Great Lakes fishery documentary documents the changes and challenges facing the industry

A new documentary available free on YouTube celebrates a Great Lakes industry that the filmmaker says often flies under the radar, even among those who live on the lakes.

Last Boat on the Lake features people involved in the Great Lakes commercial fishery, North America's largest freshwater commercial fishing fleet.

Dalhousie University researcher, Hannah Harrison, began researching the fishery after moving to Canada from Alaska to do post-doctoral studies at the University of Guelph.

She said she made the film because she realized many Ontarians don't know about the industry.

"I had this experience of visiting Port Dover," said Harrison, who is an assistant professor in Dalhousie's Marine Affairs Program.

"And I remember listening to people eating fish nearby and they're commenting, 'Oh, I wonder where they get their fish from.' And I thought that was so interesting because you could almost see from where we were sitting where the small boat harbour was where all of these commercial boats were parked."

Changing ecosystem

The film takes viewers to several ports along the lakes, including Port Dover and the Saugeen Ojibwe Nation, and speaks to fishers about the changing nature of the industry and of the Great Lakes ecosystem.

It touches on everything from the growth of invasive species such as zebra mussels to the effects of stocking the lakes with non-native species and the impact of shoreline development on habitat and access to water.

The fishers also speak of the challenges facing those who hope to get into the industry, and their concerns about its future.

And Indigenous fishers discuss the racism and lack of understanding they face from non-Indigenous fishers when it comes to their treaty rights.

"There are a lot of individuals out there that as soon as they see a net go up in Colpoy's Bay are out there damaging the nets, cutting off the net markers, and basically calling the Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry because they don't want nets within the bay because that is where they like to go and fish for their introduced salmon," Saugeen fisher Ryan Lauzon says in the documentary.

"We've had, certainly, vessels that were cut free … off their moorings.  … All those kinds of things happen on a regular basis."

Harrison grew up in a fishing family in Alaska, and was always interested in the social side of fisheries, she said.

Fisheries in Alaska, she said, were riddled with conflict between recreational anglers, commercial fishers and people who were described as 'personal use fishers.'

She realized that a lot of the problems facing fisheries had nothing to do with the fish, she added.

So when she moved to Canada in 2019 , she became excited by the prospect of studying the Great Lakes commercial fishery, something she knew almost nothing about.

And she was surprised, she said, to discover that almost no one had done any previous social science research on it.

Harrison decided to turn her research into a film, rather than simply writing more scientific papers, in order to help ordinary Ontarians learn more about the fishery.

"Though certainly we'll do that as well," she said of the paper-writing.

The film closes with a series of actions people can take to support the Great Lakes fishery, including supporting public ownership of boat ramps, docks and other fishing infrastructure and educating themselves about Indigenous people's fishing rights.