Harvesters are very upset at the idea that this may impose on their ability to sell prawns this year. Without much clarity from DFO, you can imagine the frustration level.
Some harvesters have community-supported fisheries where they pre-sell portions of their catch, and were wondering if they were going to have to pay back those customers in advance without the ability to provide the product they had agreed to.
Many harvesters purchased the supplies to tub the prawns and have specially developed labels referring to their vessel number and date of catch, that sort of thing.
I supported the work of many harvesters to expand their business model to sell frozen prawn tails last year as a reaction to the COVID disruption of markets. Websites were put up and marketers hired and people were becoming much more responsive to the community's demand, which we were working very hard with the province to increase, by being able to help stabilize some of these prawn harvesters' bottom lines as against the difficulties COVID brought on them.
With all the work and the effort gone into trying to support harvesters in being able to expand their domestic sales and sell to their local communities, harvesters were furious and so confused and very stressed to think that this entire part of their business model might be out the window.