10/06/2024
Le MPO est en grande partie responsable de ce qui arrive aux crevettiers. Depuis 2017 les crevettiers demandaient au MPO de protéger la crevette
Less shrimp, fewer turbots in the Gulf of St. Lawrence: the fisheries crisis is hitting Gaspé fishermen who have seen their quotas plummet. The sebaste, now abundant, is keeping an eye on them, but the market is not ready.
Samuel Normand has been fishing for Nordic shrimp for years. On September 12, his boat, the Sextan, is preparing to leave Rivière-au-Renard (Gaspé) for its "last trip of the season". It will climb the Gulf of St. Lawrence to off Sept-Îles and reach its fishing area after 14 hours of navigation, at 4 a.m.
He hopes to get 30,000 pounds of shrimp back into his nets in six days of fishing. Ice, groceries, fuel, the three men on board stocked up. They will live together in a space no larger than a camping trailer.
Samuel shows the superimposed berths, where sleep is rarely peaceful. We each take turns, but sometimes, when it's brewing too much, I stay up in my chair, to watch, says Samuel.
Because the boat fishes 24 hours a day. The net follows the ship, filling with the precious crustacean. But it fills up less quickly than before. When there was abundance, we could get up at two, three o'clock, but now we get up at five o'clock, says Samuel.
Nordic shrimp stocks have declined significantly in the St. Lawrence, partly due to water warming by a few degrees. The quotas allocated to fishermen have collapsed. Samuel Normand's went from 600,000 to 72,000 pounds this year. A draconian drop in income for the 40-year-old man.
We are on the edge of the abyss. It hasn't been long since I invested. Without help, we line up for bankruptcy.
Samuel Normand relies on his woolen stockings to try to get through the year. But not knowing what is coming stresses the father of three children. He does not see himself, at his age, going back to training, whatever the field.
As the boat moves away from the quay of Rivière-au-Renard, the three men smile and say goodbye with their hands. Their life, their reason for being, is on the water.
Head for sebaste
Under a fine rain that now envelops the dock, another fisherman prepares his trawl. Guillaume Synnott will not fish for Nordic shrimp, but one of his notorious predators: redfish, a bottom fish that now circulates in abundance in the waters of the Gulf, after a 30-year moratorium. Fishing reopened on July 15.
Sebaste, a lifeline for shrimp growers? Not really.
This fish with red scales and big eyes can be eaten in tasty white meat fillets or served as bait. But it is still in little demand in Quebec. Prices are therefore low at landing, as at the exit of the processing plant, which takes only small quantities.
The nerve of the war right now is: where are we going to sell all this sebaste? You have to sell this fish! The factories are not ready.
Another constraint is added: even if bardocks can be found 20 minutes from the dock, the regulations require it to fish further, 10 or 12 hours of navigation, to avoid passing through protected areas, forbidden to trawlers. At the cost of fuel, many fishermen give it up.
Result: there are only three fishermen in the Gaspé Peninsula who have embarked on sebast, at a loss for the moment.
Every Monday, Guillaume Synnott fills his small order of 50,000 pounds for the local factory, Les Pêcheries gaspésiennes. History of working, qualifying his men for employment insurance and helping to develop the market. If it doesn't work, we'll have tried it to the end! Said the 44-year-old man.
It is a market that needs to be rebuild, says Olivier Dupuis, co-owner of the Les Pêcheries gaspésiennes factory. For the moment, he cannot transform more, nor offer a better price to fishermen (between 35 and 50 cents per pound). We go according to what we are able to sell, to market.
The plant has won a contract with hospitals in the area and grocery chains, but it must support fierce competition from factory boats in Nova Scotia.
They are heavy in the balance, he says. We have no choice but to be competitive with others.
In Rivière-au-Renard, as along the North Gasp coast, many boats are stopped, in the dry dock. Shells are gnawed by rust, due to lack of maintenance. Workers work here and there to fix them. Other ships are for sale, abandoned.
The cemetery is there, the boat cemetery, as it has been called since last year, says with sadness Samantha Bois, of the Association of Captains Owners of the Gaspésie. And it's not just shrimp growers who pull it out. The turbot is also in decline. And there are always moratoriums on cod, mackerel and herring. On the other hand, the lobster is doing well, but it is fished mainly in the Bay of Chaleurs, according to the permits granted.
Fishermen on the entire north coast of the Gaspésie are caught with boats that they have acquired at high prices, which they can no longer repay, and that no one currently wants to buy, in the midst of the fishing crisis. Debts amount to several million dollars.
We are indebted millionaires!
In this environment of strong men, we hang on, we continue to joke. To the point of believing. Kevin Dunn, a 33-year-old turbot fisherman, quotes his great-grandfather: As long as you have health and a roof, life is beautiful.
This father of a six-year-old boy has a debt of two million on his back. His halibut quota is not enough. He works wherever he can, to keep his head above water. He mows lawns and drives a snow removal truck. But it is the peach that attracts him like a magnet.
It's the most beautiful job in the world! I grew up there, since I was five years old when my uncles took me with them. I don't know how to do anything else.
The fear of losing everything
In his house in Petite-Vallée, 60 km from Rivière-au-Renard, Vincent Dupuis has a jagged morale. He says that his wife and two daughters are watching him closely. A guy like me, at 61 years old, I won't have time to make my way back into fishing. I don't know how to get out of it. I risk losing everything, he says.
