The lobster fishing effort in lobster fishing areas (LFA) 33 and 34 was starting to pick up as the six-month season was entering the final two months.
The shore price reached a season high of $16 to $17 per pound in late March, indicative of the low landings and inventory.
“The market hasn’t really picked up. There’s not a lot of big interest in China. We had a little shot in the last two weeks where things picked up pretty good. Most of the inventory is cleaned out. Now it’s just fresh caughts,” said Mike Cotter, owner of Cotter’s Ocean Products in Lockeport.
Fishermen in the Lockeport area have been able to go about once a week during February and March due to the weather,” said Cotter.
“The sun has crossed the line so now they are going to start placing their wooden gear and get ready for spring. The water temperature is still cold. We had a lot of ice and a lot of runoff. It’s giving bad weather for the next few days that isn’t going to help. We’re still in March. See what April brings. If the water starts warming up, we might get a season out of it,” said Cotter.
“The water is just so cold. It’s March. The water hasn’t warmed up yet. I think the lobsters are there, they are just not moving and trapping,” said Dan Fleck, executive director of the Brazil Rock 33/34 Lobster Association.
As March was winding down, fishing effort was starting to pick up.
“Offshore boats are moving to their spring grounds closer to shore and people are trying to capture their spots before they lose them because everybody’s going to be on it in another couple of weeks. When we get into the first week of April is when we see a real increase in the activity,” Fleck said.
With mandatory electronic logbooks (ELOGs) coming next fall for commercial lobster fishermen in Southwestern Nova Scotia, both Brazil Rock and the Coldwater Lobster Association hosted ELOGs training sessions during March, using the Captain’s Elog app, developed by the P.E.I. Fishermen’s Association (PEIFA) and Socilogica Technology Ltd.
Fleck said the training sessions were very well attended, with more than 300 people turning out for the sessions Brazil Rock hosted. “We just want to help everybody get accustomed to this new thing,” said Fleck.
There are a number of ELOG entries that go above and beyond the paper log entries that industry doesn’t agree with and feel are not necessary, said Fleck, adding they are advocating for change.
So far, they have been successful on one front, said Fleck. Gone is the requirement to fill in “in-activity days“ — days fishermen don’t go fishing.
“That’s gone so we don’t have to worry about that now. Bait requirement, we’re advocating to get rid of that and the other is the time stamps,” said Fleck.
With ELOGs, for each fishing trip, fishermen are asked to record the time they leave the wharf, the time they start fishing, the time they finish and the time they return to the wharf.
“That’s a whole lot of extra and we can’t determine why they want all of this and no one in DFO has given us a clear response as to why, only that Ottawa wants it,” said Fleck.
Generally speaking, going into the training sessions people were okay with the transition to ELOGs, said Fleck.
“A lot of people showed up with their app downloaded and had their password ready to go but as soon as they seen these other things that are unnecessarily intrusive, that’s when people lost the spirit of cooperation. They don’t want to do it now, all of these additional things that people don’t believe they need.”
ELOGs also became mandatory when LFAs in eastern Nova Scotia opened this spring.
The LFA 33/34 fishery closes on May 31.
