Skinners Pond

Skinners Pond

 Skinners Pond, PEI, Unincorporated Place. Skinners Pond, 135 km northwest of CHARLOTTETOWN, is a fishing port on the western coast of Prince County. There are 2 suggestions for the community's distinctive name: the bay could have been the site of pelting operations or it might have been named after a shipwrecked sea captain. The ACADIANS were the first settlers to establish a permanent community, to be joined by IRISH immigrants around the mid-19th century. Thanks to the sheltered, navigable harbour, fishing has been the community's economic backbone.

Beginning in the 1940s, the fishermen have supplemented their incomes by raking IRISH MOSS from the harbour beaches, from which a gelatinous substance called carrageenin is extracted for use in pharmaceutical and certain food products. As in the other small communities on the island's northwestern peninsula, the people of Skinners Pond are commercially tied to the centrally located town of TIGNISH.