Hello, everybody.
I would like to thank everybody for inviting us to this meeting and giving us a chance to speak.
Unlike the Maritime Fishermen's Union, at the Shellfish Association we don't really have wharves or any gear to get lost in a storm, but we require a lot of access roads to get down to different rivers. Our equipment is our hands, basically. In the storm, Fiona, the tide was so high that it caused a considerable amount of the island to be closed down for the shellfish fishery.
We represent soft-shell clam fishermen, quahog fishermen, who require getting into the water to harvest, because there's no equipment other than your hands. These fishers lost two weeks of their season, which represented considerable income. With the higher EI qualifications, that was a critical time of the year when they were trying to get the rest of their stamps, because it takes all year to do it. You have to fish the tides. The tide before the hurricane was off. That week after that was when the tides were on, and the waterways were closed for two weeks. It was a significant financial loss to those fishermen.
As for the oyster sector, three-quarters of the island was closed, so there were a lot of fishermen who couldn't fish. In our case, our buyer wouldn't buy because the labs weren't open to do any tests on the oysters, and he wouldn't buy until he was sure that it was safe to ship. We lost a week of income also over this.
I don't know what the recommendations would be. You can't fix Mother Nature. On our part, as far as raising wharves or anything goes, some of our access roads definitely need work. A lot of the erosion is silting over our beds. The areas have to be de-silted as a result of these storms. We suffered a lot of financial loss. A lot of fishermen were hurt badly over this.
I'd like to thank everybody again for letting us take part. I'll be open to any questions.
Thank you.