I moved my household to the Îles-de-la-Madeleine for a while. My view of the sea is breathtaking. The wind is shy for a month of June and although my mornings are devoted to work, I save all my afternoons for bike rides or on the beach. The air here is so pure. It is as if the crystalline of the sea were transformed in the air into a multitude of particles that we breathe. Like a major cleaning of the air in cities. Looks new.
Posted at 9:00 a.m.
In Bassin, where I am, there are, like everywhere else on the islands, many beaches. The one where I walk is four kilometers long before the sea takes over for a moment, then another beach takes shape in front of me in the distance.
Last Tuesday, I counted 23 dead birds on my way. Gannets especially, but also little penguins. On this second beach on the other side of the gully, there are dozens of birds, cormorants I am told.
They don’t seem touched by the lurking death. I have never seen so many. A conventum of cormorants that emits a raspy sound, much like the sound of a bassoon, but a few octaves lower.
I let myself think that they gathered together and shouted like this to cheat death.
It’s been more than a month since the first dead birds were seen on the banks. Two birds, then four, then a dozen and more.
Last Friday afternoon, on the beach, a Madelinot stopped us and asked us what we thought of the birds.
Of course, all of this is sad. He continued his speech by saying that, as always, the government was washing its hands of it in an aberrant way, that the Magdalen Islands, the sea, is too far from Quebec, and he concluded by saying that maybe Prince Edward Island would better understand what is going on and take action.
He looked so distressed that I didn’t dare add to it and tell him how touched I really was by what I saw on the shore, nor that I had in mind to write about it. .
Although I come from Quebec and I register as a tourist in this magnificent archipelago, I also question myself and I tell myself that something should be done.
But investigations have been made and the conclusions are clear. Avian flu is the cause of all these deaths.
What can the government do in such cases other than to collect the carcasses and issue recommendations for use? The cleaning operation is however limited to 60 kilometers of beaches, the busiest, while the archipelago has 300. Then, the birds do not only die on the beaches, they also collapse on the land.
And there, the company that the Ministry of the Environment has mandated has not received the mandate to pick them up. The Madelinots are worried, with good reason. They live on this territory with their children, their animals. What are the dangers for both?
I’m almost there in my writing when a lobster fisherman tells me that I will also have to talk about the “school” of fish. Indeed, a few weeks ago, hundreds, even a thousand smelts were found dead in the sea not far from here, according to him.
Another, located further on the island, confirms it to me. Then, almost simultaneously, nearly 100,000 gaspereaux were found belly-floating in Nova Scotia, followed by others in Prince Edward Island. Isolated incidents? It seems. The causes would have been determined.
Still, the fishermen, those who know the sea as much as Neptune, are on the lookout. If the causes can be explained, a whiff of “something is happening” floats in the offshore air.
I am not a biologist, nor a fisherwoman, but I know that nature is fragile. Signs do not lie.
Yesterday there was a gannet on the beach, alive this time. He had buried his whole head in his plumage, curled up his legs. Only his body could be seen.
As I approached, it barely moved its wings. This morning he was dead. I understood that he had hidden to die, in peace.
I could give you the metaphor of the ostrich that buries its head in the sand.
There are sometimes images that remain and that we cannot bury.