Bunny the Crab Fisherman, and Gannets in the Fog

Sunday, July 21, 2013

It was still foggy when we got up Sunday morning. Greg checked the tire, put some more air in it and after breakfast we left for St. Bride's to look for Bunny. The two miles to the town were foggy and we could see a few fog obscured houses. At the far end of town we came across the Atlantica Restaurant, but after knocking on two doors on houses to the right of the restaurant, we realized he meant for us to pass it and it would be the next house on the right. Greg knocked on the door and talked to his wife, Darlene and soon Bunny came out.

Bunny showing us how crab pots work

He directed Greg to back onto a concrete pad in front of his garage and the two of them set about jacking up the RV and getting the tire off so it could be patched. Bunny confirmed that it had a second hole in it. While he worked on it he asked if we were from Newfoundland. I informed him we were from Maryland. During the next two hours we learned quite a bit about Bunny. He had a brogue, but not quite as strong as our waitress from the night before. He is forty-one and has lived his whole life in St Bride's, except for when he bought a house in St Johns so his wife could go to college. He hated living in the city, so he would drive in to the city to pick her up on weekends and return her at the end of the weekend.



I asked him when his family came to Newfoundland. He looked at me like he hadn't been asked that before or ever thought about it. He said that his grandfather was a fisherman, but his father worked construction, and he always thought he would do the same. One day he went out with his friend's father on his fishing boat, and from then on he realized he just wanted to fish. He worked for many years for him, but when his father-in-law was ready to get out of the business, he gave him his boat and quotas. So now he works for himself. His primary money maker is Atlantic Snow Crab. We checked out the crab traps piled next to the garage. He showed us how they worked and the bait cups that he fills with squid. In the winter he goes “up to Nova Scotia” to fish for lobster. He used to participate in the whelk fishery, but couldn't make enough to afford the fuel for his boat, and give the 10% required to each crew member.



He now has three boats, after recently purchasing the third for $1.2 million. He needed a larger boat for going out to the Grand Banks over 200 miles out. The boat he was using was 50', and they would stay out for long periods. Now, with the snow crab fishery in the nearby bays, he doesn't need to go out so much. He figures he is a millionaire now, as his friend said, you are one if you, “either have a million, or owe a million!”



Bunny is very strong, with big muscled arms and shoulders from hauling in the crab traps. He has a great sense of humor, and it was obvious how much he loves his home village and his life. We aren't so sure his wife feels the same. She hates the cold, and they get about 10' of snow a winter. She didn't come out to say hello, but she had two children to look after, and Greg said it smelled like she was busy cooking Sunday dinner. Another man from the village stopped to see what was going on and said he was on his way to his mother's for a jiggs dinner. “Can't beat a jiggs dinner”, the traditional salted beef and vegetable meal.



After the flat was fixed and the tire back on and the jacks down, we talked awhile about his new snow mobile. He and his friends travel to the western part of Newfoundland in the winter to use them. The snow is deeper and more powdery there. The climate is milder in the south, and the snow can get melted and hard packed. His father bought him his first snow mobile when he was six, and he's had four new ones since then. The current one cost him $17,000, and was quite fancy. He admitted it cost a lot, but, “You only live once!”, and this one will last him a long time. He also has two ATVs and he commented that there are probably more of them on Newfoundland than cars. He has a son and a daughter. Their bikes were in the garage too, as well a a very small ATV. The garage was very clean, uncluttered, organized, and well equipped. He had everything that was needed to help us out including a great air compressor to fill the tire back up.



For the summer he is helping to build a house in a nearby town. He expects to make $8-10,000 for his time. The fisheries run at certain times, and with quotas, so there are down times when there is nothing to fish. The fishermen pay a small amount into Employment Insurance (EI) during the year, then in the winter they get paid $1,000 every two weeks by the government.



The fog was still heavy when we finished, and like a good fisherman Bunny checked the weather. He said, the fog was supposed to leave around midnight when the wind changed direction from the south to the west, and “Tomorrow should be a screecher!” In other words, sunny, warm and beautiful! We asked him how long the fog stays and he said a few years ago it stayed 29 days before the wind shifted! The other interesting aspect about his dialect was that most inanimate objects seemed to be referred to by her, she, or fella'. Boats have traditionally been female, but it seemed the snow mobile was too. The tire was the “fella' “that didn't want to come off at first.



