PORT DE GRAVE, N.L.
NEWFOUNDLAND AND LABRADOR
CANADA
With fishery quotas continuing to decline across the board, the local harbour master in Port de Grave considers offloading capacity to be especially important for harvesters.
That’s why Darren Kennedy is particularly pleased with the work that’s happening in the harbour to create additional offloading space. This work, due to be completed in mid-November, is part of a federally-funded project in excess of $600,000 to support the Port de Grave Harbour Authority.
Focusing on the south side of the harbour, the work will create two additional berthage spaces for commercial fishing vessels to use in winter months. Once the fishing season is active, the area will become a site for offloading.
“We had a couple of offloading spots, which were kind of congested when two boats were in,” Kennedy noted. “So, in the summer time, it’s going to be used as a place for offloading … which means a lot to us, because with small craft harbours, a lot of your revenue comes from offloading.”
This will prove to be particularly beneficial during the capelin season. For the most recent season, the harbour served multiple capelin processors and had to turn down requests from other plants due to a lack of capacity to handle additional offloading.
“The more you can land at your harbour is beneficial to your harbour,” Kennedy said. “That’s one of the main things now with the quotas depleting – you’ve got to try and get as much as you can with material.”
In addition to providing additional offloading space, the federal funds will support improved electrical service in the harbour.
According to Kennedy, the harbour has been forced at times to turn away boats requiring three-phase power – a necessity for many newer 70-to-90-foot boats. The only source to accommodate that sort of electricity requirement was located on the wharf by the Ocean Choice International property.
“We only had a couple of plugs over there, so we were looking for some more 220-volt (plugs) and some three-phase power,” the harbour master explained. “In doing this project, they’re going to put some extra power in there.”
The 220-volt plugs will be added to the harbour’s finger pier.
“I guess this is a three-phased thing with this small section they’re doing here,” Kennedy said. “What we’re looking at is trying to increase what we can do for the fishermen here in those three aspects: extra berthage in the winter, increasing the electrical (service) that we can provide and the offloading in the summer time.”
Looking beyond the current project, the harbour master has identified a number of smaller maintenance issues that will soon need to be addressed.
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