St. John’s, Newfoundland: Puffins, Cod, Cod Tongues, and Farthest East
I went to Newfoundland see the puffins as much as anything so let’s dive right in. There is a lot of other wildlife, but I had to see the puffins, so signed onto O’Brien’s Bay Bulls Boat Tour. There are never guarantees what you’ll see, but this was puffin nesting season and puffins were pretty much guaranteed unless they’d all flown off during the night. And we were guaranteed an iceberg, too, because one that had been floating south grounded itself in the bay. “Guaranteed to see an iceberg,” said the boat’s guide as we watched kayakers heading out to view it. Sunny, chilly. Wearing all of my layers and a new knit hat I’d had to buy in St. John’s because I was freezing. Our safety demo done and we were off, passing the berg and an oil rig that had stopped at the entrance to Bay Bulls on its way elsewhere. It was monstrous.
Puffins Galore!
And were there puffins? Yes! There were puffins! Lots of them, thousands. The puffins were flying around or sitting in long turf outside the burrows that they dig too deep for a gull or other predator to reach in and snatch an egg or chick. They dig them two or three feet inward with those little webbed feet and cute colorfulPuffins bills. Burrows were spaced out all over Gull Island’s steep grassy slopes, like a hilly neighborhood. Puffins fly very fast and beat their wings so fast that they’re a blur. They are just oblong things in the air. “Flying potato,” said our guide. This was perfect. A nice day, an easy swell, a lot of birds.
Puffins, puffins everywhere
Along with the puffins, there were thousands of murres, or turrs if you prefer, standing crowded together on bare rocks where they lay their conical eggs. Because of its shape the egg rolls in a circle instead of plopping off into the ocean. A young man at my hotel told me his grandfather eats turrs. “It tastes awful,” he said, adding that old timers like to eat turr because it had once meant they wouldn’t starve. He also told me that there are only about 200 people left in his home town, “and they’re all older than you.” A young man acutely attuned to old timers, I’d say.
But back to birds. Black-legged kittiwakes were nesting on the rock faces. Not your average dumpster chicken, our guide said. These birds spend their lives at sea. Bald eagles nest in the area, and we saw an eagle fly-over scatter the adult murres nesting on the rocks. The adults all flew to the water leaving the eggs and chicks exposed. At that point the gulls had a feeding frenzy. It was a little depressing to watch but that’s real life nature. There were other sea birds also, which I won’t list, and a minke whale did a star turn but I was looking at something else. The captain turned to look for the whale but as the guide said, “that whale is 100 percent not interested in us.” And so it wasn’t.
A cod and its tongue
The cod fishery is central to the story of Newfoundland. A few years ago I read Cod; a biography of the fish that changed the world by Mark Kurlansky. The prologue opens in Petty Harbour, down a way from St. John’s, where I went one foggy, wet day. Cod fishing was the way of life, but in 1992 the Canadian government shut down the cod fishery that had collapsed from overfishing anyway. “The problem with the people in Petty Harbour, out there on the headlands of North America, is that they are on the wrong end of a 1,000-year fishing spree,” concludes Cod’s prologue.
I think everyone eats cod some time or other. I like cod. Not as easy to get any more. But cod tongues? I found out that cod tongues are a local favorite, mostly fried, but there are other ways to serve them. They might be a local favorite, but none of the places I ate had cod tongues on the menu. Or I skipped by that item. Cod tongues aren’t really tongues. As I understand it, the “tongue” is a bit of meat at the base of the tongue. And then there are cod cheeks, too, meat also found in the head. Two men who had grown up when the fishery was still Newfoundland’s only way of life told me that when they were little, cutting cod tongues was how they earned money. They’d get the fish heads, cut out the tongues and cheeks, and get paid by the piece.
The restrictions on fishing also limited seafood choices for restaurants, according to the June 2016 Westjet Magazine I thumbed through on the way home. But “just last year, officials relaxed the laws restricting direct wharf-to-restaurant sales.” So go, and enjoy the seafood offerings. Newfoundland has an abundance of creative chefs from what I’ve read, and I did eat well in St. John’s.
Cape Spear – Where Canada Begins or Ends
Another important place. This is the easternmost point in Canada and I had to be there. Newfoundland farthest eastI went via an excursion with two other people who I think had seen Cape Spear before. I alone got out of our van and walked the path to the edge of Canada through wind-blown drizzle, fog and cold. But then I thought “how North Atlantic” and enjoyed my moment staring out at the rocky edge of the nation. Even better, I thought this was the eastern tip of North America until I went on the O’Brien boat trip. Loyola O’Brien, one of the boat tour company founders (after the cod fishery shut down . . . ) told me Greenland is part of North American so I have to go there for farthest east. I was crushed. But Canada’s edge is pretty good!
Trip date: May-June 2016.
