My name is David Boyd and I'm 75. My wife and I own and run the Prime Berth Twillingate Fishery & Heritage Centre on the Twillingate Islands in Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada. I grew up in the nearby fishing village of Tizzard's Harbour, fishing cod traps with my father. I was a teacher before deciding in 1995 to work in the fishing trade full-time.
I have different activities at different times of the year. From May to July, for example, I wake up at around six in the morning to go and check my lobster traps. I set about 120 traps, at the same place where I set them as a child, off the coast of Tizzard's Harbour. I might check 60 traps in a day and catch 40 or 50 lobsters. I'm finding now that the lobster population is increasing because, as the ocean is warming, the lobsters are migrating even further north than here.
As well as running the centre, I'm also a commercial fisherman and a Coast Guard-certified fishing skipper and tour boat captain. I run fishing and boating tours, taking people out to see the icebergs that often move along the Main Tickle Channel. Or we explore the rugged coastline, watching whales and birds. Over the years, we've had thousands of visitors from all over the world.
After I've checked the lobster traps, I go to the Prime Berth Centre, where my wife, Christine, usually has a group of tourists waiting for me. We might have a coach with, say, 45 people, visiting from California. Christine often gives them warm clothes and caps with earflaps because it can be cold out on the open waters.
Anybody can be a tour boat captain when there are whales or icebergs, but on days when there are none, you have to be a talker - and, fortunately, I am! I tell stories on the tours and take photos of the tourists for them.
The Prime Berth Centre is made up of eight historical buildings that I relocated here. They include a 100-year-old fishing store and a net loft, as well as fishing stages, where codfish used to be processed for salting and drying. I take the tourists to one of the fishing stages to demonstrate the old methods that were practised here for hundreds of years, until the advent of electricity. This is all part of the heritage that I'm trying to preserve.