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No Trespassing. Private Road. No Parking.
These are the signs that are more and more frequently seen along Nova Scotia’s coastline. As Canadians access the shore for recreation, science, or even just to take in the natural beauty of the coast, they are being increasingly met with physical barriers to the beach, few options to park or use public transportation to get to the coast, and problems with litter and marine debris in the areas they can access.
Private property ownership dominates Nova Scotia’s coastline, and while the public wants access, property owners also want to enjoy privacy and avoid the degradation of their land. In other words, in a province known as Canada’s Ocean Playground, people are increasingly asking – a playground for who?
In Nova Scotia, we have a right to be on the coastline below the high water mark, but no protected right to get there. But should we? Right of Way is a podcast that explores the issue of coastal access in Nova Scotia (and Canada more broadly) through the stories of property owners, communities, scientists, policy makers, environmental activists, surfers, hikers, and more. Join us weekly for new episodes.
Right of Way is recorded, produced, and hosted by Nicolas Winkler (www.nicolaswinkler.com) and Hannah Harrison (www.hannahharrison.ca). Funding for this podcast is generously provided by the Royal Canadian Geographic Society (www.rcgs.org) and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (www.sshrc-crsh.gc.ca). Podcast artwork by Laura Bonga (@bongas.art). Sound editing by Podstarter (www.podstarter.io). Learn more by visiting www.coastalaccessproject.com.
Hannah Harrison 0:03
This podcast was recorded in Mi'kma'ki, the ancestral and unceded territory of the Mi'kmaq People. We are all treaty people.
Nicolas Winkler 0:15
Nova Scotia is coastline is organized in a complex patchwork of jurisdictions that dictate coastal ownership and decision making. Within that patchwork coastal access are places and infrastructure that allow the public to get to and use the coastal zone has been a growing issue of contention over the past several decades.
Hannah Harrison 0:37
There is no one body or institution that deals with access in our province no hotline to call when a coastal access problem arises. As a result, communities and property owners are trying to settle disputes over coastal access in the courts. A process that is often slow, expensive and ineffective in dealing with the very human values that underlie the reasons people want to use the coast in the first place.
Nicolas Winkler 1:00
Most of us can probably think of those reasons pretty quickly to enjoy the view to go for a walk or swim, go fishing or maybe even launch but in this episode, we're going to hear from two people who acts as the coast for reasons you might not expect. Science and trash.
Hannah Harrison 1:21
Welcome to right of way, a podcast about how Nova Scotians get to their coast or don't. I'm your co host Hannah Harrison and I work as a researcher at Dalhousie University.
Nicolas Winkler 1:31
I'm your co host Nicolas Winkler. I'm an aquanaught and I work as a Marine Conservation photographer and filmmaker. This podcast is about Nova Scotia, Canada's ocean playground, or more specifically about how Nova Scotians and visitors to our province access their coastline, or try to, for all of the many reasons that people want to get to the sea.
Hannah Harrison 2:02
We're going to start first with a visit to Dalhousie University located in Nova Scotia capital of Halifax.
Kristina Boerder 2:09
My name is Dr. Kristina Boerder. I'm a research scientist in the future of marine ecosystems lab at Dalhousie University, and most of my work focuses on studying coastal marine ecosystems mainly eelgrass, around Nova Scotia.
I'm the Lead Scientist for a new initiative called the Community eelgrass Restoration Initiative or CERI for short. And we aim to better understand that your grass meadows and their role in Nova Scotia and how they are connected to communities, how they're doing overall and the climate change and various other stressors, and how we can really rebuild community connection to these very little known ecosystems. So we go out and we study the eelgrass. We look at how it's doing its health and the role in climate change. And then ultimately, we have work with communities to restore and replant some of the eel grass meadows that we have lost.
Eel grass is an essential plant in Nova Scotia is marine ecosystems. But for many beachgoers, its presence often goes unnoticed. Yeah, most people actually don't know that your grass even exists here, or what specifically is so aggressive is one out of about 72 species of sea grasses. And these are true plants. That's the only group of plants that made it into the ocean. So it's we always emphasize and explain that they are not algae. That is the first thing that people find very fascinating that they actually flower on the water and form seeds like plants on land. eelgrass, like muddy or sandy sediments has habitats and are usually not found in rocky areas.
