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THIS&That Foghorns may go silently F
orget about paddling to the bleat of the foghorn on Vancouver Island’s West
Coast.The Canadian Coast Guard has pro- posed retiring 15 of B.C.’s 21 foghorns. “Foghorns are clearly an outgoing aid,”
said Terry Weber, superintendent of aids to navigation for the Canadian Coast Guard. “They are being retired all over the United States and Canada, and even on the East Coast which gets a lot more fog than we do.”
The primary motivation is the expense of maintaining the horns.Weber said they cost anywhere from $15,000 to $30,000 to fix. John Duncan, Canadian Alliance MP for
Vancouver Island North, said the proposal is simply a symptom of funding cuts to the Coast Guard.“The Canadian Coast Guard is underfunded. They are chopping whatever can be.” Recreational boaters like sea kayak- ers are most at risk when the foghorns are gone, Duncan said. Twelve of the fifteen horns slated to be
shut down are at lighthouses. Included are ones in popular B.C. sea kayaking areas like Nootka Sound, Clayoquot Sound, Cape Scott and Barkley Sound. Foghorns can be useful when fog rolls in
unexpectedly, but Weber said a prudent mariner should be prepared to navigate without them:
“Foghorns are a very imprecise means of
navigating.They are inaccurate and not reli- able. In thick fog sound moves around and is refracted making it hard to pinpoint where it is coming from. Recreational boaters say they need foghorns, but foghorns weren’t put in for pleasure craft boaters.”Weber said that anyone boating on the West Coast should carry navigational equipment like GPS and know how to use it. Kayak guide instructor Jamie Boulding
agrees. He directs Vancouver Island’s Strathcona Park Lodge, which runs sea kayak tours in Nootka Sound. Boulding said he wouldn’t be on the water if he had to use a foghorn to navigate.“As a kayaker I hope I’m never in a situation where I am listening for a foghorn,” he said.“I shouldn’t be out in weather when my navigation ability is a con- cern.”
The Coast Guard used 20 years of weath- er and shipping data along with anecdotal evidence and stakeholder meetings to decide which horns to
cut.The 15 foghorns would be shut down over the next year, leaving only six foghorns on the BC coast. The end of November, 2002,was the end date for public input and a final decision about the proposed cuts was to be made mid-January, shortly after this magazine went to press.
“Some people made
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10 Spring 2003
strong arguments for keeping the foghorns,”Weber said. “But most could only say they found the sound com-
forting.They were hard pressed to say they used it.”
—Ryan Stuart
photo Mike Mitchell, Canadian Coast Guard
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