Commercial fishing boats docked at Meteghan Marina in Meteghan, Nova Scotia. — ©2025 The New York Times Company
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 Canadian government, which regulates fisheries, has been reluctant to settle the politically fraught issue, alienating warring fishers on both sides.
The conflict has created deep ruptures within fishing communities. Criminals have entered the equation, 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.
Atlantic lobster caught off the coast of Yarmouth, Nova Scotia. As Canada wrangles an epic, decades-long saga of who can fish for lobster, and when, emerging threats are heating up the conflict in Nova Scotia. — 2025 The New York Times Company
A bullet 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,” Jobert said of the bullet that ended up tearing into a wall just above an armchair.
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 who he believed had ties to criminals.
He said he had received threatening text messages, followed by an in-person visit by two non-indigenous men.
Police have charged the two men with several crimes in connection to his case, including extortion and criminal harassment.
The episode involving Jobert is part of what authorities say is a pattern of violence that has rocked the area: unsolved arsons, including of a historic sawmill last June and the torching of a police car one month later, as well as shootings into the homes of other fishers.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police said a criminal organisation, with a core group of less than 10 locals, was largely behind the violence.
Their scheme, authorities say, focuses on buying lobsters that indigenous fishers catch in the summer. Harvesting lobsters during the summer is illegal because that’s when they reproduce, but indigenous fishers 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, authorities said.
Paul, from the Sipekne’katik group, arriving at Saulnierville wharf after hauling traps in St. Mary’s Bay, Nova Scotia. — 2025 The New York Times Company
“I was expecting a small, little, quaint village, but I’ve got big city problems,” said Sgt Jeff LeBlanc of the RCMP, who became the local commander in Clare in 2020.
The lobster battle has embroiled indigenous lobster fishers 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 fishers.
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 organised crime group has seen an opportunity and a door opened to possibly exploit and fund their criminal organisation with the trade and sale of that seafood, which can be very profitable,” LeBlanc said.
But policing unauthorised fishing is a top priority, said Debbie Buott-Matheson, a spokesman for Canada’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans. “Enforcement activity is not always visible,” she said.
Old problems, new players
Nova Scotia, a province of just over onemillion people, is Canada’s top seafood producer, with annual exports valued at US$1.8bil (RM7.98bil), largely because of lobsters.
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 government.
Jobert standing outside his home in Mavillette, Nova Scotia, says he was targeted for ignoring repeated orders to do business with people in the lobster industry who he believed had ties to criminals. — 2025 The New York Times Company
The government, however, has only gone as far as granting individual lobster licences 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 fishers who cite ancestral rights to make a living selling summer lobsters, while the non-indigenous were unhappy because they say that summer fishing depletes lobster stocks and hurts 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 fishers dumped lobster caught by Sipekne’katik back into the ocean. Lobster pounds where they stored their catch were set on fire. The indigenous fishers 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, 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. — ©2025 The New York Times Company
