Thank you.
I won't repeat any of Melanie's comments.
As mentioned, I'm the president of the Gulf Nova Scotia Bonafide Fishermen's Association, representing roughly 100 of the 620 fishermen in the Gulf Nova Scotia region. I also sit as the vice-president of the fleet planning board, which represents the entirety of the Gulf of Nova Scotia.
Back in April, I participated in the process of trying to design the ask from the fishers in the gulf region to the government for financial assistance. Along with that, we sat in multiple meetings with the Department of Fisheries, with Serge Doucet and the management from the gulf area. In each of these meetings we were asked what we wanted and how we saw the season going forward, and in each of those meetings we said we really had two options. One was a financial package that would protect our enterprises, some of which are in multiple generations now, three or four generations. The second option was the ability to start our season on time.
When the decision was handed down from DFO, for some reason we were told in the gulf that we needed an additional two weeks to prepare for the COVID pandemic. Oddly enough, it was only Gulf Nova Scotia that needed this time. From a health standpoint, I personally have seen very little change in the fishing industry. I've not personally heard of a single case of a lobster fisher in my area contracting the virus. The biggest impact that COVID-19 has had on our season is obviously the loss of two weeks and 25% to 40% of our income, as well as the additional market volatility and overall price reduction.
In the lobster industry in the gulf, price typically follows a pretty predictable schedule. In mid-April, area 31B opens up and the price drops two dollars. At the end of April, the remainder of area 31, the entire eastern shore, opens up along with the gulf, and the price will drop another dollar. Mother's Day arrives, and we see another price drop. Then at the end of May, the south shore closes their season, and we see an additional drop. I've been in the industry for—not to date myself—over 50 years, and this price schedule has repeated year after year. By losing the first two weeks of our season, we had already suffered the first two price drops before we started.
To make matters worse in the gulf, we really only have the lobster season and the snow crab season as our main sources of income. Fishers in the south shore, the eastern shore, as well as Quebec and Newfoundland have multiple other fisheries that they participate in as income supplements, whereas most of our other fisheries are basically recreational. By depriving the fishers in my area of 40% of their income with, really, at this point, still no viable, economic assistance package, we've pushed a lot of fishers to the brink of financial ruin. We still haven't seen a package that will prevent that. A $40,000 line of credit, basically, does very little to help the majority of fishers. In my own personal instance, my payments alone to the bank are $75,000, so that $40,000 doesn't do a whole lot.
My other concern that's come out of this is that this is the first time in history that the department has made a decision on delaying a season based on economic reasons. The mandate of the department is conservation and protection, and that's how it should remain.
It's very difficult to refute the outcome of conservation and protection measures. It's very difficult to prove who the economic benefactor is in a decision like this when the majority of our lobsters are live-shipped and areas of the minister's backyard and eastern shore were allowed to fish while we sat on the shore.
That pretty much concludes my comments. Thank you for allowing me to speak here today.