Our vessels range in length from 60 to 75 feet, with a crew of four to seven people. All crew members live, eat, and, with the exception of the captain, sleep in the same spaces.
You've heard of the problem with the physical distance requirement on lobster boats. Welcome to our fishing world, where trips at sea last from three to seven days, and sometimes eight days. It's cohabitation in its truest sense.
Surprisingly, these fishers did not show any apprehension, fear or stress, or at least very little, about the risk of being victims of this pandemic. Quite the opposite happened, as if it didn't concern them. They asked to go out to sea as quickly as possible. My member of Parliament, your colleague, Serge Cormier, can testify to that.
What hurts isn't having to comply with the public health rules that have been implemented on the maintenance sites of our ships, on our wharves and on the boats themselves. Like many other industries, it's the shrinking and, in many cases, disappearing markets that affect us. Senior management representatives of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, or DFO, have come before you to testify to that.
As you know, the restaurant, cruise and casino buffet markets have all disappeared. In the case of snow crab, about 85% of our production is exported to the United States. However, because of its exclusivity, we are relatively fortunate and our producers are quite successful in marketing this product to some of the distributors in the food service sector and to large players in the retail sector, such as Clover Leaf. However, it's all been reduced by 50% compared with 2019. It's not the best case scenario, but unlike northern shrimp, the industry is working.
Let's talk about northern shrimp, an area where Canada became a big world player between 2010 and 2015. Unlike snow crab, competition for a share of this market on the world stage is very fierce, particularly because of the presence of aquaculture products from Asia and South America. Because this product is mainly exported to the United States, Scandinavian countries, the United Kingdom and China, our producers found themselves without any market this spring because of COVID-19.
Our fishing season, which starts in March on the Scotian Shelf and on April 1 in the gulf, has been delayed until last week. So we've lost 10 to 12 weeks of fishing. I might add that Newfoundland fishers still haven't reached an agreement with their producers to go fishing. In terms of prices, this becomes even more problematic as we are seeing declines of more than 50% compared to 2019. Is it profitable in this case? It's not. However, we'll have to wait until the end of the season to confirm this.
The fixed fee for these types of boats is in the order of $500,000 per year. Because of the shortened fishing season at this time, it will be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to be profitable under these conditions. The big unknown at the moment is related to the abundance of fishing. If the catch per unit of effort were good, that would help the situation. Our experience with late summer and early fall fishing has never been very conclusive. In fact, a trip to sea is about $42,000. Also, there are different price categories based on size. To add insult to injury, small shrimp is dominating the market in 2020. The price is about $0.80 a pound.
So, you have a very good idea of how much shrimp is needed per fishing trip so that we can avoid a deficit. In this context, as early as the end of March, we asked departmental officials to meet with us to find solutions. We didn't feel that we were heard, either by the Minister or by DFO senior management in Ottawa. After several attempts, we finally held a 30-minute conference call on June 4. To date, we have received no response to our requests. Attached to our document is a list of items that we discussed with DFO and the Government of Canada. These items relate primarily to expenditure reduction items, such as the cost of licences, and wage subsidies throughout the fishing season.
In terms of possible solutions, we believe in developing the Canadian market. For example, 80% of the shrimp consumed in Canada comes from outside the country, and our major grocery store chains promote Alaskan crab more often than Canadian snow crab. How should we proceed? We should either change the role of DFO to one of marketing or create a fish and seafood division within Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada to promote local consumption.
Existing distribution systems, which are largely focused on exports to targeted countries, also need to be reviewed with the industry. It's easier to ship 500 tonnes of shrimp or crab to China than it is to send 100,000 pounds to Loblaws in Toronto.
In terms of product diversification, while the food industry is changing and product offerings are increasingly varied, our processing plants are static in the productions offered to the market. We do volume in bulk. We're talking about boxes of cooked and frozen crab pieces weighing 11 kilograms, 15 kilograms, and sometimes even more. We're also talking about cooked and peeled shrimp, or cooked and frozen shrimp on factory ships in Newfoundland in 5-pound or 25-pound bags.
We sell to food producers and distributors. We've been talking about secondary and tertiary processing for a long time. We need a research strategy geared towards the use of our fisheries resources in order to maximize one hundred per cent of the fishing quotas.
In terms of research and development, we don't have any specialized research organizations or centres in Canada for this purpose. Some of them may do it on a particular project or idea, but overall it is very little. Look at the Icelandic model and its marine products research centre called Matis.
In closing, I think that, despite everything, we have been lucky so far—