Elver ProjectCommunity Report

Resource Council

Gespe’gewaq Mi’gmaq

i Gespe'gewaq Mi'gmaq Resource Council

Acknowledgements

The Gespe’gewaq Mi’gmaq Resource Council would like to thank the Aboriginal Funds for Species at Risk funding program for their con-tributions.

We would also like to thank Eel River Bar, Listuguj, and Pabineau First Nations for their ongoing support. For those who joined us in our workshop information sessions, you provided us with insight about the im-portance of eels in our communities. This confirmed our belief that we must continue to share our stories, and to continue supporting those who are sharing their skills and knowledge with our youth.

Our youth are filled with ambitions and talents and are so eager to hear our language. Their desire to learn our traditional ways encourages us to seek their participa-tion in all that we do. Thank you to all the youth who demonstrated curiosity and enthusiasm while listening to our presentations and helping us conduct our field work. You are our future decision makers, and because of that, we feel privileged to have worked with you over the summer.

To our elders, we thank you for insights, understand-ings, stories, and values. We are continually guided by your wisdom.

From all of us at GMRC,

Wela’liog.

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Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ................................................................................................... ii

Gespe'gewaq Mi'gmaq Resource Council .......................................................1

Introduction ...............................................................................................................1

What Do Ga't Look Like? ........................................................................................3

Mi'gmaq Relationship With Ga't .........................................................................6

Fishing ..............................................................................................................6

Ga't As Food ...................................................................................................6

Ga't As Medicine ...........................................................................................7

Ga't for Tools and Accessories .................................................................7

Ga't During Ceremony ...............................................................................7

Ga't Behavior and Adaptation .............................................................................8

Presence of Elvers in the Restigouche, Eel River,

And Nepisiguit Estuaries .......................................................................................9

Table .................................................................................................................9

Project Successes......................................................................................................12

Learning from other Mi'gmaq Communities .....................................12

Building Community Capacity ................................................................14

Community Engagement and Communication ...............................14

Community Workshops ....................................................................... 14

Youth ....................................................................................................... 14

Photonovel ...............................................................................................15

Future Work ................................................................................................................15

1 Gespe'gewaq Mi'gmaq Resource Council

GMRCIn the fall of 2006, the First Nation communities of Eel River Bar, Listuguj, and Pabineau came together to form the Gespe’gewaq Mi’gmaq Resource Council Inc. (GMRC). GMRC’s purpose is to support sustain-able resource management and help with the recovery, maintenance and development of the resources on be-half of its member communities.

This began a journey that brought the communities together to improve social and economic conditions and awareness and communication in the areas of aquatic and natural resource management.

As Mi’gmaq, our connection to Mother Earth remains essential to our very existence. It is because of this special relationship that the Gespe’gewaq Mi’gmaq Resource Council exists and continues to pursue trad-itional resource management processes.

IntroductionFor thousands of years, the Gespe’gewa’gi Mi’gmaq have lived in tune with the land. Today, we continue to share relations with many aspects of the environment.

These relations can be seen through our diet, our tools, our clothing, and our ceremonies. One particular rela-tion of interest is with eel, a once abundant traditional food. Over the years, many traditional foods have re-mained prominent in our diet; however, we have been made aware that there has been a decline in the num-ber of community members who fish eel, or as known in Mi’gmaq, ga’t. The reasons for this are varied, but when speaking with community members, their main reasons for the decline was attributed to environmental

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concerns, to changes in diet, and to the fishing tradition not being passed down. We believe that by bringing back our relationship with ga’t, not only will we enhance our well-being, but we can also help enhance the ga’t population.

It is this history, relationship, and health concern for the eel that the GMRC took the lead to develop the project “Estimating Relative Abundance of Juvenile American Eel (Elvers) in Gespe’gewa’gi”. By estimating the num-ber of juvenile eels traveling to the region and exam-ining the Mi’gmaq relationship with eel, we can draw knowledge from various resource users and research-ers which will help to reinvigorate a Mi’gmaq way of living in a modern society while helping to rebuild a valuable resource for ourselves.

