[View of Samantha Bois-Roy talking, outdoors, in front of old fishing traps, nets and ropes.]
Samantha Bois-Roy: My name is Samantha Bois-Roy. I work for the ACPG Coop; it’s been almost 5 years now. I’m the agent for fixed gear, in other words for those who fish with gillnets, traps and longlines.
[Background music, successive shots of rusty old fishing gear.]
So, we decided to initiate the ghost gear program to help clean up the oceans.
[Back to Samantha, then camera moves to the recovered gear.]
Because we know that a lot of gear is lost during the fishing seasons. And the ghost gear we’ve recovered, we have traps that are more than a few years old. We’ve also found trawls that were over 40 years old. There’s a lot of rope left on the bottom. A lot of gillnets, too, that were probably lost in storms and all that.
[Back to Samantha, music stops.]
Ultimately, our main goal is to clean up the Gulf a bit to enable a sustainable, responsible fishing. And, you know, we’re also thinking about future generations.
[Music resumes, more successive shots of old fishing gear.]
I’d say that in the Gulf right now, with the data we have, we have about a hundred thousand pieces of gear that were lost over all these years.
[Back to Samantha.]
So that’s why the ACPG project is really about acting in good faith. Our captains are also highly motivated to clean up the ocean floor. So we send them out to sea for 10 days with a grappling hook to recover as much gear as possible.
[Different views of a grapple on a wheel.]
The ACPG is also working to innovate their fishing techniques as well as their fishing gear.
[Shot of a fishing harbor, then of moored boats, and finally of a fishing net on the dock.]
So, we’re trying to computerize. We’re trying… It’s somewhat part of the ACPG dynamic. We craft, we do the research, and we execute.
[Close-up shot of the hands of a worker making a fishing net.]
They’re the 3 divisions we currently have.
[Shot of engineering prototypes in a corridor, then of Geneviève Myles talking, music stops.]
Geneviève Myles: So we’re interested in innovation whenever a captain has a challenge to meet or wants to implement a new technology on board his boat. Or one who faces labor or handling challenges…
[Shot of men unrolling a fishing net on a dock, music resumes softly.]
That’s when ACPG Innovation comes into play then works with the captain and the fishing company to propose a sustainable solution, a proposal that meets the captain’s needs, and that is adapted to his boat.
[Music intensifies, shot of a man in a boat cabin, then of boats moored at dock.]
Olivier Grenier: My name is Olivier Grenier. I work with Devocean.
[Shot of Olivier Grenier speaking, standing in front of buoys.]
Devocean, “Devocéan” in fact, in French. It started with a class where you had to think about some issues, and then you had to figure out some projects that could have an impact.
[Music stops.]
Improving fishing equipment to protect the environment and ecosystems. Traditional trap fishing, the trap is the crab cage, it’s a cage that is sent to the bottom of the sea. Then that cage, with a rope, is connected to a buoy floating on the surface. The problem we have is that all these ropes, which are linked between the trap at the bottom of the sea and the buoy above, create a labyrinth of ropes that the whales have to cross when they feed, when they migrate, and all that… So, the whales get entangled in these ropes.
[Close-up shot of the top of a boat, then of the sea in the fog.]
Instead of having the buoy floating above the sea in sight of the fishermen, we send it to the bottom of the sea.
[Back to Olivier.]
Then we wind the entire rope inside the buoy. The buoy, that’s what you can see here.
[Shot of six rectangular orange buoys laid one on top of the other on a pallet, then of a buoy on the deck of a boat, and back to Olivier showing one of the buoys.]
When the buoy receives the right signal from the boat, the arm is triggered.
[Shot of Olivier Grenier, triggering the arm of a buoy and then spinning a part inside the buoy.]
This releases the rope. The spool becomes free. And the buoy is only about fifty pounds. So that allows it to rise to the surface.
[Background music resumes.]
[Shot of a man pulling a buoy out of the water and onto the deck of a boat.]
We’re still at the prototype stage, and we have equipped around fifteen boats in the Gaspé region. We have 130 buoys in operation throughout Quebec. In this corrosive environment and under pressure, there are some major engineering challenges. Above all, we’re trying to build something light and inexpensive, so that fishermen won’t go broke buying our systems.
[Shot of the mechanical winding of a buoy rope on a boat.]
We’re grafting today’s solutions, today’s technology, onto what’s already being used.
[Shot of a man releasing a buoy and a fishing trap into the water, then of a buoy floating on the surface of the water.]
That’s it… we’re trying to provide better tools so that we can fish more responsibly.
[Exploramer logo.]
[Background music stops.]
