The Atlantic Charger was an exceptional fishing vessel.
Built in 2012 at a cost of $2.5 million, the Charger was the most modern and best-equipped vessel in the Newfoundland and Labrador inshore fishing fleet.
Measuring nearly 70 feet long and 26 feet wide, it was one of the largest, if not the largest, vessel of its class. But no vessel is indestructible when confronted by the decimating powers of the northwest Atlantic Ocean, whether is due to ice infested waters or rough seas.
The story of the Atlantic Charger’s loss on September 21, 2015 and the eventual rescue of its nine-man crew is a fascinating tale, but this was no ordinary sinking because this was no ordinary vessel.
Also, Brad Watkins is no ordinary fishing captain and enterprise owner and his struggle to get back fishing once again is not an ordinary story either – in fact it was still a story unfolding when The Navigator interviewed Brad nearly a year after the incident.
Brad Watkins knew when he was a boy growing up on New World Island, on Newfoundland’s northeast coast, that he was going to be a full-time commercial fisherman and he dared to dream big, even then.
In his high school graduation yearbook, Brad wrote that he was going own a 65-foot longliner, the largest vessel an inshore enterprise owner was allowed to have at that time. His dream was curious because when Brad graduated, cod stocks were in steep decline and older fishermen were convinced the inshore fishery was near collapse. In fact, a couple of years later, the Northern cod stock that stretches from northern Labrador to southeast Newfoundland was deemed commercially extinct in July, 1992 and the government placed a ban on fishing the one species that had been the backbone of the Newfoundland and Labrador fishing industry for centuries.
Because of the negativity surrounding the industry after the moratorium, Brad gave up on his fisheries dream for a little while and tried a couple of other career possibilities. He studied underwater welding and also became a licensed mechanic. He even did a business administration program, but memories of fishing with his dad and the call of the ocean was strong and nothing else could satisfy his longings like a life at sea.
With the growth of a shellfish industry in the mid- 1990s, fishermen diversified and instead of relying on one or two types of fish, they became multi-species operators. Brad Watkins saw opportunity in the 1990s and devised a plan to be one of the biggest players in the new fishery.
Crab and shrimp became the dominant species and that radically changed the face of the Newfoundland and Labrador fishing fleet. Most inshore boats were too small to harvest shellfish long distances offshore so new and much larger vessels were built. With vessels capable of staying at sea for more than two weeks, some enterprise owners even ventured all the way north to the Davis Strait to fish Greenland halibut, known locally as turbot.
When Brad would lay awake at night planning a new vessel, the northern turbot fishery was always a part of his business plan, albeit as a secondary or backup possibility at first, but his next boat would be designed to accommodate shellfish, pelagics and groundfish. In fact, he had a gut feeling that the northeast coast’s shellfish resource would be in decline within a couple of years and he needed to be prepared.
Subsequently, the province’s first twin trawler was soon to be in the making.
Working two trawls at once would cut fishing time in half, allowing the vessel to move from one fishery to another more quickly.
Essentially, Brad wanted a vessel that could work year-round and had the Atlantic Charger designed accordingly. For example, a turbot trip to Baffin Island turbot waters from east coast Newfoundland would require food and fuel for nearly three weeks at a cost of $30,000 to $35,000 for a crew of nine.
“It was high risk, but if you got a load of turbot, it would pay off,” Brad says, adding that the Charger’s fish hold capacity for iced turbot was 200,000 pounds.
“But we never ever filled her; the highest we had was 160,000 and on her [final] trip in September 2015 we had 140,000.”
The keel of the Atlantic Charger was laid in September, 2012 and as a one-of-a-kind vessel, there were the usual glitches to contend with, but nearly halfway through construction, Brad ran into government policy changes that created a serious setback.
Like any business model, his new vessel construction was based on how much fish he would be allowed to catch. Things were going fine, but suddenly the rules changed midstream.
“I had two enterprises and had another deal with a guy to fish his so I had three sets of crab and shrimp along with my turbot and also my pelagics/seining. Based on that access, I started building the boat but when I was about eight or nine hundred thousand dollars into the construction the [Fishermen’s] Union started causing trouble that led to the government cancelling the so-called buddy-up system and blocked all avenues of catching anyone else’s fish.”
With the loss of access to nearly half his quota in the deal with his friend, Brad had to scramble to find an alternative. That’s when the northern turbot fishery idea was suddenly on the front burner.
Eventually, Brad made a deal with the Baffin Coalition, an Inuit organization based in Nunavut, to fish part of its quota in Area 0B east of Iqaluit. Government rules stated that the native turbot quota must be fished by hook and line, but it made an exemption for Brad and allowed the Charger to use nets while an automated hook and line system was on order from Iceland.
“The deal was that we would use gillnets and land the turbot in Pangnirtung,” Brad explains.
Pangnirtung is 200 miles north of Iqaluit and 31 miles inside the Arctic Circle.
Managing a fishing business is time consuming, especially when the enterprise owner is looking after more than one vessel that fishes several species. That’s why enterprise owners like Brad Watkins sometimes hire captains to go to sea while he runs the business end of things from onshore.
But being home in Newfoundland doesn’t mean the owner is not involved with the daily activities of his/her vessels. On September 21, 2015 Brad was in touch with Captain Byron Oxford onboard the Atlantic Charger several times. The vessel had e-mail service, as well as two satellite phones. The main conversation centered on a change in plans to get their 140,000 pounds of turbot to Pangnirtung.
The Coast Guard had advised Brad that the Charger couldn’t get into port at Pangnirtung because of heavy ice conditions. Brad asked for an icebreaker escort but was denied so the decision was made to head the Atlantic Charger south on Monday morning, September 21, 2015 instead of going north. Weather conditions and sea state were both good so Captain Oxford plotted course for Resolution Island.
A few hours later, all hell broke loose and the lives of nine men were in serious jeopardy.
Join us next month for Part II of Dreamboat turned Nightmare.
