Tag Archives: Paul Grant

New leaders of FFAW and ASP pledge to work together for 2023 snow crab season

The Fish, Food & Allied Workers union and the Association of Seafood Producers have long butted heads over issues related to the fishing industry but say they’re facing historic challenges this season and want to avoid any problems from the outset. “In light of the challenges we are facing this year, we have agreed that our best approach is to collectively discuss the challenges the crab fishery is facing and to seek support from both levels of government to ensure that we have a successful crab fishery in 2023,” said Paul Grant, board chair of the seafood producers’ board, in a press release ahead of the media availability. >click to read< 11:41

Left-over inventory and inflation could take a bite out of N.L. snow crab prices this year

Trevor Jones has been in the fishing business long enough to know you can’t predict the success of any year until the last pot is hauled and the nets are stored. Jones owns a 65-foot longliner, F/V Samantha Nathan, carrying on the family business that was started by his father. These past few years, snow crab has become the most important catch. Last year crab accounted for just over half the revenue for his enterprise. The record high prices, even with a drop to $6.15 a pound from $7.60 at the start of the season, helped buffer against the cancellation of the mackerel fishery and the no-go for capelin. >click to read< 10:10

N.L. snow crab sales to Japan displaced by Russia

While many countries are imposing sanctions on Russia as a result of the war in Ukraine, Japan is taking advantage of low Russian snow crab prices. Clifford Small, MP for Coast of Bays-Central-Notre Dame and federal fisheries critic, says that is preventing Newfoundland and Labrador processors from selling their crab to Japan, as they normally do. “To have one of our major markets dry up on us, and to dry up in a sense that basically they started buying from a country like Russia — that’s at war in Ukraine — flies in the face of what you’d expect from a great trading partner and an ally,” he said. >click to read< 15:44

For the Love of Cod – the fight over fish stocks may well spell the end of cod fishers—or cod

A hard exhale escapes Sherrylynn Rowe before she can help herself. “It was so disappointing,” she says. A Canadian federal government report, released in March 2018, showed that the number of northern cod of spawning age in the Canadian North Atlantic was down 30 percent from just last year. It was a devastating turn. Northern cod had been fished to near extinction in the early 1990s and it had started to look like they were finally beginning to rebound. But now the population—which had been expected to increase again this year—was shrinking fast, brought on by an unexpectedly high rate of natural deaths. >click to read<07:53