It sounds like a relatively simple process — toss a baited cod pot over the side of your boat, steam back later and pull in live cod, land it, get it processed and off to market.
It works with crab and lobster, right?
But for cod, it’s not that simple. Cod simply were never caught that way — at least, not commercially.
A demonstration project on Fogo Island off Newfoundland’s northeast coast, however, has proven over the past seven years or so that cod potting is an exciting option for a future commercial cod fishery that will face new market dynamics and serious demands for high-quality product.
“We have now proven that, with cod pots, it is a commercially viable thing to do for small boat fishermen with a 35-foot boat,” said Gordon Slade, chairman of the Shorefast Foundation, a non-profit organization helping the communities of Fogo Island and Change Islands revitalize their local economy.
“We have shown that this is possible and that fishermen want to do it and they are making a good return.”
The Foundation, along with Memorial University’s Marine Institute, began the project to demonstrate that inshore cod fishermen can produce a high-quality product by using cod pots in conjunction with new handling and production techniques.
The project began with one Fogo Island fisherman seven years ago and has increased to six fishermen currently. Last season, each fisherman caught their allotted 5,000 pound cod quota in cod pots, being paid $1.40 per pound. The fish were bled and stored using new methods on deck and processed by the Fogo Island Co-op separately from other fish and sold to a niche market of local restaurants.
Getting the fishing industry and other fishermen outside of Fogo Island to buy into the concept may take some work.
Before the cod fishing moratorium of the early 1990s, cod pots were unheard of in the northern cod fishery off Canada’s east coast. Controversial gear types such as bottom trawls and gillnets dominated.
In recent years, there are strong indications the northern cod stock is rebounding and talk has turned to the possible reopening of a commercial cod fishery. With that, comes a great debate over what fishing practices and gear should be permitted in the future cod fishery.
“If the moratorium is lifted, the industry is going to ask, ‘what are we going to do with the cod fish?’” Slade said.
“We have demonstrated that the cod pot is one option the industry and the province can develop if the commercial groundfishery comes back. We have learned an awful lot in the past six to seven years with this and that’s what you have to do, to learn everything you can before a commercial fishery comes back.”
Slade, a former deputy minister of fisheries in Newfoundland, began floating the idea of a cod potting project back in the mid-2000s. Cod pots do not damage the ocean floor, keep the cod alive even during bad weather when fishermen are delayed in retrieving them and take minimum by-catch (any by-catch can be returned to the sea alive).
Slade approached selected restaurants on Fogo Island and in St. John’s to determine what they would pay for a high-quality product that started from fish caught in cod pots.
He said the idea originally centred around how to get the best quality fish for then soon to be opened Fogo Island Inn.
“We were going to be having the Fogo Island Inn and there was Nicole’s Cafe, a really quality restaurant and bistro in Joe Batt’s Arm and we asked ‘how do we get the best cod there?’
“So I talked to the Marine Institute, which had gone out to Alaska and looked at cod potting there and came back and modified the Alaskan pot and tried it out around Newfoundland and Labrador. So I asked them, ‘why don’t we have a cod-potting effort on Fogo Island to determine whether it was economically possible to do this for the fishermen and see what kind of product we can have to put into high-end restaurants, as sort of a demonstration project?’”
At the time, noted Slade, restaurants were willing to pay about $5 per pound. Out of that came what the Fogo Island Co-op had to charge to handle the fish in a specific manner. The difference that year was $1.25 per pound that was paid to the fishermen — much higher than the union-processor negotiated price for cod at the time.
According to the Department of Fisheries and Aquaculture website, the Fisheries Technology and New Opportunities Program in 2008 provided assistance for a collaborative initiative involving the provincial government, Shorefast Foundation, the Marine Institute, the Fogo Island Co-op, and the Canadian Centre for Fisheries Innovation to conduct a baited cod pot fishery off Fogo Island.
Though cod pots have been experimented with in the past in the province, the initiative resulted in a new baited pot design at the Marine Institute and careful focus on how the fish are bled and handled at sea, processed on land and transported to local restaurants which are able to promote this high-quality Atlantic cod to their customers in a number of seafood dishes.
Customers are informed of the environmentally friendly form of fishing, the process done to maintain the high quality from sea to table, and the healthy aspects of the product.
Not only was the fishing to be carried out at Fogo Island, but pot construction was done there as well, with assistance from the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency and the Marine Institute.
“We proceeded to the next step which was to get 75 or 80 of the new modified pots built,” Slade said. “So we got the Marine Institute to come out and we built the pots on Fogo Island. They came out and trained the people how to build the pots, and then we identified fishermen who were prepared to try this.”
The modified pots are made of steel rod and mesh — more expensive than some other gear types. But they are collapsible which make it easier for transporting and storing. They measure six feet long, six feet wide and about four feet high. Other designs are being tested.
A two-year project that will end this summer is testing a smaller and lighter Norwegian pot design.
“The project is looking at the difference between the Marine Institute modified pot and the Norwegian pot,” Slade said. “When that study is done at the end of this year, then we’ll know which is the best pot. With the ones we have now, we have to have 35-foot longliners to handle the pots. With the Norwegian pot, which is much smaller, you could do it in a small open boat.”
In addition to selling the cod to the Fogo Island Inn and Nicole’s Cafe, the fish has also been sold to several St. John’s restaurants and some in Ontario.
“We are looking at the quality in the bigger picture. I look at fish as something we should be handling like we handle milk, for instance,” Slade said.
“The consumer should have the confidence that this fish they are eating has gone through all of the proper sanitary processes, from the time the fish come out of the water until it goes on the table in the restaurant.”
The key to maintaining quality, Slade noted, is the handling of the fish through the whole process. The fish is bled in a way that doesn’t damage the fish’s heart, he said, by fishermen making a specific cut.
“The heart is still beating and the fish is put in a 300-gallon vat of ice water, slush. After 20 minutes the heart will pump all the blood out of the fish. Then you gut it and clean it and put it into another vat in ice… ice it down in the hold of the boat,” Slade explained. “It’s brought to the plant and processed on a separate line and put in a plate freezer, as opposed to a blast freezer. It’s done up in a shatter pack with the skin on. Restaurants want skin on. It goes out in 10 pound boxes, four of them in a carton.”
This coming fishing season, he noted, to further enhance quality, a newly designed handling system will be tested on one of the fishing boats at Fogo Island. It is a stainless steel and aluminum system designed by the Marine Institute that will aid in the bleeding, gutting and cleaning on deck.
“It would be a proper deck handling system and we’ve got the design done at the Marine Institute in consultation with a fisherman for his boat,” Slade said.
“We are hoping that this summer we can have that installed. That would be another step in the quality process. I think if this deck-handling system works well, others will want to get involved in that.”
The whole idea, Slade said, is to focus on what can be done locally and to provide total transparency for the consumer. He said showing that the local industry is being responsible custodians of the ocean resources is important.
“You’d be able to say this fish was caught in a cod pot, handled on deck in conditions comparable to what you’d have with any other food product, and has gone through the sanitary process in the plant through to the freezing,” Slade said. “So, you know what you are getting. You have absolute confidence in the quality during the whole process from sea to plate.
“And I think that is where we should be going in the future.”
