Thank you.
My name is Doyle Brown. I started sealing some 36 years ago on the Gulf Star. I always sealed on the big boats.
For the last four or five years I've had a little 34' 11”, and as Mr. Gillett said, we fellows cannot afford to beat off to Labrador and take 250 seals and beat back to St. Anthony and lose another two or three days' hunting with 250 seals. It's gone clean out of our minds to send a 34' 11” out there, first.
About two weeks before the seal fishery opened last year, on the news almost every night all you could hear about was ice conditions. We were worried because the big boats--I'll say the big boats, over 34' 11”--were all concerned that there was no ice and they wouldn't want to get to the fields.
So opening day came on the 12th. I don't agree with that date. It was always the 8th. One time it was April 6. Now it's April 12, another six days later. I think myself it should be open April 8. That's a pretty good time to open it.
But to beat off up to Labrador, I went up to the line in the straits. We got one day on. The big fleet got three days on.
The other time we were up there sitting dead in the water listening to helicopters flying over telling us it wasn't open and we weren't allowed to kill seals. An hour after that there would be a plane, another helicopter, a coast guard ship going around you, and we were up there sitting dead in the water waiting for a storm to come to head back to St. Anthony.
If this is what we've got for a seal hunt, the ones who are footing this for a week, well, it's a suicide mission. If they're so concerned that the big boats had no ice, what about us two weeks later? We got three days on out of 14, and they gave the big boats three days in a row, and we are sitting like fools up there in the straits.
Now we've got to beat back some hundred miles to St. Anthony because a storm is coming, and after that we've got to beat down off the Round Hills and off to Labrador, some 350 miles from my home port.
Meanwhile, here are the seals right there through the Grey Islands, a hundred miles away. We could have killed our seals and come home comfortable. But I had to be down there three weeks, beating out all kinds of storms looking for 250 seals that I could have killed by my door.
Indeed, son, we were up off that Labrador coast, not worried--no coast guard ships down there are concerned about the 34' 11”. But when the big fleet was opened up, there were coast guard ships, helicopters.... Nobody in Ottawa...I'm surprised that the Prime Minister wasn't out there his own self.
But if that's what we've got to look forward to this spring--a three-day hunt out of 14 days--while the big boats have their three days out of three days, killing seals around us, I think something has to be done with that, boy. That's not right to go up there, to beat up the straits, probably 200 or 300 miles away from home and sit dead in the water for three or four days and watch the other boats kill the seals around you, and you've got to take your ass in your hand, buddy, and beat back to St. Anthony because a storm is coming, and be in there another four or five days and then where is the ice to? Down off the Round Hills, boy.
And you've got to beat them off the Round Hills in a 34' 11”--and that's not a 65-footer, that's a 34' 11”--and look for 250 seals, and you can't come into a port. You've got to come back to St. Anthony to off-load 250 seals. I don't know where we're coming from.
We had 7,000 pounds of crab to catch last summer. I don't know what it'll be this summer. And if we've got to survive on 7,000 pounds of crab at 90¢ a pound, brother, it's like I said, they got a few terrorists up there in Ottawa there on the mainland during the summer. They should have come to Newfoundland and taken our union, because that's what I call a terrorist group, when you've got somebody there making plans and it probably takes them five or ten years to execute them.
I think what they're trying to do is take the 34' 11” out of it altogether because they don't want us out there. But I don't think that we can put up with too much of this. The 250 seals...if we've got to call in our seals, DFO knows if we've got 250 seals aboard. We're not going to call in 300 if we've got 250 aboard and take a chance of getting caught.
If we've got 250 seals aboard my boat, and there is another day's hunt in two days time and I'm out there 100 or 120 miles, why can't I stay out there those two days, wait for it to open, and kill my other 250 and come in with my 500? Why have I got to beat into land and take another two day's time and beat out there another probably 70 or 80 miles to look for the same herd of seals again?
Whoever's making those plans has never been sealing. I don't think they've seen bullshit.
Thank you very much.