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Lifelines: Canada's East Coast Fisheries

Cross Currents
500 Generations of Aboriginal Fishing 
in Atlantic Canada
 
Sea Mammals
Cross Currents: 
500 Generations of Aboriginal Fishing in Atlantic Canada

 

Atlantic Canada's waters and coastlines offer highly diverse habitats for marine mammals, including large and small species of whales, porpoises and seals. Most importantly, the harp seal migrates southward on ice packs from the Arctic, arriving in the Gulf of St. Lawrence in vast numbers during the fall. Noticeably absent from today's waters is the Atlantic walrus, which had been hunted to extinction by the early nineteenth century. The most populous walrus areas of Atlantic Canada once lay in three places: the Magdalene Islands, Sable Island, and the southern coast of Newfoundland. Aboriginal peoples developed specialized technologies and strategies for hunting sea mammals, like the walrus, in order to exploit this invaluable source of food and raw materials.


Pinnipeds

Pinnipeds of Atlantic Canada
Illustration by Frédéric Back
(Source: Claude Villeneuve and Frédéric Back, Le fleuve aux grandes eaux (Les éditions Québec / Amérique inc. - Société Radio-Canada: 1995))


Cetaceans

Cetaceans of Atlantic Canada
Illustration by Frédéric Back
(Source: Claude Villeneuve and Frédéric Back, Le fleuve aux grandes eaux (Les éditions Québec / Amérique inc. - Société Radio-Canada: 1995))



HUNTING SEA MAMMALS | BEOTHUK CANOE


Design

 

 
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