Dispute Growing Over Allocation of Unit 1 Redfish
It was inevitable that the interest in the growing redfish stock in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and portions of the Cabot Strait would continue to increase.
It was also inevitable that competing groups for the potentially lucrative fishery would start drawing proverbial lines in the sand.
Over the last few years, many facets of the Atlantic Canadian fishing industry have been quietly whispering and speculating on the growing redfish population in the Gulf. And grow the stock has.
As The Navigator reported earlier this year, Unit 1 redfish has been under moratorium since the 1990s with the exception of the index and experimental fisheries. Unit 1 includes Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization (NAFO) Divisions 4RST and 3Pn + 4Vn. The redfish fishery in Unit 1 consists of two redfish species that occur in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and Laurentian Channel areas — deepwater redfish (Sebastes mentella) and Acadian redfish (Sebastes fasciatus).
Based on the research survey in 2019, redfish minimum trawlable biomass was estimated at 4.4 million tonnes (S. mentella = 4,365,000 tonnes, S. fasciatus = 78,000 tonnes), the highest value observed in the time series (since 1984).
With such a biomass off the shores of multiple provinces, the interest is obviously peaking, from a number of different players.
The latest discussion, that some might call a row, was kicked off in mid-October when the FFAW-Unifor called out Ocean Choice International (OCI) on what it called a lack of economic benefit that an offshore-dominated Unit 1 redfish fishery would have for Newfoundland and Labrador.
“OCI has long promoted itself as one of the largest quota holders of wild fisheries in Canada. The company already has exclusive access to tens of thousands of tonnes of redfish in Unit 2, greysole, yellowtail, coldwater shrimp, turbot and cod,” explained Keith Sullivan, FFAW-Unifor President.
“OCI will never depend on Unit 1 redfish to be economically viable, but dozens of communities and a thousand workers in the inshore will depend on it.”
The Newfoundland and Labrador-based union stated that OCI’s factory freezer trawlers are able to provide some processing onboard the vessel, but with the exception of a small amount of fish landed at the OCI plant in Fortune, the majority of fish caught by OCI’s trawler fleet is exported to low-cost processing countries in Asia.
“Instead of bragging about the minimal amount of work that OCI provides workers in Fortune, OCI should instead disclose what per cent of its offshore catch is processed on land in this province and what per cent is being shipped overseas where workers are paid a fraction of what they are here,” Sullivan said.
“OCI has a long history of leveraging a few better paying jobs in this province to distract from the pipeline of Newfoundland and Labrador fish that it routinely sends to Asia for great profit. That is what OCI means when they say, ‘the fishery means the world to us.’ We expect that the province will see through OCI’s ruse and fully support the inshore getting majority access to Unit 1 redfish. We also expect that the decision-makers in Ottawa will put community over corporations in making its redfish access and allocation decisions,” Sullivan said.
Historically, according to the FFAW, the offshore fishery held the vast majority of the quota, approximately 74 per cent of the redfish quota in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and a portion in Cabot Strait, with only around 15 per cent of the quota allocated to the inshore sector.
However, the FFAW is calling for the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) to commit to giving 50 per cent of the quota to the inshore fleet.
OCI was not long in firing back at the union’s claims.
In a press release, OCI stated that “year-round harvesters are calling for an end to tactics of division as the FFAW executive launches yet another campaign to mislead the public and politicians into damaging the future viability of the fishery, people and communities. Earlier this month, the FFAW executive launched a campaign pursuing offshore Unit 1 redfish quota, the latest species in a long list targeted by the union. One species at a time, the FFAW executives continuously lobby to take quota from offshore harvesters for allocation to the inshore — threatening the livelihoods of thousands of Newfoundlanders and Labradorians and rural communities supported by the offshore fishery.”
“It’s disheartening to see the livelihoods of our employees continuously targeted,” stated Martin Sullivan, CEO of Ocean Choice.
“Our 1,700 employees work hard at sea and on land, many of them year-round, to build a sustainable and successful fishery for the future of Newfoundland and Labrador. They deserve better and as a company, we will stand up for them.”
OCI noted that it has invested tens of millions in building marketing capacity, incorporating new technology at its Fortune facility and in building a new state-of-the-art vessel, the Calvert, to be ready for when Unit 1 redfish is re-opened.
“Ocean Choice is able to make these kinds of investments based on a stable supply of redfish from its established quota shares. Stable quota sharing arrangements has underpinned Canadian fisheries management for decades. This stability is what allows enterprises in all sectors of the fishery to invest,” the company explained in a press release.
Of course, given the proximity of this stock, any forthcoming redfish fishery will involve many players from several provinces.
Currently, nine companies hold offshore trawler mobile gear licences for redfish in Gulf Unit 1. The trawler fleet is defined by vessels 100 feet or 30 metres and longer.
The offshore quota allocation is as follows:
- Mersey Seafoods (N.S.) 31.08 per cent.
- Madelipeche (Que.) 30.11 per cent.
- Clearwater Seafoods (N.S.) 14.6 per cent.
- Ocean Choice International (N.L.) 12 per cent.
- Louisbourg Seafoods (N.S.) 4.48 per cent.
- Belle Bay (N.B.) 3.71 per cent.
- Caramer Limited (N.B.) 3.75 per cent.
- MV Osprey (N.S.) 0.1 per cent.
- Acadian Fish Processors. (N.S.) .02 per cent.
As OCI and the FFAW were engaged in the latest war of words, with Nova Scotia companies holding 50.3 per cent of the redfish quota, Steve Craig, Nova Scotia’s Minister of Fisheries and Aquaculture weighed in, asking that Ottawa maintain the existing allocations.
The Quebec provincial government also sided with Nova Scotia to maintain the current quotas.
Quebec said it’s essential for the federal government to maintain the historical share of quota when large-scale fishing resumes in several years, even if the industry there is not ready.
Quebec’s fisheries minister, André Lamontagne, said in a statement the redfish fishery was important to his province’s economy before the 1995 moratorium.
“The reopening of the fishery is an opportunity for Quebec to relaunch this industry from a development perspective, that is to say, by maximizing the value of this fishery and the spinoffs for Quebec’s coastal communities,” he said.
The FFAW is not alone in its stance on allocating more redfish for the inshore fleet.
A broad coalition of inshore harvester associations, Indigenous nations and players in seafood processing are calling on DFO to immediately suspend its consultation process on the emerging redfish fishery in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and to establish a new process that allows for meaningful engagement and transparency.
“The current process is unnecessarily rushed,” says Jean Lanteigne from the Fédération Régionale Acadienne des Pêcheurs Professionnels and the Association des Crevettiers Acadiens du Golfe.
“DFO’s allocation decision on redfish will determine for decades to come the economic future of scores of communities on the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador, New Brunswick and Quebec. Such a decision demands consultations of more than six weeks and a questionnaire with five questions. It needs meaningful consultations with meetings held virtually over a reasonable period. It also means that the input from stakeholders should be disclosed so that the decision by DFO can be understood by all.”
“When this fishery opens, it will be able to sustain thousands of jobs on land and at sea in Quebec, New Brunswick, and Newfoundland and Labrador until at least 2060. The redfish fishery will be a driver of economic sustainability and revitalization,” says Claudio Bernatchez of the Coopérative des Capitaines Propriétaires de la Gaspésie.
“But this will only happen if inshore harvesters and Indigenous groups in these three provinces are given a significant majority of the redfish quota when the fishery opens.”
