The overall consensus throughout Newfoundland and Labrador is the cod are back.
While you will still find a few people sitting on the proverbial fence, the majority of fishing industry insiders are in agreement that groundfish stocks have recovered enough to facilitate a return to some sort of expanded commercial fishery.
The agreeing is the easy part of this equation — what comes next, not so much.
It is well and good for everyone to dust off their soapboxes and announce the return of a commercial cod fishery. If only it was that easy. Sure the fish are back in the water, but now what?
After a 23-year hiatus from the cod market, what approach needs to be taken toward re-entering the fast-paced, ultra-modern world of groundfish sales? How are the fish to be harvested? What about quality assurance measures? Today’s market is vastly different compared to the cod block days of the late 1980s — consumers’ expectations are much higher.
Like everything else in this on-demand world, customers want their product yesterday and if a vendor cannot deliver to those expectations, buyers will simply take their business elsewhere.
On paper, Newfoundland and Labrador is geographically positioned in a very advantageous situation — close to both U.S. and European markets. Sounds easy, but a sound plan must be found to deliver fresh and frozen fish to the markets of the world in a timely and cost-effective manner.
Could the beleaguered Canada Post be a solution here?
Think about it — the downtrodden Crown Corporation already has the necessary infrastructure in place and God knows it needs to find new ways of generating revenue.
Still chuckling about the vision of taking a feed of cod fillets out of your new super mailbox?
This out-there concept might not be as laughable as some might think — just ask Megan Brennan.
Brennan is the new postmaster general of the U.S. Postal Service.
Her unenviable task is to pick up an old government-affiliated organization, drag it kicking and screaming into the digital age, while increasing its profitability. According to the Wall Street Journal, volumes of first-class mail, its most profitable product, fell 2.2 per cent through the first three quarters of this year and has fallen about 20 per cent over the past decade.
But only after six months on the job, Brennan is thinking outside the mailbox, so to speak.
She in embracing the growing culture of consumers expecting and demanding deliveries in the shortest amount of time as possible. The U.S. Postal Service’s direct competitors, such as FedEx, UPS and Amazon.com already know this and Brennan realized early on the traditional delivery business will have to evolve in order to compete and survive.
Her sweeping changes have already resulted in postal employees making daily deliveries of such products as bottled water, groceries and she’s pushing Congress to green light the shipping of alcoholic beverages — with the aim of lifting the prohibition-era ban on the Postal Service shipping alcohol. Analysts predict this move move could provide the postal service with an additional $50 million annually. She also wants to offer more Sunday delivery across the country.
This might seem radical, but pales now that the U.S. Postal Service is officially in the fish business.
For example, in New York City, letter carriers in the early morning hours load boxes of fresh and frozen seafood from Fulton Fish Market onto mail trucks and deliver them to local restaurants by 11 a.m.
How’s that for fresh fish delivery?
Many fish industry veterans will scoff at the mere suggestion of using Canada Post infrastructure as part of a seafood distribution network. They will argue it will never work because it was never tried here before. It is that type of thinking that helped get us into this mess in the first place.
Are these naysayers going to rush right out and charter the large aircraft needed to transport our fresh groundfish to national and international markets — that of course do not exist yet?
Probably not.
Many will say that we have more pressing issues to worry about then how to figure out how to attach a stamp to a cod’s head — and that may be true. But for now, the only thing that people seem to agree on, or at least be discussing, is there is more cod in the water now than has been seen in decades — unfortunately that is about as far as the new groundfish fishery of the future has progressed right now.
Somebody or something has to act as the catalyst to start the planning process for a resurrected cod fishery. This process, which is sure to be hotly contested and controversial but necessary, needs to start now.
With the various levels of government mired in fall-long election battles, it is doubtful the politicians are going to take the time and effort needed to kick off the series of forums necessary to start the planning talks. Doubtful as well that any of them want to make this an election issue — too many unknowns and potential landmines to tip-toe around, especially in rural districts and ridings.
Conversations need to start on harvesting techniques, quotas, quality control, markets and yes, how to get the product to the consumers that might want a premium cod product from this part of the world — whether that takes place with the help of Canada Post or not.
Maybe somebody should drop a letter in the mail to Deepak Chopra, the president and CEO of Canada Post and ask him if he is interested in the getting in the fish business. At least that would be a start.
