On a cloudy evening in early September, fisherman Darren Porter pulls an aluminum boat up to shore on Lake Pisiquid, a small body of water bordering the Nova Scotia community of Windsor. Two fish scientists aboard his boat hop out and begin dragging a seine net through the long grass poking out of the shallows, looking for juvenile fish.

For seven years, a monitoring team made up of the Mi’kmaw Conservation Group, Acadia University and Porter has been testing this site, along with others on the Avon and on an unobstructed tidal river across the bay, to establish the relative abundance of fish.

It’s a windless evening, and as the team brings the net to the beach to check its contents, the water mirrors the pastel sky above.

But Porter knows the situation on this lake is anything but calm.