louise Whitehouse / The Narwhal

Six guardians are employed full-time in Heiltsuk territory, on B.C.’s central coast, and patrol the territory five days a week on three different boats. They track ship traffic and wildlife, keep an eye out for poachers and uphold Indigenous laws.

Before becoming a guardian, Campbell was a commercial clam digger in Gale Passage. But on Oct. 13, 2016, that changed. A watchperson on an American-owned tugboat, the Nathan E. Stewart, fell asleep and the boat ran aground at 1 a.m. at the mouth of Gale Creek in Seaforth Channel.

It took 17 hours for oil spill responders to arrive on site from Prince Rupert. In the meantime, 110,000 litres of diesel, lubricants and other pollutants were spilled into the water.

The Texas-based Kirby Offshore Marine Corp. — the owner of the tug — was eventually fined $3 million for the spill. A civil case for damages filed by the Heiltsuk Nation is ongoing.

‘We were helpless’

Three years later, when I ask members of the Heiltsuk Nation about that day, I can’t help but notice the way their expressions change, like they’re recalling a painful nightmare.

“The whole water was just pink with diesel,” guardian Jordan Wilson remembers.

“We were helpless, defenseless, to stop it from spreading.”

Wilson takes notes as part of his duties as a member of the Heiltsuk Coastal Guardian Watchmen. Photo: Louise Whitehouse / The Narwhal

Jordan Wilson, one of six Heiltsuk Coastal Guardian Watchmen, says the water turned pink the day the Nathan E. Stewart sunk. Photo: Louise Whitehouse / The Narwhal

When oil spill responders finally did arrive, they tried to surround the spill with an oil containment boom, but winds and waves forced it open in parts, according to a Heiltsuk report on the 48 hours after the spill.

Kelly Brown, the director of the Heiltsuk Integrated Resource Management Department, was the first member of the Heiltsuk to be notified of the spill. The call came at 4:30 a.m., more than three hours after the tug had first hit the rocks.

“Ninety per cent of all our food and all the resources we depend on are in that area,” Brown said.

The Heiltsuk rallied to do what they could, as they waited hours for a team to arrive with supplies, only to have them deploy defective equipment in unfamiliar conditions.

In the midst of the catastrophe, the seed was planted to create a new way of dealing with oil spills on the north central coast.

“As our community’s economy, environment, and way of life hung in the balance, we promised ourselves this would never happen in our territory again,” said elected chief councilor Marilyn Slett about a year after the spill, on the day the Heiltsuk announced a plan to establish an Indigenous Marine Response Centre.

Heilstuk Tribal Council’s elected chief councillor Marilyn Slett says Heiltsuk have more people working in their territories than Parks Canada or the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. Photo: Louise Whitehouse / The Narwhal

Heiltsuk-based response centre could reach spills more quickly

The 196-page report, Creating a World-Leading Response Plan, describes the likelihood of marine incidents on the central north coast, evaluates best spill response practices around the world and says an Indigenous Marine Response Centre located on Denny Island — adjacent to the existing Canadian Coast Guard base — could respond to all incidents in the study area within five hours and to 80 per cent of incidents in three hours.

“We have a very well-established guardian watchmen program and we’re really proud of it and they are the eyes and ears on the water,” Slett said. “They’ve responded to distress calls, responded to the Nathan E. Stewart, responded to emergencies, so for us it was a natural step in terms of looking at marine response.”

The proposed Indigenous Marine Response Center would employ 37 full-time staff and crew. The annual operating cost is estimated to be $6.8 million, with an estimated $11.5 million needed for start-up costs.

“We have more people working in our traditional territories than Parks Canada, than DFO,” Slett said. “We have Heiltsuk here who are trained, who are out there monitoring.”

The view from a Coastal Guardian Watchmen vessel in Heiltsuk territory. Photo: Louise Whitehouse / The Narwhal

The Heiltsuk Coastal Guardian Watchmen pull ashore. Photo: Louise Whitehouse / The Narwhal

Brown said before the spill First Nations had not been fully engaged in oil spill response plans.

“We believe that as Haíɫzaqv (Heiltsuk) people with all the local knowledge for the area, that we’re the right place to put an Indigenous Marine Response Centre that would be managed by ourselves,” he said.

As the Heiltsuk await federal funding for the program to move ahead, part of the problem is the colonial mindset that kept the Heiltsuk out of the loop during the initial stages of the spill response in the first place.

“There’s still no recognition of the Heiltsuk government,” Brown said. “We have to be recognized as a government here. We’re the ones left having to manage whatever the disaster left.”

A spokesperson for Transport Canada told The Narwhal that collaboration with Indigenous peoples is vital to protecting Canada’s coasts and waterways and said “the government of Canada wants Indigenous peoples to play an active role in marine safety.”

“As part of Canada’s $1.5 billion Oceans Protection Plan, we are working with Indigenous peoples to assess marine safety risks in their communities. We are learning where we need more capacity to prevent and respond to marine emergencies. Multiple First Nations, including the Heiltsuk Nation, have proposed establishing Indigenous marine response centres as part of this process,” the statement read.

“Our discussions with the Heiltsuk Nation are ongoing.”

Kelly Brown is the director of the Heiltsuk Integrated Resource Management Department. Photo: Louise Whitehouse / The Narwhal

50 families impacted by loss of clam beds

To mention nothing of the bungled cleanup, dozens of people like Campbell immediately lost their jobs in the clam beds, where 50,000 pounds of manila clams were harvested the year before the spill.

“The spill itself devastated our community,” Slett said. “We haven’t been able to harvest clams commercially since. And that has affected up to 50 families in our community.”

Out of work, Campbell started getting his first aid certifications and then enrolled in a two-year stewardship technician training program, which prepared him for a job with the Coastal Guardian Watchmen.

Walter Campbell is one of six Coastal Guardian Watchmen in Heiltsuk Territory. Photo: Louise Whitehouse / The Narwhal

Before the Nathan E. Stewart contaminated Gale Passage with diesel fuel, Campbell was a commercial clam digger in the area impacted by the spill. Photo: Louise Whitehouse / The Narwhal

As Campbell pilots the boat, I notice a red sticker by the steering wheel that says “Report More Pollution” alongside a 1-800 number for the Canadian Coast Guard.

If the Heiltsuk succeed with their proposal, help may actually be on hand next time someone reports a spill along this coastline.

“If we had that in the first place, maybe we’d have been able to protect more of this,” Campbell said.

Updated on Nov. 26, 2019, at 5:08 p.m. PST to include comment from Transport Canada.

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