Nicolas Winkler 3:42
Kristina's team works with eelgrass to understand their density, the habitats they occupy what other forms of life live in the eelgrass meadows, and importantly, how they work as carbon sinks, an important topic in the era of climate change.
Kristina Boerder 3:55
While there's no such thing as a real typical day, but of course, the work mostly happens in the summer season when the water isn't too cold. And usually we pick a site that is accessible that we can get in very easily and that it's safe for us to do research and we go in by land or by boat.
And then we start to look at where's the grass? What's the dimensions of the meadow. And really, depending on the side and what objectives we have, we either take sometimes sediment cores to look at carbon stored in either grass, or we do further measurements to look at what species we can find and the overall biodiversity at the site.
Hannah Harrison 4:42
But before Christina can do this work, she and her team must access the shoreline in the right locations where eelgrass are likely to be present. And this poses some significant challenges.
Kristina Boerder 4:54
One big part of our work is to find the sites so there is no official map of where eelgrass is. So a lot of it is by hearsay that we talk to people or ask people to contact us. And they tell us where the eelgrass is. And from there on we look at maps and try to decide how we get there. And with such a high number of shoreline being in private hands, access is always a big issue for us. So we have to determine is there public access nearby that we can safely use and then get to our site, such as like a public wharf or a beach or the like? Or can we contact land owners and ask if we can get access across their property to get to the shoreline and then access the site from there.
Nicolas Winkler 5:46
Even careful planning of Christina's research sites based on strong relationships with property owners can be interrupted by changing coastal ownership.
Kristina Boerder 5:54
So there's certainly been challenges around that. We have tried to exercise so this was in the wider Halifax Regional Municipality, where we knew there's a good eelgrass bed, and it's a private beach and the property had changed hands recently, we had good, good connections with the previous land owners, they were very happy for us to be there, we were always chatting with them and just keeping them up to date. And also letting them know when we get there, then the property sold and the new owners put down not only put up a fence completely around the property, but also they were not amenable to anybody accessing it. So because this is one of our study sites, and we of course, can just like drop a study site halfway through because we've invested time and energy and we want to have a time series through the years, we had to go in by boat instead. And then really make sure that we stay below the high tide line in order to really access that site. And yeah, we were not able to talk to the landowners at all about it. But of course, it doesn't feel good for us to be at a property where we're might not be welcome.
So I hope we can get a chance to talk to them at some point, but so far, I haven't been able to make contact.
Hannah Harrison 7:17
Boat access is less desirable for Christina's team than being able to walk to their research sites, in part because coastal access via boat launch or Wharf is also a challenge in our province.
Simply put, there aren't a lot of options for safe, reliable and affordable public launches, not to mention the additional cost and skills required to trailer launch and operate watercraft in the shallows. If you imagine a research project that already has a lot of people and moving parts to it, adding those extra elements creates extra logistical challenges and costs that would be avoided if land based access were available.
Kristina Boerder 7:55
it makes a vast difference for us. So one would be like we park we walk in, we might just like have waders, for example, if the metal is very shallow, and then we can do our work and usually wrap up within like two or three hours. If we have to have a boat, we have to have a bigger car we have to with a trailer hitch we have to trailer the boat and we have to have a boat launch or like a public ramp somewhere we have to bring the motor fuel, we have to go through all the safety issues connected with motoring with students also on board. We don't want to anchor in the metals just because anchoring can disturb the metal. So usually we have to have a shoreline access also, of course to rest to construct and build the gear and these kinds of things. So we usually rely on having a solid solid piece of land to do this, we usually like to have like Sandy or rocky beaches. And if we can't get to these areas, safely, this like expands a research day that would be two or three hours to a whole day at least and just makes it much more expensive and complicated to do to really complete our work.
Nicolas Winkler 9:11
In addition to creating extra cost and safety considerations, access problems can also impact the scientific design process. models that are too difficult to access add to the list of limitations that inform which eelgrass Meadows Christina and her team can study.
