North Lake Harbour - North Lake, Prince Edward Island
Posted by: Bon Echo
N 46° 27.988 W 062° 04.190
20T E 571417 N 5146297
Commercial fishing port on Prince Edward Island
Waymark Code: WMZNJR
Location: Prince Edward Island, Canada
Date Posted: 12/08/2018
Views: 2
North Lake Harbour is managed by the Harbour Authority of North Lake (Fisheries and Oceans Canada - Small craft harbours) and is listed as a "Core fishing" harbour (
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The harbour is a popular place for charter deep sea fishing and a sign on one of the buildings proclaims it to the "Tuna Fishing Capital of the World". It is apparently also used for lobster fishing (based on piles of lobster traps near the buildings).
The following account tells a little about the early days of tuna fishing at North Lake:
"“The first tuna landed in North Lake Harbour in 1967. At that time bluefin tuna were called horse mackerel by the locals and were thought to be a nuisance fish as there was no market for them and they tore holes in the fishermen’s nets. Word of the bluefin tuna showing up off North Lake Harbour spread to the international sport fishing community. Soon after, a vibrant tuna charter fishery began with local boats taking out charters from places like Germany, South Africa and Australia. North Lake soon became known as one of the few places you could land a fish weighing over 1000 pounds and was coined the “Tuna Capital of the World” because so many records were broken here. This was significant because to belong to some of the more prestigious sport fishing clubs one had to land a fish weighing over a 1000 pounds. This was just the beginning of tuna fishing in Canada."
"In 1973, I landed the largest tuna of the year at 1017 pounds. Back then when we first landed tuna, we paid someone $10 to bury the fish after the trophy pictures were taken. Initially, there just wasn’t a market for them and the locals preferred the taste of other fish. However, a local fish buyer began freezing the fish and then sent them to Japan. He paid us $10 for the tuna, which to us was like $20 because it previously cost us $10 to bury it. We soon found out that in his first year of selling the tuna to Japan, he made a $1,000,000.00 off our fish with no rebate back to us. We never sold him any more tuna."
Source: brucestunacharters.com/our-history/ (
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