Fisheries committee  Legally, members. Anyone can be a member of a harbour authority. We have fish harvesters, tour boat operators, fish farmers, and pleasure boat operators who are members of our harbour authority, because they are traditional users. In our own harbour authority, among ourselves, it is a majority of fish harvesters.

Fisheries committee  That's an interesting question. There's no way to actually be able to target at twenty years. If you asked anyone around this table thirty years ago, with the exception of Kevin, if crab would be your primary species, they would have said, “You're crazy; it's a nuisance fish”--and likewise with shrimp.

Fisheries committee  And the other fish is at Renews rock on the southern shore. I'll add just one thing on that: it already has happened. Around this province there were, it's estimated, over a thousand communities here. Now we're down to a couple of hundred harbour authorities operating. And these are operating for a reason: they've been sustainable.

Fisheries committee  Just as a comment, the European Community talked of these as subsidies. Without subsidies, how would the agricultural industry for flowers work in the Netherlands? If they were not eliminating ground from the deltas to prevent water from building up and the tides coming in, they would not survive.

Fisheries committee  On the storm surge part of it, I do agree with his points. We all have large shipping areas, and oil is a big issue to all of us. We're all just waiting to see when something is going to happen, in Placentia Bay more than anywhere else, and St. Mary's Bay, because there's so much oil traffic directly through those areas.

Fisheries committee  The swordfishermen thing was a lucrative deal we worked into. We ended up having anywhere from five to six enterprises from the New England states operating there, and most of the crews now are Newfoundlanders. One came up last year and she took the skipper and engineer and they got two Newfoundlanders to fly down and take the boat up with them, and then the rest of the crew was picked up in Bay Bulls before they started fishing.

Fisheries committee  Just for myself, I will use one example. We have our berth draw, it's called, for berths at the wharf. We have so many berths there, and you can put your name into a hat and your name comes out and you pick the berth that you like. They're two and three abreast. So far this year I've had 12 phone calls from people wanting to put in boats that I just can't fit in there, along with the ones that are already there and ones that have used it over the last number of years.

Fisheries committee  These range from 20 feet to 40 feet, depending on the size of the boat. Two years ago I had fifteen boats wanting to come to Bay Bulls for approximately two weeks from the mainland--it was a group of pleasure boaters--and I just couldn't. We got our fishermen together to see how we could move our boats around to fit these boats in.

Fisheries committee  Most of us here are in the same situation, the same as Kevin and Ron; our harbours deal with the same thing. Some places are good to unload. In our location it's Witless Bay. The fish plant is there and they come in to unload in Witless Bay. You could put about $50 million in Witless Bay and you wouldn't make a safe harbour, because it's open; there's no shelter.

Fisheries committee  Realistically, we have two different projects. The outside breakwater, which we see as the primary necessity for shelter, is $1 million. We have another plan, through a tourism development, working with our fishermen, tourism, and recreation users all together, that's possibly going through ACOA for another $1 million for that project.

Fisheries committee  This particular wharf, the outside one, now I think is somewhere around 30 to 32 years old, and for the first five years it was there it wasn't used, because it was shorter at the time. We had a breakwater and it couldn't be used. We extended it, and because of the force of sea ice, losing their own premises, more and more harvesters went to it, and you still had your collar out to go to besides.

Fisheries committee  My name is Don Drew. I am the president of the Harbour Authority of Bay Bulls. I'm also the mayor of Bay Bulls. I've been on the harbour authority since 1989, when we formed. We opened for business in the spring of 1990. We have two wharves in our community, both about 200 feet in length.