Good afternoon, everyone.
Before I start, I would like to give you a little history of area 25. In the late seventies—I heard someone talk about it earlier—there was a buyout of licences. Quite a few were bought up in our area. In the eighties we started seeing a good rise in the fishing. In the mid-eighties, area 25 was enjoying high catch rates. By 1989, for daily catches in the first week of the season we were put on a quota of 1,100 pounds per day at our co-op. They just couldn't handle the amount that was coming in.
In 1990, DFO put a size increase on the industry for area 25—the only area, and it was the first time it had ever been done. We weren't even consulted. It was just a week before the season that we were called to a meeting and told that our size was being increased.
This kept on for five or six years. We kept having an increase every year—again, as I said, the only area that had. During this time, each year our catches were dropping.
In our southern part of area 25, down in the strait—we all know the problems we have there—the catches were dropping off drastically. Then we ended up with a twofold problem, because as the catches were dropping in the south, we were being hit with size increases, and every year we were losing, dropping on our catches.
People were selling out in the south, and someone was buying the gears and bringing them north. In one year, we had as many as 13 gears move to the north. This went on for quite a few years.
In the late eighties we had 17 fishers. Just to give you an idea about where I'm talking about, we're mostly right up at the very north end of the district along the area 24 line. We have 250 to 252 fishermen in area 25. Today there are about 210 in the top third of the zone. This is where all the gears are. It has created a lot of problems.
With the three harbours at the north end we have seen increases, as I said, from 17 in one area to 53 there now. The next harbour up, which would be Skinners Pond, has an increase; I think 10 or 12 have moved into that area.
Pressure on the stock is very severe, and DFO stood by and allowed all this concentration into one area to happen. We kept asking for something to be done, but they turned a blind eye to it. Now we constantly hear from them that they want us to reduce our effort. Each year they put new measures on us. This year we were given a new 10-year plan, which according to our fishermen would probably put us right out of business.
We are fishing a different, smaller.... We have a window lobster. Everybody else is at 115 to 129 grams. We are at 114 grams, and everything above that we throw away, of the female lobsters—we put them all back. Still that isn't enough. They are asking us to cut traps and to reduce our seasons. We are having a hard time to make a living as it is.
This is why we stated that we were not in favour of doing anything with this 10-point plan. We had New Brunswick fishermen agree with us to go with the same thing. We're not interested in doing any of these things until we have a buyout and reduce the number of fishermen.
Everything is talked about on the basis of effort. You can't have any better effort of reduction than to take 100% of a fisherman out of the fishery. He's gone out of the fishery. All these measures they are taking are band-aids.
We believe that in area 25 we have two big problems. In the south, the catches continue to really drop off. We believe there are environmental problems. Studies have been going on in the last two years. We still don't have an answer as to what the problem is, but the stocks are disappearing—and not only lobster: every stock in the strait is disappearing.
What this has done, as I said earlier, is bring all the gears to the north. Now we have a problem in the north, where we have too many fishers taking too few fish. It must be a really good stock, because it would be gone by now if it weren't, because of the way it has been fished with the increases.
We would like to see some licences bought out here to help those who remain to be successful once again and be paying taxes and contributing more to the economy.
Area 25 had a buyout going a couple of years ago, made possible by crab quota. We bought out nine licences and we shelved two for a year. This program received praise all across the country, and we believe we could successfully run it again if we were given funds. The only area, I guess, that had a successful buyout was ours. Pretty well every penny that was put into it was used to buy licences, with a small bit for administration. We believe it's our only way to ever fix our industry: to buy out some. A third of the licences have to go.
Before we started this buyout, we were concerned about the gears moving to different areas. We went after DFO and were successful in getting, finally, a port freeze put in place, because we felt that if we buy eight or ten gears out of an area and somebody brings in eight or ten more, we haven't accomplished much. It's something we have brought up with DFO before.
And I think it's something that has to be looked at in areas. You can't have effort going all into one part of a zone; that's bound to cause problems. If we ever have it balanced out again, it has to be looked at to make sure the problem never comes back.
That's about all I have to say on this right now.
As far as protection is concerned, we'd certainly like to have more protection. We've seen in the last year or two a little bit more funding, and we could certainly use more, because everything helps. Our fishermen today are just hanging on, and if DFO makes any more cuts to us, we're all going to be out of business. We can't survive it. We see removing some licences as our only hope, and they have to go immediately.
Thank you.
