How is Coronavirus impacting BC’s fishermen?

Doug Kostering, a fisherman who docks in Port Hardy, had a two week delay to this start of his halibut fishing this year as the offices that handed out licenses were closed because of the virus. He estimates that two week delay alone resulted in an up to $30,000 loss in revenue. “Fishermen are in an uncertain industry to begin with. Fishermen traditionally take all the risk up front – they take out lines of credit, they take out loans, they do all the work to fix up their boats and get ready for their upcoming season,” said Chris Kantowicz, Skipper Otto’s COO. “And they do all that in hopes that not only will they catch fish, but once they have that fish in hand, that there will be a market for it. It’s a lot of risk and all of it lies with them.” >click to read< 07:06

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.