What do ga’t look like?Ga’t are long, narrow, and can grow to almost 5 feet long. Older ga’t are usually dark brown or greenish, with yellowish-white bellies. If you’ve ever encountered an eel, you would have noticed that they are also cov-ered with a thick mucous coating that they use to help protect themselves.

Ga’t are unique because although their life begins in salt water, they

spend most of their lives in fresh water, and return to the sea to

breed to start the cycle all over again.

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Their life cycle consists of 7 stages:

1. Eggs2. Leptocephalus3. Glass eel4. Elver5. Yellow eel 6. Silver eel7. Spawning

They emerge from their egg in the Sargasso Sea as leptocephalus and begin to drift in the ocean currents resembling very thin-like transparent ribbons. It can take about a year be-fore these tiny eel larvae reach the coast of Mi’gma’gi where they transi-tion from glass eels into what we have been busy monitoring in the summer, elvers.

The elvers that we encountered entering the fresh-water in Eel River Bar and Pabineau were all about 10 cm’s long. Most of these elvers would be making their way upstream into rivers and smaller streams but some also stay in bays and mouths of rivers where the water is brackish (part salt/part fresh). It will be at least three years before they mature into adulthood, living up to 20 years in fresh water before they return to the Sargasso Sea.

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Mi’gmaq Relationship with ga’tThere is no question that ga’t was an extremely import-ant being for our people, taking care of us both spiritu-ally and physically. It continues to amaze me how re-sourceful our ancestors were. One would hardly think just by looking at an eel that it contributed so much to our lives. But it’s true, our ancestors, parents, and grandparents all knew very well the value of our rela-tionship with ga’t.

Fishing

What we learned from our elders was that ga’t was fished and enjoyed all year round. Fishermen used a few different tools but the most common, as described to us by an elder, was the use of spears. There were two different types of spears, he explained, a winter one and a summer one. You could tell which one was which by the number of spikes that it had. During the summer, when you could see the eel swimming free-ly in the water, he would use a spear that had 2 to 3 spikes that would be used for more accurate spearing. During the winter, he would use a spear with multiple spikes that were placed more closely together. This, he said, was because in the winter, ga’t are hiding within the mud and he would need multiple spikes to make sure he could capture and haul the eel out of the mud and back up through the ice.

Ga’t as food

The elder pleasantly recalls his mom preparing the eel in chunks and having it baked as well as boiled in a stew. It was a meal that brought the family together after a day of playing outdoors he said.

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Ga’t as medicine

We also learned that g’at was an important source of medicine. Ever sprain your ankle or have to bandage your wrist? Well, it was once a common practice to bind sprains and other injuries. Eel skin was also used re-duce swelling. The eel skin would be wrapped around a joint, like a knee, and as it shrank it would help heal the injury. We also recently learned at a conference that oil that is left from cooking eel was once used as eardrops to help with earaches.

G’at for tools and accessories

In addition to food and medicine, eel and eel skin was used for many other purposes. For example, a piece of eel skin was often used to tie hair, and because of its durability and tightening ability, it was often used to bind sleds, moccasins, clothing, etc.

Ga’t during ceremony

G’at was also a part of ceremony to give thanks, as described below:

When darkness has settled, food is put out into the night preferably on an old stump or near a tree and offered to the spirits. In days gone by, eel skins and fish heads were offered. An elder would lead the family to a stump, give thanks for surviving thus far and ask for additional as-sistance until spring’ (Marshall 1997).

“

source: Paqtnkek Fish and Wildlife Commission, 2002

Community Report

Ga’t behaviour and adaptation Ga’t is a very mysterious fish. To this day, we are amazed at its capabilities and astonishing antics. In the water, as they move upstream, they often have to navigate around obstacles; climbing over rocks, dams, and even waterfalls. In Eel River Bar, we were told that the elvers could sometimes be seen climbing up the fish passage of the dam. And in Pabineau, we were told that eels could be seen swimming up the Pabineau Falls.

