With the lobster fishing area (LFA) 25 fishery well underway, reports from both New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island are reporting strong catches so far.
The season, which runs from August 11 to October 14, 2023, has had a record-setting start, according to Martin Mallet, the Executive Director of the Maritime Fishermen’s Union (MFU).
“Like any fishing season, you have to wait until the end to really make a good analysis of the season, but from what I’m hearing, this has been a record year as of today,” said Mallet.
This strong start was echoed by Molly Aylward, the Executive Director of the Prince Edward Island Fishermen’s Association (PEIFA).
“Catches were strong out of the gate, but have declined since that time,” said Aylward in a written statement. “Keep in mind it is early in the season and that the situation can change.”
Price-wise, Mallet noted that prices are settling within the $7–8/pound range in the next few weeks. He noted that with this slight uptick from the $6.50–7 per pound range seen in 2022, harvesters are getting some relief from the high input costs seen in the fishery.
“That is good considering the cost of fishing and the cost of operating has been increasing over the last few years, significantly so,” said Mallet.
For the MFU, a question it had early on was how Hurricane Fiona would play into the 2023 fishery. Reports from the year previous told of juvenile lobsters being washed ashore by the storm that ravaged much of Atlantic Canada, leaving the industry wondering how the lobster stock would be affected.
“I know it’s too early to tell, but it seems like it hasn’t had an effect on the adult lobsters,” said Mallet. “The issue there is that we’ll only see within the next few years what that impact has been, really, on the adults when you get into the fishery from that age class that was affected last year.”
Close to the border between LFA 25 and 23, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) had issued a seasonal area closure due to whale sightings earlier in the summer. For Mallet, the protection measures for whales enacted by DFO need to be fine-tuned to strike a balance between protecting fish harvesters and protecting whales in the area.
“We’ve been asking DFO, if there’s no whale pods there, why close the whole season off for several months when there’s no whales around? More and more science shows that in the first few weeks when the whales are within the gulf, they scatter around and look for food or whatever they do — they move a lot. But, at some point during the summer, they settle in some areas in particular,” said Mallet.
“What we’re seeing here is they’ve not settled anywhere close. Another thing is the observations that closed this quadrant were from whales that were in the quadrant just north of there, which was quite a length away from the actual LFA 25 area.”
Mallet said that the whale area closures are based around snow crab fishing areas, which occupy much more space than the inshore lobster areas.
“These areas are immense, and in the case of inshore fishing where we don’t have a lot of space to move into when we fish lobster, there should be some special considerations made by DFO,” said Mallet.
