In September 2022, post-tropical storm Fiona dumped up to 90 mm of rain in Prince Edward Island (PEI), bringing wind gusts up to 150 km an hour, high waves and flooding. Similar – and worse – activity happened across the Maritimes.
“Huge rafts of buoys that had broken loose and in a tangled mess were floating around,” said Peter Warris, executive director of Prince Edward Island Aquaculture Alliance. “We literally had whole mussel farms, oyster farms just swept away. Gears strewn over miles and miles and miles.”
One of the industry’s issues that Fiona exposed was the lack of affordable private insurance options for PEI’s growers, which motivated a new pilot project currently underway to rectify that situation. A combined effort amongst industry organizations, including the PEI Aquaculture Alliance and local insurers, with support from the provincial government – and hopefully, eventually, the federal government – the project aims to help aquaculture companies recover quicker from future storms and support a growing part of PEI’s economy.