Ballantyne's Cove Bluefin Tuna Interpretive Centre

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  It’s a surprise to many that a small fishing community like Ballantyne’s Cove, nestled along the shoreline of St. George’s Bay, is home to some of the world’s largest bluefin tuna. In fact, the largest tuna ever caught, weighing 1647 pounds, was landed at this wharf in the late 1970s, and avid fishing enthusiasts from as far away as New Zealand return every year to charter a fishing boat. The Bluefin Tuna Interpretive Centre is a tidy little building alongside the wharf. Open daily during the summer months, it’s a delightful storehouse of interesting facts and artifacts. Take, for example, its one-of-a-kind fishing chair, a complicated raised apparatus with padded arms and a neckrest. Few people know this, but the late Harold Ballantyne, one of the area’s most accomplished fishermen, created this unusual piece of nautical furniture from an old barbershop chair. And who could fail to be entertained by the background story of the antique cut glass prism lighthouse lamp made in France in the 1800s? (People will have to come to the cove for this anecdote.) Along with artifacts and maps that tell the story of the early days of the tuna fishery in St. George’s Bay is an excellent eight-minute video created by Peter Murphy featuring many of the people who are still earning a living from the sea. The Tuna Interpretive Centre is a little-known gem in an area known for its colourful history.
  By Ken Heaton, April 13, 2017

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