Shrimp capture. (Photo: J. Gnagey/Copyright: FIS)

Companies fight to manage 48,196 tonnes of northern shrimp quota

CANADA
Thursday, June 09, 2016, 23:20 (GMT + 9)

Nova Scotia fish companies that pioneered the offshore northern shrimp fishery are fighting to keep their share of quota as the Trudeau government faces its first major fisheries decision in Atlantic Canada — one that pits province against province.

The question is, who gets to catch a plummeting northern shrimp stock off Newfoundland and Labrador?

"We're being used to fix a problem we didn't create," said Andrew Titus, captain of the Mersey Phoenix, a Nova Scotia-based factory-freezer shrimp trawler to CBC Canada.

"If they change those rules, that is a direct hit to us ... they want to kick us out of an area where we have been fishing since 1978," said Titus, an employee of Mersey Seafoods.

The so-called last in, first out policy — known as LIFO in bureaucratic jargon — has been used to manage quota sharing for decades, including the northern shrimp fishery. It means the last entrants to a fishery are the first out when a quota is cut.

Nova Scotia companies — including Mersey Seafoods — were among the first into the northern shrimp fishery in the late 1970s.

Newfoundland's 65-foot [19.8-metre] inshore fleet joined in 1997 with the LIFO principle clearly in place for the past 19 years. Newfoundland licenced shrimp-processing plants in coastal communities, and everything was fine until the stock plunged.

The fishing grounds at stake are known as shrimp fishing Area 6, which lies off northern Newfoundland and southern Labrador. This year, the total catch in Area 6 is 48,196 tonnes — that is over 48,000 tonnes.

Four Nova Scotia companies now own 60 per cent of the offshore fleet, which has access to 13,000 tonnes of shrimp in Area 6. It is fished in the winter when more northerly areas are iced up. The winter fishery in Area 6 makes the offshore northern shrimp licence a year-round operation. The quota represents 35 per cent of the value of all offshore northern shrimp landings for the sector.

Offshore northern shrimp quota is shared between 17 licences. They are allocated this way:

• Nunavut — 1.5
• Quebec — 3.5
• Newfoundland — 8
• Nova Scotia — 2
• New Brunswick — 2

Over time, Nova Scotia companies have gradually come to fish offshore licences allocated to other provinces. The four Nova Scotia companies are Mersey Seafoods, which has the two Nova Scotia licences. Clearwater Seafoods fishes with two Quebec licenses. MV Osprey Limited of North Sydney fishes with one New Brunswick licence and two Newfoundland licences. Davis Strait Fisheries fishes with a Newfoundland licence.

The Nova Scotia companies employ Newfoundlanders and some have business relationships with Newfoundland processors.

Source: Paul Withers | Read full article at cbc.ca 

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