He also has debts to pay. For the sake of economy, he did not go to sea this year. Just putting the boat into the water, preparing it for fishing and having it insured, it's around $100,000, he explains. Then each trip to sea is 25,000 liters of fuel.
He will inspect his boat from time to time, but it hurts his heart.
It takes me 3, 4 days to get over it, he confides. I have a boat to my liking, I shaped it in my own way. Fishing was going well, my things were going well. Then today, to see my boat that has such a value, that will rot there...
Vincent Dupuis denounces the silo management of fishing. He thinks that the decision to authorize sebast fishing comes much too late, when scientists had alerted us several years ago that this fish was coming back in force and was squanding shrimp stocks.
He advocates for ecosystem management, from the entire Gulf, that takes into account the impact of one species on another, to be ready to respond.
With sebaste, we could have prepared and started a small-scale fishing to create a need. Today, we would not start from scratch, to be all badly taken.
Rethinking fishing
We are due for a very big reform in the fishing world, says Samantha Bois, of the Association of Captains Owners of the Gaspésie.
More and more, we talk in the environment about fishing less, but fishing better. Focus more on the quality of the product sold than on the quantity. Get a better price for the fisherman.
In order for fishing to persist over time, we will be called upon to change our fishing methods and our consumption methods, says Samantha Bois.
This is also the opinion of Sébastien Dupuis, president of the Tourelle Fishermen's Association, in Sainte-Anne-des-Monts (Haute-Gaspésie). In the old village, there are only nine fishermen left, and almost all of their boats are mounted on the mainland.
The crisis has had the merit of provoning discussions. In this environment where every captain is an entrepreneur, Sébastien Dupuis notices a desire to work less each in his corner.
There are a few of them sitting at a fishing table set up by the MRC de la Haute-Gaspésie in December 2023.
Ideas and projects are flying. The Tourelle Fishermen's Association would like to return to the sale at the dock.
In the past, there were fishing huts, the world sold their fish, but at this time, you no longer see that, says Sébastien Dupuis. We could maybe take less, but sell it ourselves on the dock. It's certain that the fisherman would have a better price, it's official. It was the same before that, tse!
The economic advisor for the bio-food sector at the MRC, Yannick Ouellet, sees it as a great opportunity to bring back to life the dock and the former village of Tourelle, which has already had its sea festival.
We have no choice. We must react, we must launch ideas, projects, he says with conviction.
Files as varied as they are delicate are on the table. For example, how to promote seal hunting, increasingly present along the coasts, a halibut predator? Or would a collective permit formula, inspired by Aboriginal community fishing, be possible to make more fishermen live decently? In the longer term, should we develop mariculture or the seaweed trade?
In the immediate future, Yannick Ouellet believes that institutions, in the health sector for example, could put more local fish on the menu. It is not normal that in our schools or hospitals, we eat imported fish. The sebaste, it would be perfect in the institutions. The industry must develop this market
In Quebec, 80% of what we fish is exported and almost 90% of what we consume is imported, according to figures confirmed by the Institut de recherche en économie contemporaine.
Create added value
In Rimouski, the Marco Polo returns from a bourgot fishing. The 27 boxes are landed directly in a truck where they will be weighed.
A good fish is always measured by its quantity. But the young captain, Emmanuel Sandt-Duguay, has designed a model that could inspire other fishermen. He keeps part of his cargo to transform it in his small canning pry, Chasse-Marée, to create added value, he says.
Its cooked bourgots are sold in brine at the nearby Gagnon fishmonger, but also in cans, with a variety of seasonings, like sardines in Portugal.
This is how Chasse-Marée launched a new product this summer: a canned redfish. The round and pastel pink box can be found in a hundred fishmongers and grocery stores throughout Quebec. We are very happy with the answer, says Emmanuel Sandt-Duguay, we have almost no inventory.
He has teamed up with a project manager who does not go to sea. Guillaume Werstink is in charge of making the company work well and smelling the changes.
We know that in fishing, there are ups and downs. Our goal will never be to make 12 million bourbon or sebaste canes! he said. The idea is really to value what is available, then leave the resource alone if it doesn't go well, to move towards what's going well.
Chasse-Marée buys its sebast at the Les Pêcheries gaspésiennes factory in Rivière-au-Renard. Everything is connected! Enough to stimulate orders to the processing plant and give hope to the fisherman Guillaume Synnott, who, despite the current low profitability, is betting on the future of this new fishery.
Get out of the mono-industry
The fate of a village like Rivière-au-Renard depends on it. Almost all of its economy revolves around fishing. Businesses, hardware stores, car dealerships and others thrive when fishermen earn a good living.
We must get out of the mono-industry, says Daniel Côté, to give a recreational tourism momentum to the village.
The mayor of Gaspé climbs the brand new observation tower, covered with light wood. The spiral staircase leads to a view of the beach, the port, the blade breakers and the boats offshore.
At the foot of the tower, a promenade has just been set up with signs on the history of fishing. The project received an award from the Union des municipalités du Québec.
It will not save the economy, acknowledges the mayor. Tourism can never supplant the fishing industry. It is to bring a little water to the mill of the shops, that people stop here by going to Forillon Park. But the fishing industry must regain its luster.
