CORNER BROOK — The lobster season has not been favourable for most harvesters on the west coast.
With the season coming to an end, people are switching species in hopes of better luck, said Michael Hickey of Benoit’s Cove.
“Lobsters are poor all over the west coast of Newfoundland this year,” he said. “Everyone got the same story in every little cove. Lobsters are in a down swing, I guess.”
Hickey said there was peak in the species a few years back, but the decline of the lobster fishery is evident this year.
The cost of having a lobster-harvesting enterprise, he said, is almost not worth the hassel.
Bait is 45 cents per pound, he explains, on top of rising fuel prices and other necessities.
The season started out, offering $4.59 per pound of lobster, and is now down to $3.94 per pound.
“On a daily basis it makes it difficult,” said Hickey.
The season has a rockey start in April, with a pricing conflict between fishers and buyers.
Buyers were not willing to pay what the Food, Fish and Allied Workers (FFAW) union pricing formula, based on the Boston Seafood market, said the lobsters were worth.
Lobster harvesters were left to sell ad hock for the crucial first weeks of the season to anyone who would buy their catch.
The union stepped in and created a co-op offering a fair price for lobsters and sold them wherever they could, mostly on the mainland of Canada.
Hickey said although it was a valiant effirt, the co-op was not equipped to handle lobster as it could not collect and sell the lobster as quick and easily as the usual buyers.
“You got to give the union a pat on the back,” he said. “They were trying.”
Jason Spingle, FFAW staff representative, said the season had a tumultuous start, but seemed to turn around.
He said forming the co-op prompted buyers to start buying again when they saw lobster being sold without them.
Spingle said while the co-op did not make big waves in its first year, the union plans to build on it for next season.
“It’s fair to say it was a good season,” he said. “The weather was good and the catch was steady.”
For Hickey the season did not start off well. He lost a load of lobster he had stored waiting to be collected by the co-op. High winds and waves at the end of April in Crabbes River brought the crustacean-filled holdings onto shore, killing the catch.
“We don’t know what we lost. We lost whatever we had,” Hickey said. “Too much to even think about.”
Last Thursday Hickey started fishing caplin because it is most worth his while now.
Allan Sheppard of York Harbour, is hoping to continue harvesting lobster until the season closes in his area on July 5.
He said many harvesters are giving up because there appears not be a lot of decent-sized lobster left to be caught. Sheppard said most of the lobster he’s catching now are undersize and are being thrown back.
“We’re just mulling the same lobsters, over and over,” he said. “What is gone is gone. We’re just getting the same ones.”
Sheppard and his partner are moving their equipment around, to see if they might have better luck in Area 13B.
Overall, he said, his lobster season has been poor, with respect to catch and pricing.