Kristina Boerder 7:55
It's definitely another factor that we have to consider. So one thing the first thing we start with really is is this metal suitable. And the biggest thing of course, is the the natural circumstance like what does it look like? Is it safe? Is it just the meadow big enough and it's close to shore? Is it too swampy or not? So these kind of questions already narrowed down the amount of sites that we can visit. But this basically adds another bottleneck to it. If we have a public access. These are definitely the Goldstar sites. We rank the sites by a range of criteria from ecological to like these access issues. And if we have public access that's usually like immediately catapults them to the top.
Hannah Harrison 9:29
With access being of such importance to their work, Christina and her team must invest significant time and energy in locating safe and appropriate access for their research. Often, this means working with local coastal property owners.
Kristina Boerder 10:26
So if we can't access it through a public access point of some sort, we have to find out who the landowners are, we have to go there, we have to knock on doors and find people and then explain. And it really varies widely what the reception is, I have to say, for Nova Scotia. So far, we overwhelmingly had good experience with people being interested and very, very supportive, in some cases, like to the degree that they really enjoy having us there. And yeah, showcasing their property to a certain degree. But some some cases, people are just like cautious around having any kind of official research happening at their property, even if it's not technically their property, we're just using it for access. So mixed reactions overall.
Nicolas Winkler 11:23
While working with property owners to access field sites, something Christina and her team invest a lot of time and energy into that can be local politics around coastline use, or personal preferences of property owners that are often harder to foresee.
Kristina Boerder 11:35
I think a common concern is that they don't want it to be officially known that their property is involved with that, for sometimes reasons that they are fearing that it will cause disturbance in their communities. Whereas others are very, very proud of it. And, yeah, talk to the neighbors extensively about the work or invite the neighbors over. And we always love to have like as many people as possible come along and take a look and ask questions. But some people just want this to stay private for various reasons. So if that is the wish of the land owners, of course, we respect that. So we will not identify any property unless they say they can do that. Or we can do that or want that specifically. But yeah, often, there is conflict around environmental issues and viewpoints, where they are worried that by supporting our very much conservation minded work, that this might not resonate well with some neighbors.
Hannah Harrison 12:41
As a researcher who also does a lot of field work, one thing that comes to my mind is how the amount of time and effort Christina invest to gain coastal access, rubs up against the sometimes breakneck pace of research and publishing expectations. In research, there's a saying of publish or perish, which puts tremendous pressure on researchers to conduct research as efficiently and cost effectively as possible so they can publish their results. But relationship building and working meaningfully with communities doesn't work that way. And it shouldn't work that way. And so Christina's work is really interesting, and how she is able to balance the access needs of her teams and demands of her field work, while also building meaningful relationships with property owners.
Kristina Boerder 13:22
Oh, absolutely. It slows us down quite a bit to the degree that we hire had to hire a person to do this work like me as a researcher. I love to interact with people, but it just got too much. And we try to foster relationships that are lasting that are personal, we usually plan the team around the fact that someone from the team can go up and just keep people posted and like to the house and sit down with them and chat about what we're doing. We send Christmas cards, we stay in touch and that really makes the work so much more personal and enjoyable at the same time.
Hannah Harrison 14:03
Research is a critical part of how we learn about the world we live in an in an era of climate change. research focused on ways to store carbon is essential to the future wellbeing of all life on Earth. Many research projects are funded through provincial or federal agencies that in part, get their funding through tax dollars and other government revenue sources. When research is made more difficult or slower due to problems like access, those costs ultimately fall to all of us.
Nicolas Winkler 14:46
Lobster bands, parts of lobster traps, tampon applicators, a broken Plastic Pail from a child's beach set. Miscellaneous debris are not uncommon in Nova Scotia and beaches. For some these items are artifacts of an important industry or occasional mislaid items from a day at the beach. But marine debris poses serious hazards to human and environmental health. And the scale of the problem is much larger than what we see on an average day on the beach. For one Nova Scotian in particular, marine debris is a problem everyone should be concerned about.
