MOUNTAIN LIFE - Blue Mountains | Spring 2019

SPRING 2019 ML BLUE 63 Andrew Akiwenzie says he “mothballed” his business in 2018. It just wasn’t working. Akiwenzie’s Fish & More had been operating for 15 years. A commercial, Indigenous fisherman on Neyaashiinigmiing (formerly Cape Croker), he called his business an artisanal fishery; he sold his fish at Toronto’s Saint Lawrence Market, directly to chefs like Jamie Kennedy and more. Andrew had been fishing since he was a teenager. His vast knowledge of Lake Huron and Georgian Bay comes from days, weeks and years spent on the water. But over the decades, the catch was changing. “We’re noticing a huge change in the species of fish we’re catching,” says Andrew’s wife and business partner Natasha Akiwenzie. “We’ve been looking back over photos from ‘93 and we were catching, early spring, about 200 pounds of whitefish and it looks like about 30 pounds of lake trout. For my husband that would be three nets: a day’s worth of fishing. If you were selling to a wholesaler, it would have worked out to about $2.40 for a pound of whitefish, and for the lake trout it’s about 25 cents.” For those not so quick at math, that’s about $487. A worthwhile day of work. “Now we’re catching about a box of lake trout, which is 100 pounds, and about 10 pounds of whitefish, so two whitefish in a day,” she says. “The values haven’t changed.” And that works out to about $49. Quite a difference. So what changed? Did they overfish? “It’s not because we overfished,” she says. “There are less people fishing than there were. It used to be an industry; we were a fishing community. Our number of fishermen has dropped significantly because we can’t make a living off what we’re catching. What we’re noticing is the water is warming up considerably. Whitefish and lake trout are coldwater fish but Georgian Bay and Lake Huron are warming up quickly. It’s not just a little bit warmer either.” They were noticing changes in the weather as well. “The winds were picking up consistently, limiting the number of safe days to go fishing. It’s such a huge factor on what we can and can’t do.” Over the last couple of years, as their profits dwindled, the family started questioning their future. “I would say the last three years, we were really struggling,” she says. “We were trying to figure out why. Was it just bad luck? After it started becoming normal, then you get worried. So someone handed me a grant application from INAC (Indigenous & Northern Affairs Canada) and said, ‘You should apply for this.’ It was an Indigenous climate monitoring grant, so communities and individuals can come up with something to monitor the environment.” From there the Akiwenzies started making connections; Victoria Serda was a climate change expert and was interested in helping. John Anderson, a retired marine scientist from the Department of Fisheries & Oceans became interested. And together with a couple other fishermen, they formed the Bagida-Waad Alliance (Bagida-Waad means, “they set a net,” in Anishinaabemowin), a not-for-profit corporation formed to research and monitor climate change on the waters of Lake Huron and Georgian Bay. They’re also encouraging youth to hear stories from the elders about fishing and set about active stewardship of the lands. “That’s how the group started, very humbly. Half of the board members are First Nations half of them are not. We just bring all our expertise and experience.” And with members like John Anderson, backing up the day-to-day life experience of the Akiwenzies with real data isn’t hard. “My two primary data sources are Environment Canada and NOAA [the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration],” says Anderson. “This is all publicly available data. I’ve looked at air temperature, surface temperature and winds. What I can tell you, we’ve been steadily increasing our air temperature since the 1960s. Precipitation is increasing as well. We know that’s happening. When I look at the lake temperature, I’ve got a data set that goes back to 1995. All the Great Lakes are increasing. Since the ‘70s they’ve been steadily tracking upwards. And when I compare that to air temperatures, surface water temperatures are increasing anywhere from two to three times faster than the air temperature.” And what does that do to the ecosystem of the lakes? “It fundamentally changes it,” says Anderson. “We don’t exactly have a solution for this, it’s huge,” says Natasha Akiwenzie. “We have a few points we’re focusing on. We’re hoping to monitor the Bay. We want to get science equipment like data loggers and temperature loggers and weather stations so we can actually monitor what’s going on. The other thing we’re working on is youth engagement and community engagement. So we want to get people out and listening to the stories and learning from the fishers and learning about the environment. And also just doing activities outside: picking up trash on the shoreline, or planting trees. We just received a grant from the Ontario Arts Council to do a pottery workshop; again working with something from the environment to understand it a little bit more. We’re doing a lot of little activities, hoping to do bigger ones.” The Alliance also hired two youths to interview elders and fishermen to collect stories and pictures for an upcoming book and documentary. All with the purpose of sharing the larger story of the warming Great Lakes and the real-life implications of climate change. “Climate change is affecting us,” says Natasha. “I’ve heard people say that climate change isn’t affecting us yet and it drives me insane.” Learn more about the Bagida-Waad Alliance on their Facebook page. “Our number of fishermen has dropped significantly because we can’t make a living off what we’re catching. What we’re noticing is the water is warming up…”