photos by Cindy Ross
narrow Saint-Louis
Lagoon.The wind has picked up to 35 knots so we stay put and call it an early day of paddling.Our evening trip out to the sandbar and the seals will have to wait until
tomorrow.Victor checks his weather radio numerous times a day to get the latest weather conditions and plan the best time to see the seals.“Wind is practically the only factor for cancelling trips,”Victor tells us.“If it’s blowing more than twenty knots it’s a small craft advisory and unless paddlers are very experienced, a trip won’t go.” We never paddle in more than five feet of
water and in the summer the water temper- ature hovers between seventy and ninety degrees. The most the tide changes in Kouchibouguac is four feet, unlike in the Bay of Fundy where tides fluctuate as much as forty
feet.Fog rarely forms on the lagoons so finding your way is nearly always possible with your naked eye. All these factors make Kouchibouguac a very comfortable and safe paddle for
families.Victor assures us that early morning is usually the best time to paddle, with less wind, little boat traffic and the seals undisturbed.
bring my children on kayak trips for many reasons.Every paddling experience opens another world of learning and the first in-camp activity is digging for soft-shell clams,which Victor secured a permit
for.The kids excitedly try their hand at it hoping to make a contri- bution to
supper.They crawl in the shallow water on all fours and shout with joy when they've found one. “The trick is to look for two air holes in the sand,”Victor informs
I
us.“You’ll find the clams about six inches underneath.” My 11-year- old daughter, Sierra,devises a way to plunge her index finger quick- ly into the hole and get a head start before the clam detects it is being harvested and starts to move away.
28 FALL2002 The Micmac First Nations people inhabited this area and fished
Soft-shell clam digging for dinner and learning how to handle jellyfish are some of the experi- ences in the kayaking world of learning.
these waters for 3,000
years.For over eight months of the year, they subsisted on four main types of food: shellfish, like these clams; marine mammals, like walruses and seals; bird eggs on the dunes; and fish, with the American Eel being their favourite. Only ten per- cent of the Micmac population survived the European
diseases.Two hundred years later, the families of those who survived the measles and small pox were forced to leave when Kouchibouguac became a national park. Big Cove Reserve on the Richibucto River, eight kilometres south of the park, is New Brunswick’s largest native reserve with 2500 resident Micmacs.
F L
or their next lesson, Victor shows the kids how to handle a jellyfish without
being
stung.Victor grabs the floating mass with his bare hand and flips it over into the palm of his other hand. “As long as you only touch it with this tough inner part of your
hand, you won’t get stung,” he tells them. He shows us where to insert our index finger so we can feel its harmless muscular mouth. He tells us some species of jellyfish in the Atlantic Maritime waters reach eight feet wide with thirty-metre long tentacles!
obster season just opened in New
Brunswick.As we paddled along the mainland this morning,we stopped to watch the lob-
stermen unload their catch while the women sized the crawling grey-green crustaceans.Lobstering is still one of the main sources of economy in this Acadian region.One hundred and fifty families use the wharf in the park for the two short months the lobsters are in season and each boat can have up to 250 traps in them. The traps are much more sophisticated than the phantom traps
from years ago. Storms can render lobster traps lost at sea by mov- ing them far from their original
spots.New, coated metal traps have
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