NewsBreak26 With Vicki Hogarth: 4 Critically Endangered North Atlantic Right Whales Spotted In Bay Of Fundy For First Time In 2023

Whale watchers in Southwest New Brunswick had the rare experience of seeing the critically endangered North Atlantic Right Whale this past week near Eastern Wolf Island. Four North Atlantic right whales were spotted Saturday in the Bay of Fundy — the first documented sighting of the species in the bay this year.

Danielle Dion, a biologist with Quoddy Link Marine in St. Andrews, spotted the four whales on Saturday while leading a whale-watching tour. She immediately notified the Canadian Whale Institute and has seen one of the whales every day since Saturday.

"The estimated population right now is about 340 individuals, so we had more than 1% of the worldwide population within about a mile and a half radius around the boat," said Dion. "In the past decade, Right whales have pretty much abandoned the Bay of Fundy as a critical feeding habitat. Even though this is a protected area for them, the food that they rely upon is just not found here in the quantities that they need. And our sightings on Saturday were the first sightings of Right whales in the Bay of Fundy in 2023. So it's a very important sighting and every single sighting of a critically endangered species to report that is very important."

Dion says individual Right Whales are easy to identify because of unique scarring.

"Right whales are identified by the callosities, so the roughened patches of skin that are on the front of their head, and unfortunately, a lot of them are identified by scarring that's on their tail stalks and that's from entanglement in fishing gear," said Dion. "With over 85% of the population entangled at least once, it's a huge issue."

The Charlotte County Fall Fair took place on Saturday and Sunday with thousands of visitors descending on Ganong Nature Park to celebrate rural life in Southwest New Brunswick. From exciting games and hayrides to market vendors and live music, the two-day celebration of autumn was one of the most highly-attended fairs in the event's history with approximately 1,700 people at the fair on just the first day.

Close to 300 people met at the Point in Saint Andrews on Saturday evening for a smudging ceremony and silent walk to mark Truth and Reconciliation Day. Many of the participants wore orange in recognition of residential school survivors and in memory of the victims who never came home. One of the event organizers, Saint Andrews Deputy Mayor Kate Akagi who is a member of the Peskotomuhkati Nation, said she was pleased to see so many locals come out to the event as well as a few residential school survivors and their family members.

"Today is about remembering the residential school survivors and the ones that didn't come home," said Akagi. "A few years ago, they found over 200 graves. And so we wanted to be able to have a gathering that talks about that, and speaks about why we're wearing an orange shirt, why this has happened, why the government has given the day all of these things to talk about it in a way that people can understand. And it's nice to see young people to very old people coming out."

The Honourable Kathy Bockus, the Minister Responsible for Seniors, was in St. Andrews on Thursday to announce over $224,000 in funding from the province for the Charlotte County Seniors Resource Centre located in the Saint Andrews Wellness Centre and opening this October. The mandate of the centre is to help Charlotte County seniors access important information and services to ultimately help seniors stay in their own homes longer. 

Finally, Abby, Alistair and Lila of Vincent Massey Elementary School were selected from a letter writing contest to try out the roles of Mayor and FireChief of Saint Andrews for a day. Look out for a special kids edition of Your Town Matters where they share about their experiences of a day in the life of running the Town of Saint Andrews.