Angela Riley 15:18
My name is Angela Riley, I run Scotia onshore shoreline cleanup project. I was born and raised in Nova Scotia by fishermen and fisherwoman. In a fishing family, I've always been connected to the oceans I've sailed, I write songs about the ocean and now I run Scotia and shores. We are a business that is dedicated to cleaning the shorelines of Nova Scotia. In less than four years, we've been part of over 1 million pounds of debris removal and over 60,000 pounds in 2024 Already.
Nicolas Winkler 15:55
Angela founded Scotian shores in 2020 at a time where like most people, she was spending a lot of time at home.
Angela Riley 16:01
So it was August 2020 pandemic. And we were not allowed to go anywhere else except our neighborhood, which included the beach for me. So I took my two sons who were were quite young at that point. And I was in actually quite a bad eco depression because I had just had my second son and realize just how bad the future looks. It's quite scary when you think about climate change. So as mom, I needed to show them that we could do something. And the beach cleanups are kind of where it started. So I'm not really super sciency and researchy, and all the data papery. Great that people are, but I'm really good at teamwork. I'm really good at event planning, motivating people. And that sort of thing was some of the training I had growing up. So I decided to just start pulling people together. To do shoreline cleanups, it's a really easy way to become aware of the kind of directness that the Ocean and Earth are in but easy way to get involved and feel like you're actually doing something. And it helped me not feel so alone.
It's kind of partially helping me with eco depression, showing people it can be done. And then also just trying to help other people that are feeling alone and like well, what do I do about this climate stuff.
Hannah Harrison 17:24
Angela runs Scotian Shores as a business rather than a nonprofit, in part because she finds less bureaucratic red tape around private businesses as compared to NGOs. That also in part because it allows her to be more nimble and responding to debris removal needs as they arise. But even as a small business model, her Debris Removal work depends heavily on volunteers.
Angela Riley 17:44
So yes, we are a business but 95% of what we do is volunteer I do not get paid well. Enough for food on my table. And I work hard at that. Most of our success we call the ocean warriors are the the singular or small groups going out and doing their own little cleanups and reporting back so that they're part of the big picture so anybody can get involved. And sometimes coastal access is a huge part. And that's why we go micro because if you're in a group of one or two people usually can get into some other places that you normally can't.
Nicolas Winkler 18:26
physically getting into sites in a way that is safe and allows for the removal of heavy trash or debris is one of Angeles biggest challenges. In essence, there are two ways to get to the coast, by land or by sea.
While taking a boat to get to a beach full of red lobster traps may seem like a simple task, finding suitable lunches that are also affordable is a challenge.
Angela Riley 18:47
Yeah, a lot of them are private. So like I can think of a whole bunch of places like we have a Zodiac but to get it into the water, I really have to look at it because I'm like, Well, do we have to pay to use that boat launch? Can I just hop over the fence or not the fence but hop over the rock wall here and throw my boat in the water? No. Don't do that.
They're privately owned. So like I live in eastern passage, and there is all I can think of 10 boat slips, I have access to one of them if I pay for it. Access is a major barrier in terms of physically getting to sites to clean up marine debris and litter. The regulatory access such as permits or permissions are also a significant challenge for Scotian shores. It depends on the type of access you're talking about. Like sometimes it's I can see that there's 20 traps sitting on that person's property but I can't get to them unless I hike two kilometers around because that person doesn't want us to go over the property because someone in the past is wrecked it or they just are protected of their property. That's just the way it is. So that kind of access is hard. That happens at crows neck down down in Barrington. Crows neck is a really good example of coastal access.
So it's a species at risk place. It's critical habitat. It is also half owned by Nova Scotia nature trust. And it also has another access that's privately owned, but all blocked off because they don't want anybody there. So because this place is so protected and so hard to access, there's 200 lobster traps sitting on it. For us to get it we have to hike the whole way. We could take a boat, but it's hard to get to. And in order to actually do the cleanup on this piece of land, I have to get permission from Nova Scotia nature trust, I have to do a species at risk permit which requires me to get scientists in on it, I have to do a DNR - Department of Natural Resources permit. There's a lot of permits for this one beach and we can't clean unless we do all that so all this garbage just sits there.
