In a statement to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans, which recently held a hearing in St. John’s, Icewater Seafoods called for a more balanced approach to the exploitation of Northern cod stocks.
Icewater is the second largest holder of enterprise (greater than 100-foot vessel) allocations for Northern cod and is the company that received the cod allocations formerly belonging to Fishery Products International.
When that company was split up and sold to High Liner, Icewater and the province of Newfoundland retained the cod allocations.
The company’s plant in Arnold’s Cove is the only plant in Newfoundland that has consistently processed cod from the various smaller fisheries since the moratorium.
Icewater says that the world’s cod fishery has changed dramatically from the early 1990s and that in the past where Newfoundland could successfully produce blocks and salt cod, today the market demands primarily a high quality cod loin.
This is not produced consistently by the inshore fleet. For this reason and to promote year-round processing operations, the company believes that there must be a balanced offshore (fall/winter) and inshore (spring/summer) fishery.
The province’s commitment to give priority access for the first 115,000 metric tonnes to the inshore fishery does not mean exclusive access, according to Icewater. It points out that prior to the moratorium, offshore cod accounted for about 40 per cent of Northern cod landings.
Icewater has also cautioned against a premature opening of the fishery. It, along with the Groundfish Enterprise Allocation Council and the Association of Seafood Producers, have begun a Northern cod Fishery Improvement Project (FIP) in 2015.
The project has a five-year work plan and a budget of $11.7 million. To date, the FIP has funded the development of assessment and simulation models, genetic identification of stock components and worked towards the development of a large-scale acoustic tracking array.
The work of the FIP has highlighted one key risk — if the productivity of this stock remains low, the population is likely to decline again. Any fishing will increase that risk.
The positive population growth has been driven by a few successful year classes and so far they have not repeated. Currently the stock is only at 34 per cent of the minimum reference level (650,000 tonnes) and furthermore, DFO is using a model that cannot see beyond a three-year timeline.
This poses a risk of short-sighted actions that cuts off the longer term potential growth of the stock. At a minimum, says Icewater, the big year classes have to survive to move through the fishery and hopefully replicate the spawning gains they represented.
The company feels that under a precautionary approach, building the stock to the reference limit will take five to 10 years and should not be short-circuited by prematurely increasing fishing pressure.
This article was republished with permission of John Sackton and seafood.com.
