“Things aren’t like they used to be. ” – A Year-End Message from your Fundy Baykeeper

I started working as a university summer student with the Conservation Council’s Fundy Baykeeper program in 2009. I didn’t know what to expect from the job, but I loved the water, and I was curious about what lay beneath the surface of this stunning tidal playground.

One day during that first summer, I was on the water with a small patrol team. We had stopped the boat to take a lunch break, letting the vessel drift quietly in the waves. As we sat there, a finback whale — the second-largest animal on Earth — swam directly beneath us. One moment, I was looking at its enormous snout just below the surface on one side of the boat while its massive back was still visible on the other. 

It took my breath away.

The Bay of Fundy is unlike any other place. Its tides— among the highest in the world—shape an ever-changing landscape. As someone who grew up in northern Ontario, it all felt magical — even finding a sand dollar shell or learning how tiny copepods, carried by the Labrador Current, fuel a marine ecosystem that once supported thriving populations of North Atlantic right whales.

But over time, I learned the Bay of Fundy, as majestic as it is, is also highly fragile.

Learning from Wabanaki friends and colleagues and talking to fishers, researchers and coastal communities, I heard the same story repeatedly: Things aren’t like they used to be. 

Waters once thriving with biodiversity beyond what we can now imagine have been stripped down. Fish populations, crucial to the ecosystem and the economy, have dwindled. Even the whales struggle as habitat loss, warming waters and shifting food sources push them to the brink.

These stories stayed with me. They became the reason I returned to the Conservation Council after university, determined to protect this place and the communities that depend on it. 

I was so fortunate to learn from some amazing predecessors, and since I started as a student, I’ve worked on some of the Bay of Fundy’s biggest challenges, like fighting illegal pesticide use on salmon farms, advocating for the restoration of vital fish habitats and so much more.

Now, as the Conservation Council’s director of marine conservation, I’ve learned two things through it all.

First, we can’t give up. When rivers reopen to migrating fish, when a whale surfaces in waters we feared they’d abandoned forever and when coastal communities come together to protect what they love, these moments remind me that hope is as much a part of this place as the tides themselves.

Second, none of this is possible without people like you.

Your support powers every win. It ensures we can keep working to restore what’s been lost and protect what remains. It’s the reason we can still dream of a future where whales thrive, rivers run free and the Bay of Fundy remains a wonder worth exploring.