Avoiding Policy Errors? OCI proposal.

Below please find letter to Darin King re: OCI proposal.

Hon. Darin King,

Minister of Fisheries and Aquaculture,
St.John's

Minister King,
                        

Before you make your final decision on the OCI proposal  to export round fish,  you should know  that a very high percentage of the turbot, redfish and as well a high percentage of the yellowtails as well are undersized and continuing this export will do irreparable damage to any hope of groundfish recovery in N&L.   This will be a major policy error on the part of any responsible government and there is no doubt this fact will become well known to all concerned in due time.

 A short time ago we received a call from an office in St. John's  where a gillnetter owner and three of his crew members asked us to meet and discuss the turbot fishery they were involved in off Northern Labrador and Baffin. They have been involved in that turbot fishery for a few years and exporting frozen turbot with heads and tails removed.. They indicated the prices they were receiving for the unprocessed fish and as well for the heads and tails which were packed separately.  However, they are deeply concerned that the turbot fishery will be totally destroyed within the next two/three years at the rate these small fish are now harvested by the larger FFTs of which there are a substantial number now exporting these undersized fish with practically no supervision or control. According to them the turbot are very small, far too young to reproduce and the resource will be destroyed in a short time. Some fish, according to them were the length of your hand. They were asking us to give the matter as much publicity as possible, even though they are involved as gillnetters in the same fishery.  They feel the damage being done by the FFTs is enormous.

We have informed DFO accordingly and requested they immediately investigate the warning passed along to us by those fishermen and owner of the vessel.
We should also make you aware, if you don’t already know that the redfish which is being referred to these days are tiny fish, especially from  the Grand Banks, 3NO areas.  If we had any semblance of fisheries management by DFO or NAFO there would not be any fishery carried out on that slow growing species.

Additionally, it’s remarkable that N&L based FFT owners are responsible for the traditional by catch rate of 5 percent on American Plaice raised to 13 percent at a recent NAFO meeting.  Raising that by catch level to such a high level  will definitely prevent any hope whatever of recovery of that very valuable AP species which was the life blood of the south coast plants for twenty five years before the moratorium.

Minister, this business of exporting such a high percentage of small fish in all three of those species is a very important matter that must  be investigated and cannot be ignored. A political decision to continue exporting those small fish which, without question, is so detrimental to recovery of the resource will be proven to be disastrous to this province in the long term. We bring this matter to your attention and would recommend very strongly that it be discussed with DFO officials who should know it's fundamentally wrong and against every fisheries management principle to permit the harvesting of undersized fish.

Gus Etchegary
Chair
Fishery Community Alliance

PS.  If we make the most disastrous decision we could possibly make and continue the export of unprocessed fish containing as well the high percentage of small undersized fish, the European Fishing nations of NAFO and other fishing pirates will have a field day at Canada's expense. They will effectively ridicule us by stating the fact that both levels of Government (Canada and N&L) are the main contributors to the final demise of our N&L fishery.

CC  Premier Dunderdale