Our elders have been observing ga’t for the majority of their lives and have learned that they are most active at night, making this the best time to go eel fishing. Dur-ing the day, they said they can be found laying buried in mud or gravel. They also hide under logs or boulders, below undercut banks, or in dense vegetation.

We are often asked what eels eat. This is a rather dif-ficult question to answer as eel are not picky eaters. Their diet includes a variety of small fish, shrimps, crayfish, aquatic insect larvae, snails, mussels, aquatic worms, frogs, toads, and salamanders. Ga’t will also eat decaying matter that fall into the water.

Ga’t are also adaptable in and out of the water. There have been incidences in the lab where eels were seen jumping straight up out of a bucket and even escaping from a tightly wound bag. The fact that they have the ability to absorb oxygen through their skins to breathe allows them to survive out of water for several hours.

source: Paqtnkek Fish and Wildlife Commission, 2002

Gespe'gewaq Mi'gmaq Resource Council9

Presence of elvers in the Restigouche, Eel River, and Nepisiguit estuaries

Understanding our relationship with ga’t, its lifecycle, and its habitat needs will ultimately lay the groundwork for future work directed at protecting and enhancing ga’t and all it provides for us.

This is the first year that an opportunity to investigate elvers (juvenile eel) was available for our communities. As such, the results we find will be used as a starting point, with the expectation to conduct future monitoring work in the coming years.

We began making elver traps in May and June, and checked our first trap on July 6th, 2009. We were very excited when we saw our first elver in Eel River Bar! From that day on, we caught a total of 42 elvers throughout the summer. It was quite the experience checking traps, anticipating how many elvers we would catch that day.

We chose the best sites possible, combining recom-mendations from our elders and fishers as well as sci-entific information found from other research papers. Because there was such a variety of habitat prefer-ence, we tried a few different habitats; some in slow moving waters, some in fast moving waters, some in salty and others in fresh waters.

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Elvers pH (avg.) D.O. (avg.)Salinity (ppt)

Temp. (avg.)

Eel River Bar 29 8.36 8.11 mg/L 0.45 20.0 C

Pabineau 13 7.79 9.85 mg/L 0.0 19.8 C

Listuguj 0 8.6 11.15 mg/L 0.1 11.9 C

Presence of elvers in the Restigouche, Eel River, and Pabineau water systems.

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Twenty-nine (29) were found in the Eel River Bar area and 13 were found in Pabineau. No elvers were found at Listuguj. We also noticed that the elvers found in Pabineau were much larger and stronger compared to the elvers found in Eel River Bar.

It is difficult to conclude the reasons why elvers were present in some rivers and not others. Some conditions we will look at in the future is whether water temper-ature, available oxygen, and pH of the water play a role in habitat preference. We look forward to observing the biological and physical conditions that influence elver survival and distribution in our fresh water systems.

A 2004 study by Peter W. Sorensen, conducted at the University of Rhode Island’s Graduate School of Oceanography, looked at substances that attracted elvers in freshwater systems. The researchers tested the elvers’ responses to different plants, animals, and inanimate objects such as rock collected from a Rhode Island (U.S.A.) brook with a fairly large elver run.

Many items were attractive, and several were repul-sive, suggesting that elvers are receptive to a variety of odors. The odor of decaying leaves was highly at-tractive as were odors of the surfaces of aquatic plants, submerged stones, and other migrating fish. Because leaves only became attractive when combined with stream water, microorganisms responsible for decom-position are thought to be a valuable attractant in the freshwater ecosystem. It was suggested that their odor could serve as a possible index of environmental suit-ability for migrating eels.

In the marine water system, we learned that some researchers believe that a possible weakening of the Gulf Stream interfered with larval transport, causing declines in elver abundance in the entire Gulf of St. Lawrence region.