Hannah Harrison 20:52
This issue of getting the right permits to even be able to do a beach cleanup is particularly challenging due to the jurisdictional challenges of the coastal zone. As we heard in episode one parts of the coast are controlled by the province, other parts by the federal government. And anything above the ordinary high watermark can be a combination of municipal, private or perhaps even NGO owned for many people we spoke to for this podcast, the issue of who controls access and who can give permission or offer accurate information about access is one of the greatest frustrations of coastal users and property owners.
Angela Riley 21:25
The biggest thing I get out of our government and different levels and there's lots that are doing great things but the biggest answer I get - in not these words - "It's not my sandbox." coastal areas is a gray area because tides.
Is it high tide? Is it low tide? Is it this person's job? Is it DNR? Is it ECC is it Fisheries and Oceans? Is it Nova Scotian aquaculture? Is it this so the circles that I go through and I just laugh at them now when I call them like I'm calling you because they told me to call you but you're probably going to tell me to call this person, right? And they're like, Oh, well, no, because you're telling us we're going to do that now. So I'm getting to the point now where I have like it written down that I'm gonna have to go here and then here and then here and then they're gonna send me back to here. And then they're just gonna be like, we don't know. So by that time, we're already done the cleanup.
So there are times where we just were like, yeah, it's gonna get caught up in there and they're not gonna know. But it's we're now three years in so it's getting better.
Nicolas Winkler 22:47
For maritimers, finding lobster traps on the beach or other types of marine debris may not be a big deal. At first glance, fishing is a tough job in the industry sometimes loses gear in rough weather. What if something accidentally falls overboard. But fishing gear isn't the only type of debris, Styrofoam tires and increasingly plastics and microplastics can be found all over Nova Scotia coastlines. And they pose a new type of Access Challenge access to healthy and safe environments for animals and humans.
Angela Riley 23:15
lobster traps specifically are coated in PVC plastic, which is horrible. Like it's worse plastic out there. They have net inside of them if the net was cut. Awesome, but it's still it does entrap we have found birds I have found lots of birds in dead in these we've actually found a baby sheep. And I know that's really horrible. But for the listener out there saying why is the lobster trap bad. There's little baby sheep and one of them and it broke my heart. And it's also like dangerous because they're metal. So as they break down, they're actually stabby. So like the cape Island. I would tell other people don't take your kids here because they're going to get tetanus because there was 3000 traps on the shorelines and everywhere you walk there is traps sticking out. So sometimes one trap isn't bad, like the wood traps that you see in the pictures. It's probably going to break down. Yes, there's a bit of netting, but when you get like nobody cleaning the mop and there's traps and traps, like just hundreds of them then it's just it's really dangerous. And then the other plastics, they break down into microplastics and we're eating them. We focus on macro plastics, which will lessen the microplastics but a lot of animals are eating this stuff like I know whales are washing ashore due to entanglement but look at what's in their stomach and we can save them all from entanglement but they're all going to be eaten this plastic. So sadly, the fishing industry in Nova Scotia attributes to a lot of the debris that we have the rope to it just breaks down into little tiny fibers and it's not just animals but boat propellers. You see a lot of stuff getting tangled in the netting and the rope so it's it's really expensive.
Angela tries to work with property owners to gain access to beaches that have marine debris. But this process comes with a cost. Having to go to every individual property owner is actually super time consuming. And I don't mind I love having a yarn with the people. But sometimes those yarns can go for an hour, which is great because I get to really know these people, and they might tell me some results that it's washed ashore. But if you think about it, it's finding out who the property owner is how to contact them. Sometimes it's going to their door knocking.
Are they home? Nope. Gotta try again. Are they home? No. Gotta try again. Sometimes it's oh, this person lives in United States. So we have to like, do all kinds of different ways to get a hold of them. So there's the time it takes actually contact them. And then the time it takes to, as I say, win their trust. And then it's the follow up afterwards, as well with the landowners. I gotta get them to write me an official letter sometimes just so that if anything does come up, I have that proof to cover my butt. And then the follow up after is this is what we took. Did we do any damage to your property? If we did, I'm so sorry. How can we fix this next time? So it's a lot of that.
