Kristen Villebrun and Wendy Bush hoped they wouldn't have to pray for Chedoke Creek, but four years after they first raised alarm about the water's condition, they were part of an Indigenous full moon ceremony to do just that. About 50 people showed up near Princess Point on the dark and frigid Monday evening for the monthly ceremony, which was particularly special as it focused on Chedoke Creek. The body of water that runs into Cootes Paradise had about 24 billion litres of sewage and storm water runoff leak into it due to a gate being left open.
Changes to the flow of the Labrador Current along the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador to Nova Scotia are leading to sudden warmings or drops in the oxygen levels of the waters in several regions including the St. Lawrence Gulf and Estuary. This change has dire consequences for marine ecosystems and fisheries. To better predict what could happen in the future, researchers set out to answer the question: what controls the pathway of the Labrador Current?
Harmful algal blooms work by disrupting food webs, Dr Caron said. Creatures such as shellfish, anchovies and sardines consume the toxins before then being eaten by larger marine mammals. "They eat a meal of those highly toxic fish and then they become toxified themselves, and if they get enough of that material, it of course can kill them, which is happening now," he said.
As Nova Scotia nears completion of the long-awaited Coastal Protection Act, some advocates say there's a hidden part of coastal development that has been left out of the legislation. The Coastal Protection Act regulations will set out site-specific horizontal and vertical setbacks that dictate how close private property owners can build to the coast. But the act does not address setbacks for the septic systems and wells associated with those developments, which advocates worry could jeopardize the act's ability to safeguard the shoreline from the impacts of climate change.