Elvers pH (avg.) D.O. (avg.)Salinity (ppt)

Temp. (avg.)

Eel River Bar 29 8.36 8.11 mg/L 0.45 20.0 C

Pabineau 13 7.79 9.85 mg/L 0.0 19.8 C

Listuguj 0 8.6 11.15 mg/L 0.1 11.9 C

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We would like to look into this further and to bring the results back to the community to get your thoughts, theories, and understandings of what makes certain rivers and streams more attractive for migrating elvers. Your knowledge is essential in helping to bring back our traditions, and to continue a sustainable relation-ship with the lands resources.

Project SuccessesThere are many factors that contributed to the success of the project. GMRC is proud to recognize that our activities, resources and support were based on the strengths, skills and abilities of our people and as well as from other Mi’gmaq organizations. All those involved took effective action and played leading roles in the de-velopment of this work.

Learning from other Mi’gmaq organizations

GMRC’s Environmental Manager and Research Asso-ciate traveled to the Unama’ki Institute of Natural Re-sources in Eskasoni, Nova Scotia to receive training on how to monitor elvers.

The training allowed the team to get hands-on experi-ence and to learn about what to expect in the field. They learned quite a bit about how to build traps, how and where to place them, how to handle elvers, and what habitat conditions were most favourable.

We hope to continue this great relationship so that we can continue to exchange valuable information about ga’t and other resources.

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Building Community Capacity

We also had the privilege of working with 3 Listuguj youth who worked directly with the project and who acted as responsible stewards of the environment. They included Daniel Mitchel, Samson Barnaby, and Misty Barnaby. Their volunteer and support made the project that much stronger.

Community Engagement and Communication

Our direction is continually guided by the desires of you; our community members. By learning what you know, and listening to your desires, our products and service will continually improve to meet your needs. We take pride in listening, learning, and responding.

Community workshops

The community workshops and information sessions allowed us to inform you about the elver research pro-ject and to hear your stories about ga’t.

The presentations provided technical information on ga’t including: characteristics, terminology, where they are found, how far they travel, and life history. Then came an opportunity to learn why GMRC was studying elvers, including the goals and objectives of the pro-ject, what kind of data collection we conducted, as well as what kind of information the community wished to share.

Youth

GMRC had the opportunity to spend time with students from LMDC’s ECO program. The students went into the field and had the opportunity to visit one of the elver project sites at Eel River Bar, and get a hands-on ex-perience. They were shown how to collect data such as; pH, temperature, dissolved oxygen, and depth.

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The students also measured and observed the elvers. On November 4, and December 2, 2009, students also came from the Alaqsite’w Gitpu School to learn more about GMRC. We showed the students a short intro-duction video on GMRC and then did a short presenta-tion on what research projects GMRC is doing, includ-ing the elver monitoring project.

Photonovel

During the early stages of the project Janine Metallic, a PhD candidate in Educational Studies at McGill, was asked to share some of her knowledge on research methods relating to Indigenous ways of knowing. One of the ideas she presented to the staff was the use of a photonovel as a unique way of telling stories and shar-ing information. Photonovels are like comic books, but pictures of real people in real settings are used along with caption bubbles and text.

While the AGS students were here, they received a sneak peak of the elver photonovel, and have been sharing it with their families, giving it positive reviews, and getting their seal of approval.

Future work Our future work consists of continuing to build an in-ventory of migrating elvers, and expanding our under-standing of ga’t by looking into its dietary habits, its relationship with other species, and its relationship with the Mi’gmaq way of life.

This comprehensive approach will help build the foun-dation for sustainable resource management process-es for ga’t that is also relevant to our values and per-spectives as Mi’gmaq.

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Such an approach recognizes that all ecosystems are interdependent, and that changes to one ecosystem can impact another.

We look forward to more work involving our traditional foods and traditional ways of learning.

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