Bunny took two hours of his time on a Sunday morning to plug our tire and talk to us about his life. We have been so impressed by the friendliness and the helpfulness of the Newfoundlander people. When we thanked Bunny and tried to give him some payment for his time, he just pushed the money back into Greg's shirt pocket and laughed. “No, you keep it! I always try to do things for other people because you never know when you'll need it yourself! Tomorrow’s going to be a screecher, so why don't you go back to the campground and go see the birds tomorrow. I've only been there once, but the bird's are really something, you can get really close.” He and Greg shook hands and he gave me an arm around the shoulder and we drove off back towards the campground.

We decided to drive the 13 km into the St Mary's Ecological Reserve and see if it would be worth it to make the hike out to Bird Rock in the fog. If the air held in the tire, we would spend the night back at the campground. If not we would drive north to another campground to be near a tire center in Placentia when they opened the next day. We found the parking lot, but couldn't see where to go. There seemed to be a boardwalk and a sign about the trail so we started walking on that. Suddenly the visitor center came looming out of the fog in front of us. After a quick tour of the exhibits, we ventured out on the 1.4 km trail to Bird Rock.

The road to the Preserve

Well trained Gannet.

The Reserve has the largest and most accessible gannet nesting colony anywhere. The gannets are the seabirds, a type of booby, that we watched diving into the water from our campsite at Meat Cove. On the cliffs below them are nests of Kittiwakes and Murres. We knew that the observation area is only fifty feet from them, but the fog was so thick we didn't know if we could see them. We walked along a grassy path in the Barrens towards the sea cliffs. The trail was marked with florescent orange stakes. We kept having to watch our step as there were piles of “poo” everywhere. Just about the time that Greg guessed that there must be sheep grazing on the cliff side meadows we came across them near the path.

Slugs like fog

Fierce animals

After about a mile we began to hear the birds, smell them and finally see the rocky promontory we needed to walk on to observe them. We looked down on Bird Rock, 50' away and 200' feet above the surf, which we could hear, but not see. Note from Greg – visibility seemed to range from 200 feet to less than 30 feet as billows of wet fog blew past. The top was covered with nesting gannets, with many babies peering around their mothers and out of the nests. Many other birds were swooping and soaring on the strong updraft from below and landing on the cliffs nearby. The kittiwakes were farther down on the cliffs and the murres beneath them. The kittiwakes look like gulls, but the murres look a bit like small flying penguins rapidly beating their wings, with their feet and legs splayed apart and looking like they were out of control and ready to crash into the cliff side nests. A cartoon bubble over their heads would say, “Oh no, I'm not going to make it! “

Gannets, Kittiwakes, and Murres on the mainland

Gannets only on Bird Rock

Mom and chick

Fencing pair

The birds were somewhat obscured by the fog, but still visible enough to be impressive by their sheer numbers and proximity. The most unusual sight was the young man with the long dreadlocks playing his banjo. It was hard to hear him above the bird noise! We didn't stay very long, because we had to keep wiping fog off our glasses in order to see them. I'm sure that if we had seen the birds on a clear day we would have seen thousands more on the nearby cliffs. But, the ones we saw were worth all the tire troubles to get there!

Still foggy on the way back

The air was holding in the tire so we checked back in the nearby campground and spent the rest of the day relaxing around camp. It had been a stressful two days worrying about the rig, but proof to us that God travels with us and had a plan for us to be enriched by getting to know some wonderful Newfoundlanders. I love that we are having the time to begin to know a place and its people in ways that are impossible with a strict schedule that just hits the tourist highlights. Newfoundland is proving to be far more than we expected!



Tomorrow we will leave the Avalon Peninsula and begin to head west again toward the western coast. But, first we will stop part way across Newfoundland and see the aviation museum in Gander and go north to Twillingate and Iceberg Alley. We are considering a ferry trip as well to Fogo Island.