It's madness: Struggling to survive fishing regulations

By Aaron Beswick

FOR THE SOU’WESTER

Carl Hedderson hung his head in disgust while venting his struggles with DFO’s fishery management.

The owner of the 46-foot Mary Beneta is trying to keep fishing despite small quotas and regulations he claims are needlessly convoluted. His latest struggle has been with the dockside monitoring program.

“It’s madness,” said Hedderson of regulations forbidding him from landing cod at his home port in Straitsview, N.L. “I burned $9,600 fuel all last year and so far I’ve already burned $13,000 this season. Now they tell me I have to burn more just to land my cod.”

Straitsview is registered as a ‘random port’, meaning dockside monitors visit it at random. Because the Mary Beneta is over 40-foot long, it has to land at a ‘fully monitored’ port. While Hedderson fishes six gillnets and is only allowed to land 3,000 pounds of cod per week, like boats under 40-foot he is forced to steam an extra 18 miles to Cook’s Harbour, a fully monitored port, to land his catch. Consequently, the Mary Beneta burns an extra 100 litres of fuel per trip, at $1.40 per litre. He then has to haul the fish to St. Anthony in his own truck. Meanwhile his gillnets are only two miles from the wharf in Straitsview.

Last year he hauled his nets one evening and found only 100 pounds of cod – not enough fish to pay his fuel bill for a steam to Cook’s Harbour. He called the Fishery Resource Council (FRC), which controls dockside monitoring, and asked if he could tie up to the Straitsview wharf for the night, ice his fish, then haul his nets in the morning and make the steam with a larger catch.

“They told me you aren’t technically allowed to leave a wharf with fish in your hold, so I couldn’t do that.”

Another time he hauled his nets and was informed by a fisherman that there was a dockside monitor on the wharf in Straitsview. Hedderson called the FRC and asked if he could land his fish in Straitsview since there was a monitor present.

“They told me that while there was a monitor in Straitsview at the time, because it was a random port there ‘technically’ might not be a monitor at the port and therefore I had to land in Cook’s Harbour anyway,” said Hedderson, repeating his earlier declaration of, “It’s madness.”

Due to last year’s troubles Hedderson buddied up his licence with a boat fishing in Blanc Sablon this summer, putting three crewmen out of work because the regulations wouldn’t let him catch the fish next to his home port economically. This was despite the significantly higher prices offered for cod by the buyer at the Straitsview wharf than those in Blanc Sablon.

In its defence, a Department of Fisheries and Oceans spokesperson pointed out that dockside monitoring rules are submitted to them for approval by the Fish, Food and Allied Workers union.

“The dockside monitoring program (DMP) is discussed on an ongoing basis with the fishing industry and at least once a year during a formal advisory process. DMP rules are established as part of a conservation harvesting plan which is submitted by industry (FFAW) and approved by DFO,” said he spokesperson through a statement. “The general intent of the DMP in the Newfoundland and Labrador Region is that all landings be monitored by an observer. However, DFO realizes that this may not always be possible for reasons of logistics, volume landings in some ports and vessel safety. Smaller vessels are allowed to land in a ‘random port’ due to safety considerations.”

The statement went on to say that DFO is working with the industry to resolve issues around the DMP.

(Aaron Beswick is a journalist with Transcontinental Media’s Northern Pen, which is a contributor to the Sou’Wester.)