It’s still dark on Nova Scotia’s South Shore, the water indistinguishable from the land below, as we peer down at it from a Canadian Air Force CC-130 Hercules. The white lights shining below us look to be the familiar glow of porch lights, streetlights, and car headlights as seen from the air, but a closer look reveals these lights bobbing in the dark, moving in erratic, rhythmic patterns against the black expanse of the Atlantic.
This is Dumping Day, the annual start of the lobster season, and for the fleet of captains and crews venturing out, it is the most anticipated—and the most perilous—day of the year. From our vantage point thousands of feet above, the Watch is in progress: the coordinated, high-stakes efforts to monitor, manage, and hopefully prevent the kind of tragedy that turns a celebration of industry into a national mourning.