And even with those efforts to work with individual property owners, not every encounter goes smoothly. There are politics involved with what it means to clean beaches in Nova Scotia. I see both sides. I can get why some people get upset, but I've been screamed at Get off my property. That's my lobster trap. And I'm like, but then you better believe I'm coming back in the nighttime ninja cleaning. But no. There's and with us at Scotia shores because we've are down in the Bay of Fundy and southwest Nova. And because 80% of the boat is fishing debris. When we started this, the messages I used to get, you're making us look bad. And I'm like, no, no, no, no, I come from a fishing family. Honestly, Nova Scotia were built on the fishing industry. You don't you do not fight them. And I don't want to. But no, I've had threats. Definitely. I have one guy that tells me a story. He removed a few traps off the beach. But he had three fishers come block his way with a track and tell him you better put that down boy or you're not leaving. So sometimes there's that because people like there's illegal fishing that goes on as well. So you gotta be careful. Oh, oops, I didn't realize that that was an illegal trap. It can get violent. And I've also seen the other side where the property owners are trying to protect their property because I see what people do with the dog poop bags. Oh my gosh, I wouldn't want people on my property either. If they're going to be leaving all that and taking ATVs and ripping it all up. So I can see both sides.
With us, we have to do a lot of pre work to be like, No, this is how we're going to mitigate any damage. How would you prefer us to access you know, you don't want us to use an ATV, then we're going to do it by foot. Dang it. But you know, we've got that's what we're gonna do to build your trust.
Nicolas Winkler 28:08
This tension between property owners who want to protect their property from disrespectful or irresponsible users and groups like Scotian shores who need access to the coastline to remove debris is something you'll hear again in future episodes of this podcast.
Hannah Harrison 28:22
For us, it raises this issue of a coastal ethic. What responsibilities do we have as coastal users to avoid trashing our coastlines? Especially when we are crossing privately owned properties to get there? For Angela, this ethic extends to a broader question of how we as Nova Scotians as coastal people treat our coastlines and what we expect from government to make sure regulation and support is in place to keep them clean, safe and healthy for generations to come.
Angela Riley 28:51
I don't think we're taking very good care of our shores. To be honest, we're taking care of the pretty ones, the provincial parks, the places where people like to go be tourists, and where the government's like, oh, people are going to see that so we better clean it up. But I find the places that aren't visited as much are not well taken care of, or they turned a blind eye because like in eastern passage, this eroding dump there is a kilometer of eroding dump and nobody will do anything. So I'm just every like week going and picking up what I can that's coming out of the shoreline tires, cars, differentials full of oil, copper wire, which woohoo, that's money, but like burnt plastic. I have like five pound rocks of burnt plastic chips right now they're not rocks. It's burnt plastic. Like pyroplastic. It's, it's horrifying. So there's that side of it that I'm like, Oh my gosh, why are we letting it be like this, but then there's the other side of Scotian shores where I see hundreds of people 1000s Every day, go out and clean up because we care. So it's like, I have all these volunteers that are working so hard to take good care and stuff.
And then we have a government that's not really supporting us. I'm the middle person that's trying to keep them motivated and it's really hard sometimes especially when fisheries like fingers crossed they're gonna say the Ghost Gear Fund is back but like when Fisheries and Oceans doesn't renew the Ghost gear grant, which is like the only funding for this, like how do you think all the volunteers feel so even the people that are trying to take care or becoming demotivated, and then you hear things like the coastal protection act is slashed. So it's just like we can care, But it just seems like the higher ups don't seem to care or they just don't have the resources to care.
Hannah Harrison 30:35
The last thing we talked about with Angela is this tension around changing demographics in Nova Scotia. Changing property ownership along the coastlines is changing access to those coastlines as well. But we've also heard concerns about how these changing demographics impact coastal ethics and issues like trash dumping. For Angela, the question of who lives in Nova Scotia, and who is using the coastline comes with an interesting change of perspective.
