The Grand Manan Fishermen's Association (GMFA) is asking the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) to place an immediate freeze on all lobster license transfers to nonresidents of the island after a lobster license was sold outside Lobster Fishing Area (LFA) #38 to a company from the Yarmouth, N.S., area. However, DFO says it will not consider a freeze on license transfers at this time, according to Stefan Leslie, DFO director of resource management for the Maritimes Region.
Members of the GMFA are upset about the license being sold off the island because younger fishermen cannot compete with corporations in being able to buy licenses to enter the fishery. Grand Manan is different from most other lobster fishing areas, as the participation of younger fishermen is relatively high, and, to preserve the opportunity for future generations to be able to fish, the cost for licenses has to be affordable.
On February 6, many concerned fishermen and residents of Grand Manan came together at the monthly meeting of the Grand Manan Village Council. At that meeting, the council unanimously supported a freeze on the transfer of lobster licenses off the island. "It is critical that a freeze is enacted before additional licenses leave our community," says Grand Manan Mayor Dennis Greene. "The lobster fishery is the economic driver of our island."
The president of the association, Brian Guptill, adds, "We need the freeze to allow us the time to make sure that we find the right answer for Grand Manan."
"We believe there are solutions that would be acceptable to the community and to the Department of Fisheries and Oceans," says Laurence Cook, chair of the GMFA Lobster Sector.
Cook explains, "We have a lot of young fishermen here who want to do this. It's a shame" to have the licenses be sold off the island. "A young fellow will spend his money here and help our economy," he points out.
If licenses are sold to companies off the island, their boats will have to fish in LFA 38, but they will not have a Grand Manan crew and the crew will not be spending their money at the island's businesses, says Cook. "The island economy takes a hit." With about 100 lobster boats fishing out of Grand Manan, Cook observes that every lobster license is about one percent of that portion of the economy. "We can't afford to lose too many percentages."
The reason fishermen who are getting out of the fishery are selling to companies off the island is for cash, Cook says. "The companies have the financial means" to purchase the licenses. Local fishermen, with the current state of the economy and low price for lobsters, have a difficult time being able to pay for a new license. If a young fisherman goes to the bank to get a loan for a license, which can cost about a quarter of a million dollars, and a boat, which can cost from $100,000 to $600,000, the bank will weigh the risk of his being an inexperienced fisherman. "It's almost impossible for a young person to go to a bank to borrow money to buy a boat," says Cook.
Cook points out that the loss of licenses has happened to the island's other fisheries, with only one herring purse seiner now based on Grand Manan, only one full-bay scallop license-holder and no groundfish draggers. Most of those fisheries licenses have been sold to Nova Scotia companies. "We're kind of a one-horse town. We cannot survive without the lobster fishery." The only other significant industry, he says, is salmon farming, which "is not enough to support the island's economy." He adds, "Businesses on the island are dependent on people spending money from aquaculture or fishing. Why the government would like to see the money transferred to another province, I have no idea. It's bizarre. It's an economic question, not a Nova Scotia versus New Brunswick question."
DFO says license transfers allowed
The GMFA finds the license transfer off the island to be baffling, based on DFO's rules regarding owner/operator for the inshore fleet. The association says that the department has required for more than 50 years that a lobster license-holder reside in the lobster district where they fish but recently lifted that requirement.
However, Leslie says that DFO has not made any changes in its residency requirements for licenses. The transferring of licenses from one district to another in a DFO region has been in practice since the 1980s and was adopted as a DFO policy in 1996. All license transfers have been in compliance with DFO policy.
Cook, though, notes that DFO policy for LFA #33, around Shelburne, N.S., requires fishermen to live in the area where they are fishing. He says that DFO "said they allowed that because they're different."
According to Leslie, in LFA #33 there is a requirement that was instituted several years ago that licenses can be transferred only within the same county, because about 60 licenses had been transferred from the eastern to the western end of the district. "There was a substantial migration of licenses in the district," Leslie notes, which raised concerns about conservation of the resource. He says the LFA #33 restriction is the only exception to DFO's policy.
Similar concerns had been raised in recent years about the transfer of licenses from New Brunswick to Nova Scotia, and DFO placed a temporary freeze on all inshore licenses between the two provinces from 2003 to 2010. DFO evaluated the impacts of the transfers, and Leslie says, "There was not a lot of support for maintaining that freeze."
Leslie points out that the proposal for a residency requirement would be only at the time of reissuance of a license. Since there is no residency requirement while a fisherman holds the license, he says it raises questions "about the efficacy of a requirement then."
According to Cook, DFO informed the association that a court case determined that it was illegal to restrict who could buy a fisheries license based on where they live. However, Cook says the GMFA hasn't seen or been able to find the court case, and he doubts that it exists. He notes that, in Newfoundland, fishermen not only have to live in the province to fish there, they also have to use a boat built in Newfoundland.
"This is a critical time for the fisheries on Grand Manan. If we start losing lobster licenses, businesses will begin to suffer." He adds, "It's a massive block of Grand Manan's economy, and we cannot afford to lose it."
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