Above: The Inuksuk II will be Baffin Fisheries’ largest vessel to date at 80 metres long and 18 metres wide. Photos submitted by Chris Flanagan, CEO of Baffin Fisheries
Nunavut-based Baffin Fisheries is set to procure the largest fishing vessel in Canadian waters, the Inuksuk II.
The vessel, at 80 metres long and 18 metres wide, was conceived by Baffin Fisheries in 2019 and is set to be completed in the third quarter of 2024 as a replacement for the 37-year-old Inuksuk I. The Inuksuk II, designed by Skipsteknisk Norway, is being constructed by the Tersan Shipyard in Turkey. The $72-million vessel, according to Baffin Fisheries CEO Chris Flanagan, will save time, money and fuel during fishing trips thanks to its expanded storage space.
“There are no ports in Nunavut where we can land our vessels, so we land in Newfoundland or Greenland,” said Flanagan. “To get from St. John’s to where most of our quotas are, it’s about six days sailing. A larger vessel, mainly, has a larger cargo area. For example, if we did four trips instead of six to get all our quota, that could be as much as 10 days less steaming. If you consider how much a vessel like this burns a day, that’s significant money savings and reductions in CO2 emissions.”
The Inuksuk II will feature living spaces for 36 people, which will allow Baffin Fisheries to further its mission of training Inuit workers and allow them to garner the experience needed to move to higher positions. Flanagan said their other ships, the Inuksuk I, Arluk and Sivulliq don’t have as much space for additional personnel.
“In Nunavut, with no history of offshore, there’s not many people whose fathers and forefathers worked on commercial vessels. So, we need to do a lot more training and we just couldn’t do it on our old vessels,” said Flanagan. “So, we’ve now got space for 36 crew members, so we’re able to train people to work on the deck, on the bridge, in the galley and in the factory.”
The new addition to Baffin Fisheries’ fleet also features a highly automated factory. Whereas factory workers aboard the Inuksuk I might have spent a good portion of their day doing heavy manual labour, workers aboard the Inuksuk II will spend more time programming and monitoring equipment controls as well as providing quality control.
“There’s still quite a bit of labour in the factory, but it’s less. It’s more ergonomically safe,” said Flanagan. “We’ve also got automatic palletization. Previously, boxes were hand-stacked in the cargo hold — one box at a time, one man moving them — now that we have automatic palletizing, they’re wrapped and secured on a pallet, lowered in an elevator and moved with a forklift. It is safer and saves us a bit of money on offload because we don’t have to pay the cold storage facility on shore to sort it and palletize it.”
Other features of the Inuksuk II include an emergency get-home system to power the vessel in case of engine failure, a robot used for storing products, two cargo decks and a Guinness World Record-holding Wärtsilä engine — reportedly the world’s most efficient four-stroke diesel engine.
While the upcoming procurement of the Inuksuk II has been cause for celebration for Baffin Fisheries, Flanagan said the undertaking has been equally difficult as it has been rewarding for the company.
“The biggest sentiment is that this is a lot of work. With a larger engine, we’ve got to have a different class of chief engineers. So, our chief engineers have to go back to school. It could be guys in their 30s or 40s who have to study physics again or write math exams again,” said Flanagan.
“But the vessel itself; the work of installing the factory and the accommodations is a monumental task. We have people over there now overseeing it, but we’ve seen many vessels built ahead of us that have run into many challenges in the new world of inflation and supply constraints. Pumps that were either on the shelf or a two-week order can now be six months away, so it’s very difficult to build a ship in this environment.”
By the time the Inuksuk II is ready by the third quarter of 2024, it will greatly increase the company’s capacity for fishing both turbot and shrimp in their fishing areas. Compared to the original Inuksuk I, which has a carrying capacity of 700 tonnes of turbot or 440 tonnes of shrimp, the Inuksuk II will boast a carrying capacity of 1,100–1,200 tonnes of turbot or 600–800 tonnes of shrimp per fishing trip.