Angela Riley 31:01
I don't care where you're from, and honestly, that come from ways. I'm really happy you guys are coming because all of all of you, all of you the comment is, why is it so dirty here? Thank you. Thank you, person from Ontario who has so many frickin people live in there. You're saying our ditches are dirty? They are. I lived in the Yukon for a while they don't have a lot of facilities up there. And it's so clean. Like so, To me all the come from aways. I love it. I'm like That's right. Tell people how dirty because it is. Nova Scotia, And I'm sorry, But it does seem like there seems to be a lack of respect for like dumping. And it's not just people that are coming from a weight dumping and I can prove that million times over. You should see the old dumps that I found before people could fly here and move all their stuff here like we wreck this Providence before anybody from away came. And if you really want to go way back in it, colonization Thank you very much. A lot of it I'll be honest, the roadside. Yeah, it's our fault. But in the Bay of Fundy and southwest Nova and stuff. We're actually finding a lot of stuffs coming out from the States, Maine, USA, thank you very much. And I can prove that with lobster trap tags, because it has their name written all over it and their fishing gear is marked differently and their buoys are done differently and the fishing numbers so we can prove sometimes upwards of 60% of what we're picking up in the Bay of Fundy is coming from the States.
Hannah Harrison 32:34
The impacts on our coasts are many, and they come from a broad range of sources from individual actions, historic decisions now impacted by modern social and environmental change, and even from those with whom we share international borders, but it doesn't matter if someone has lived here for generations or arrived last year. coastal access is an issue that requires attention from all who called Nova Scotia home.
Nicolas Winkler 33:03
Thanks for listening, thanks to our guest, Dr. Kristina Boerder and Angela Riley.
Scotian Shores is one of several organizations that is helping to clean and take care of Nova Scotians coastlines so that all Nova Scotians can safely enjoy this natural treasure. But getting to that coastline and being able to safely and reliably Holloway trash and marine debris is an ongoing challenge as securing funding for this work. The patchwork of jurisdictional control of the coasts and the difficulty organizations like Scotians shores face, and getting timely and accurate information for permission to clean is a major inefficiency in our system, and one that seems to have no clear, immediate answer. These stories from Kristina and Angela have us asking, How can coastal access be made more reliable and more easily understood? And how can we lessen the red tape on groups like Scotian shores? Should it be the responsibility and in some cases burden of individual property owners to facilitate access for every researcher or environmental group? Who needs to get to the coast? Or is a better system possible? And what responsibilities do we coastal users have in respecting our environment and each other by keeping coastal lands and waters clean to begin with?
Next time on Right of Way:
Various Guests 34:15
when the waves get good as a surfer, your brain kind of turns off and everything's just to get out to the surf. So there's no stopping surfers to get into the surf. Back then I probably did not think twice about whose land that was on a respected business was bringing me there. So I had no reason to assume that I shouldn't be there. But now that I've lived here for a while and I understand kind of the nuance of these issues, and I understand that most of our coastline is privately owned, and our license plate says Nova Scotia Canada's ocean playground, and yet the infrastructure to support any of that is so frustratingly lacking. It doesn't make any sense to me. How how it can be promoted so strongly, and yet supported so poorly.
Nicolas Winkler 35:00
This series will continue to release one episode a week throughout the summer of 2024. The views expressed in this podcast is solely those of our guests and do not necessarily represent the views of the hosts their affiliates are the financial supporters of this podcast. Remember, things may have changed by the time you hear this.
Hannah Harrison 35:16
Right of Way supported by the Royal Canadian Geographic Society and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Additional support from the Marine Affairs Program at Dalhousie University sound editing by pod starter cover art by Laura Bonga. Do you have a coastal access story you'd like to share? Visit our website at www.coastalaccessproject.com to get in touch. With your permission we may use your feedback in the last episode of this series.
Looking for more information, you can find any x or documents referenced in this episode in the show notes. You can find Scotian shores at www.Scotianshores.com And on Facebook, Instagram and Tiktok. You can also email them at Scotianshores@gmail.com You can call Scotian shores at 902-471-4073. You can also find their marine debris art and crafts at the Alderney market in Dartmouth Nova Scotia.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai