Small boat fishermen feeling frustration, despair

By Aaron Beswick

FOR THE SOU’WESTER

Transcontinental Media/Northern Pen

As small boat fishermen gathered at DFO offices in St. Anthony, N.L. the morning of June 17, Premier Danny Williams was calling VOCM’s open line. “We don’t need that kind of pessimism and crap coming out of your mouth in the mornings, I can tell you right now,” Premier Williams responded to host Randy Simms’ question of whether the province was focusing too much attention on oil when the fishery and forestry industries are facing their worst season in years.

John Regular wouldn’t be inclined to agree. The Ship Cove small boat fisherman averaged half a lumpfish per net during a season he spent some $2,000 gearing up for and his Employment Insurance ran out in late April. “I got eight weeks punched with no income – not a copper,” said Regular. “We’ve had some good years and some bad, but nothing like this.”

The approximately 60 fishermen from Boat Harbour to Noddy Bay who protested outside the Department of Fisheries and Oceans building are in a particularly bad position. The area is known as an overlap between fishery management zones 3K (Eastern side of the Northern Peninsula) and 4R (west coast) – they don’t have access to west coast lobster licences or east coast crab licences.

Therefore their incomes rely almost entirely on lumpfish, cod and seals, with occasional earnings from mackerel, herring and capelin. The seal hunt this year was a complete bust with very few pelts being bought at a low price, lumpfish never showed up and now cod has gone down to 50 cents per pound for top quality amongst the few willing to buy it. “(Provincial fisheries minister) Tom Hedderson said they would assist plant workers and crew but these fellows are individual enterprise owners, family affairs,” said Roland Hedderson of the Fish, Food and Allied Workers’ ( FFAW) union. “These fellows won’t qualify for the federally announced lobster assistance package either because they don’t have lobster licences.”

The FFAW is demanding the immediate extension of an extra five weeks of EI benefits to fishermen to help them survive the short term and that they be allowed to base their 2009 claim upon 2008 earnings because few are expected to earn enough off the fishery this year to qualify. In the long term they want money to help rationalize the fishery – a buyout that would leave fewer fishermen catching larger quotas.

The small boat fishery is the only local employer in many of the communities between Boat Harbour and Noddy Bay and the fishermen gathered to protest had little faith that any of the estimated $10-billion worth of oil revenues the province could receive from the mornings Hibernia South announcement will end up helping the industry they rely upon.

Frustrations boiled over as fishermen talked about the perceived regulatory excesses making their industry and lifestyle impossible. “Why not let three crews share one boat for lump – why won’t they allow a ‘ buddy-up’ on lump?” asked Wild Bight fisherman Clyde Brown. “Crab is right outside your door and you’re not allowed to catch it. Then when there’s seals on the go you got planes and helicopters flying over with the fisheries truck driving up and down the road – It’s just like Iraq and for what? They make you feel like you’re a criminal cause they’re afraid you’ll go get a meal of seal for yourself. It’s madness.”

He and other fishermen discussed their desire for Individual Transferrable Quotas (ITQ’s). Under ITQ’s fishermen would be allowed to trade quotas according to what fish are appearing in a particular area, catch the fish when they want and how they want – saving money on fuel and overhead by sharing boats. Others, however, have argued that the quotas are so small that ITQ’s would leave you with too little to catch. “It’s the same amount of fish coming out of the water – what do they care?” asked Brown. “Then we might be able to make a go of it.”