On the face of it, this looks like a great project: a bunch of provincial government cash to pay a bunch of lobster fishermen to track their catches.
"This project is an example of harvesters taking a direct role in the stewardship of the fishery and having input into the management of the resource," said the Honourable Trevor Taylor, acting Minister of Fisheries and Aquaculture. "As such, our government is pleased to approve funding for this initiative. This is important work because it is the most extensive attempt to date to profile lobster stocks."
Ummm.
Not exactly.
The fishermen involved in this provincial government project can't make any decisions about the lobster fishery. They can't have any meaningful input on quotas, season or anything else.
That's because all they are going to do is write down in a notebook how many lobsters they landed (excluding the unofficial ones to be sold under the table later on), how big they were and so on.
Now while there is lots of talk about this whole thing being scientific, note that it is being run by the Fish, Food and Allied Workers Union. That's right, the union which represents the people who will be getting the cash for making notes in a book.
There's no mention of Memorial University, the Marine Institute or any other crowd of scientists.
There's just the people who catch lobsters and their union.
Now for an example of fishermen having real control over their livelihood, take a look at the Eastport Marine Protected Area, now expanded to five sites along the northeast coast.
As for science, the whole approach in these lobster management areas is based on science. It has been since they were established.
If the provincial fisheries department and the hunter-gatherers union really wanted to get interested in fisheries management, conservation and a scientifically based approach, they'd be working with the federal fisheries crowd.
This provincial initiative doesn't look like anything significant. It looks more like make-work in another guise or a political statement.
After all, it's only $10,000.
The Newfoundland and Labrador Legacy Nature Trust already administered over half a million in federal cash on one study four years ago.
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