On October 16, 1990, our harbour authority was incorporated with a five-member elected board. The mission of the harbour authority is to operate and manage a safe and commercial fishing harbour in St. Brides. This year will mark our 18th year of operations.
Presently the local board of directors manages three and a half hectares of land leased from the small craft harbours directorate. The local board manages the east and west breakwater, two marginal wharves, eight floating docks and a float approach, harbour office, bait unit, three off-loading systems, saltwater and fresh water systems, paved parking lot, coast guard, air horn, and navigational aids.
Since our harbour authority was put in place with the help of MHAs and MPs such as Mr. Manning here, we have developed a very interesting harbour. Yet our harbour is still not safe enough for the size and number of vessels that use it. With our older generation of fishers getting out of the fishery, we see younger fishers stepping in, and right away those younger fishers go for newer and bigger vessels to fish farther offshore.
Right now we have 45 permanent fishing enterprises in St. Brides, plus another 20 to 25 vessels that come from neighbouring communities like Placentia, Branch, and farther, from St. Mary's Bay sometimes, to unload their catch there. Last year alone we had landings of 3.8 million pounds of fish products, which included crab, cod, lump roe, halibut, and even tuna. We have a processing plant on the wharf in St. Brides where we process most of the groundfish, making work for the residents there for eight months of the year.
Yes, we have a busy harbour right now. But we are working on blasting and dredging inside to make our harbour a lot safer, because when a storm is coming up we have to move to farther away communities, which is 30 or 40 miles out of the way, and this is very costly. And sometimes the storm might come up in the night and you don't get the chance to move. Back in 1999 we had a major hurricane called Gert, and it did a lot of damage to vessels in St. Brides.
So this money that we're spending right now is not enough. We need money approved immediately for this year to put a marginal wharf in this new dredged area to make a safe haven for our fishing vessels.
As I mentioned earlier, we're located right on the headland of Placentia Bay. Cape St. Mary's ecological reserve is only seven miles above us. So we have a lot of tourists and tour boats getting interested in our harbour. Right now our harbour is overcrowded and so busy with fishing boats unloading their catch that there's not room enough there for those tour boats every day to unload their passengers.
So there are a lot of reasons why we need more money in St. Brides. I brought a few pictures with me just to give you an idea of what goes on there.
There is a cruise boat right there that was in the bay. It was a nice day and they got to bring in some of their passengers and unload. Most of the boats had gone out fishing, so there was a bit of room, but some days our harbour is so overcrowded.