Milligan's Wharf, P.E.I. - Co-ordinates on a plotter and a few buoys still bobbing in the water helped direct members of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans to the spot in Hardy Channel where a loaded lobster boat wrecked on a sandbar on setting day.
Egmont MP Bobby Morrissey, a member of the standing committee, helped organize the half-hour sail last week that took participants to the scene of the boat swamping.
The standing committee is partway through an Atlantic Canada tour of fishing communities. Prior to the visit to Milligan’s Wharf and Hardy Channel, the seven attending committee members toured Malpeque Harbour and met in Slemon Park with representatives of other harbours.
Their only sail, though, was out Hardy Channel to the scene of the April 30 swamping.
Prior to the sail, Hardy Channel fisherman Lloyd Phillips expressed disappointment with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans for not taking the tide and weather conditions on April 30 into consideration. He felt the spring opening should have been delayed a day. He was also disappointed that the swamped vessel was left in the water with gear on for three days before fishermen were allowed to remove the gear and retrieve the boat. Had they been permitted to go out the day after the swamping, he thinks the boat might have been salvageable.
“It’s common sense,” he said.
Morrissey believes last week’s tour helped demonstrate the need for dredging. He said a new round of soundings is being obtained and an environmental assessment will have to be completed before dredging is carried out.
Once dredging in Hardy Channel is completed, he said, it tends to last several years. He noted it was last dredged in 2004.
By comparison, he said, the committee was made aware of drifting sand issues at Malpeque Harbour, which requires dredging work there on an almost annual basis.
Milligan’s Wharf port chairman Lyndon Hardy took the committee and staff members out onboard his vessel.
“It shows the standing committee what we’re dealing with, that we have an issue of no water in our harbour,” said Hardy.
Phillips told the committee members that friends from other harbours, who sailed in through Hardy Channel once, told him they’d never be back.
Fishermen and harbour manager Karen Rank also showed off the new section of wharf completed this spring and pointed to a section of wharf that will need replacement in the new five-year plan.
