Tag Archives: Sara Quigley
Controversial bycatch monitoring program coming to Maritime lobster industry
Canada’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans is rolling out a controversial bycatch monitoring program in three lobster fishing areas in Nova Scotia, but it won’t say when the program will be introduced across the Maritimes. The department is imposing at-sea monitors for the first time this fall in three lobster fishing districts in Nova Scotia from Halifax to Digby. The department said it needs to collect data on other species — such as cod, cusk and Jonah crab — that are inadvertently being caught in lobster traps, which is known as bycatch. The question is when the monitoring will roll out elsewhere. >click to read<11:14
Lobster Fishing Area 41 – Clearwater Seafoods’ offshore lobster monopoly
Wedgeport lobster fisherman Lucien LeBlanc has watched the big blue Clearwater Seafoods trawler Randell Dominaux hauling lobster traps 80 kilometres off the southern tip of Nova Scotia — and looked on with envy. “If a genie popped up and I could get one wish, I’d like to have a zone all to myself. Not just to myself — I’d love to have it for LFA [lobster fishing area] 34. They have a large zone and they only use a miniscule amount of it,” LeBlanc said. The Clearwater trawler is working its side of what’s known as Lobster Fishing Area 41 — a vast area reserved exclusively for Clearwater in a lobster fishery unique in Canada. >click to read<09:10
