Slim Fishing

Have We Become Too Dependent on One Species?

Decades ago, Maritime coastal communities thrived on abundant and diverse species of fish. Mackerel, halibut, herring, salmon, hake, grey sole, swordfish, pollock, perch, smelt, haddock, flounder and, of course, cod, were all part of that industry, along with the still-familiar lobster, and many others.

These fish can still be found off the Atlantic coasts, but independent inshore fish harvesters are no longer granted the quota required to fish them. Inshore fish harvesters have noticed some species getting smaller as well as scarcer.

My father had a three-and-a-quarter inch net and you could use that to catch mackerel for two weeks. Last 10 to 15 years you put it out two nights, take it in. Then you put in smaller mesh nets… for four or five days. Little bits of things is all you’re getting. So we buy our bait for a mere dollar a pound.

–Neil’s Harbour fish harvester Michael Buffet

Despite the cod collapse and severe decline of many groundfish and pelagic fish, our fisheries are earning more dollars than ever before. There are two reasons for that increased dollar value: lobsters and snow crab.

Back in 1990, [Atlantic Canada] landed 1.3 million metric tonnes, which was primarily groundfish, at a value of $0.95 billion. The most recent data available from DFO shows the landings in 2018 were only 0.6 million metric tonnes—so less than half of what it had been in 1990—but the value of the landings was $3.2 billion, so it had more than tripled in value… The value per pound has increased sixfold. So that’s had a positive impact on many of the harvesters who … gained access to any significant shellfish species.

–Fisheries consultant Peter Norsworthy

These high-priced species have thrived after the collapse of the cod, which independent fish harvesters blame on an overabundance of corporate trawlers going back to the 1970s.

It got bad when the draggers came. Those seiners come out of Newfoundland, take fifty thousand pounds a swoop. They dump the rocks in a pile underwater, like a mountain. New technology just made better killing machines. They’re 24-7, come in, refuel, out again. They had thousands of them.

–Glace Bay fish harvester Jim Munden, 80 years on the water

When draggers came on 40 years ago, that was the start of depleting the cod. When you went out where draggers had been, you’d be hauling up slub and the bottom is smooth as the floor of a garage.

–Glace Bay fisher harvester Danny Munden, 40 years on the water

Danny Munden describes ideal conditions for shellfish, and he and other fish harvesters acknowledge that lobster and crab fisheries have been good to them. But relying on a single fishery comes with a cost. The fish processing sector has declined dramatically:

There was probably about six or seven hundred plants active in Atlantic Canada in 1990; there’s probably only two hundred active now… in most cases… year-round employment simply isn’t available anymore, so the annual income of plant workers has declined very significantly.

–Fisheries Consultant Peter Norsworthy

As a result, young people in coastal communities are more likely to leave for more reliable work elsewhere.

Unequal Access

Although money from lobstering can be good, not every community has benefitted equally. “Those that didn’t gain access to snow crab quota or additional lobster … certainly didn’t benefit from this economic gain,” Norsworthy says, “so there’s still some wide disparity in earnings.”

Fish harvester Michael Buffet, who fishes Lobster Fishing Area 27 in northern Cape Breton, says that the southern portion of that LFA has better catches, making it more lucrative. In his 40+ years on the water, he’s gone from fishing multiple species throughout the year to living mostly off one short lobster season. And he worries even that won’t last.

We’re at the end. Swordfish are commercially extinct since the 60s. Lobster are fished to the max. If you had to buy a license for what they’re selling them for here now and try to fish it here you’d never pay for it—I’m only getting one-third the lobsters you’re getting in the other part of the LFA—financially it wouldn’t make sense.

–Michael Buffet

Adaptation

Some biologists and fish harvesters also fear that if a large and diverse groundfishery could collapse, a shellfish fishery dependent on only a few species is surely vulnerable.

The snow crab along the Scotian Shelf is declining, presumably because … the waters are warming up and these animals are not finding suitable habitat in these southern waters. The Gulf of Maine is one of the fastest warming oceanic bodies of water in the world. Lobster is still doing okay for now but there is a lot of understanding particularly from the northeast US and New England that they may not have a lobster fishery in a few decades because lobster just won’t be able to tolerate the warm temperatures in the southern part of the Gulf of Maine.

–Sean Brilliant, marine ecologist, Canadian Wildlife Federation

Fish harvesters often point out that they are stewards of the sea, and particularly of the species they fish, because their lives depend on it. Pierre Pepin, a DFO research scientist in St. John’s, feels that fish harvesters and coastal communities have long proven to be adaptable, and that it’s this adaptability that gives him hope for their future.

Even though the different communities that harvest the ocean have a degree of tradition, that tradition also includes adapting to change… In some cases it means adapting to exploiting different species. In some cases it can mean moving around, going to different places.

–DFO research scientist Pierre Pepin

What the fisher harvesters fear is that the increasing pressures of conservation, shorter more intensified–and therefore much more expensive–fishing seasons mean there may not be any fishing communities left to adapt.

Watch this space for more to come on how fish harvesters and industry work to adapt to a changing ocean.