To say this year’s snow crab fishery in the Gulf of St. Lawrence has been a challenging one, would be an understatement.
The 2018 season was delayed in opening by the presence of heavy ice in the bays and ports of the region. And once the fishery finally opened, catch rates were much lower than last year.
However, the biggest disruption to the valuable fishery was the closure of crab fishing areas due to the arrival of right whales in the Gulf. At least 18 North Atlantic right whales have been found dead in the last year — 12 found in Canadian waters and six in U.S. waters.
As of June 15, the snow crab fishery was shut down in the following areas: GV32, GV33, GV34, GV35, GX32, GX33, GX34, GW32, GW33, GW34, GW35, GW36, GX35, GX36, GX37, GU37 (portion), GU38 (portion), GU39 (portion), GU40 (portion), GV37, GV38, GV39, GV40 (portion), GW37, GW38, GW39, GW40, GW41, GX38, GX39, GX40 and GX41.
The shut downs led to New Brunswick’s Fisheries Minister Rick Doucet, to call on his federal counterparts in Ottawa to find ways to make up for lost revenue in the fishing industry in light of the closures in the Gulf of St. Lawrence designed to protect North Atlantic right whales.
“We would urge the federal government to look at measures such as finding a time for those with licences to replace the lost days on the water and to address concerns in the region as to how this might impact employment insurance and how the federal government can mitigate that,” Doucet said in a statement issued June 11.
Along with the fishing area closures, DFO also introduced a series of new management measures in 2018 to further minimize the risks of interactions with the North Atlantic right whale:
- The use of a vessel monitoring system (VMS) with five minutes reporting intervals.
- The fishery will close on June 30, 2018 at 24:00 hrs (ADT). All gear must be removed from the water by the end of the day on June 30, 2018.
- New gear requirements:
– Minimal rope floating on the surface of the water
– Requirement to mark rope with orange colored markings
– Additional identification of buoys
– Requirement to report lost gear
And if this season could not get any worse, snow crab fishermen were also facing quota cuts — the 2018 southern Gulf quota was set at 24,613 tonnes, down from 40,000 tonnes in 2017 — a drop of 38 per cent.
