Search And Rescue

The start of lobster season is the most dangerous day in one of Canada’s most dangerous industries. Air Force and Coast Guard teams put their own lives on the line to watch over the melee of 1,500 vessels holding 5,000 crew.

- Quentin Casey

It’s still dark on Nova Scotia’s South Shore, the water indistinguishable from the land when viewed from a Canadian Air Force CC-130 Hercules. Seen from the air, the white lights shining below look to be the familiar glow of porch lights, street lights and cars. But as the sun rises above the horizon, it’s clear these white specks are actually floodlights streaming from hundreds of fishing boats heading out to sea from their ports.

“This is completely insane,” says flight commander Major Gregory Boone, who’s seated next to Captain Joseph Dobson at the controls. “It’s all the way to the horizon.”

The team on board the Hercules this morning is watching close for an emergency. There are six in the cockpit, and the rest of the team—including two search-and-rescue technicians, a couple civilian volunteer spotters and a military photographer—is gathered back in the plane’s hold. They’re perfectly at ease, even as the plane banks in stomach-churning motion left and right over and over again.

It’s November 28, 2017, and today is the first day of lobster season—or “dumping day,” the most dangerous day in one of Canada’s most dangerous industries. On the water this morning are roughly 1,500 lobster boats with more than 5,000 crew, from ports spanning near Halifax, all the way around the tip of Nova Scotia’s South Shore, and up to Digby in the Bay of Fundy. These are lobster fishing areas 33 and 34, the busiest in Canada, and the boats, typically with a crew of four, are headed out to drop traps for the areas’ lucrative six-month season, which runs from the last Monday in November until May 31. During that period in 2016- 2017, licence holders in areas 33 and 34 landed 30,703 tonnes of lobster, worth half a billion dollars. That’s the second-largest landed value on record.