RISKING IT ALL AT SEA
Fishing can be cruel, but the crueller economics of the industry make some tempt fate
HALIFAX On Feb. 12, 2013, an unseasonably warm evening, five young fishermen departed the West Head wharf on Cape Sable Island, N.S., aboard the Miss Ally, a 12-metre Cape Islander. The men, spanning in age from 21 to 33 — three of them fathers of young children — were headed out in pursuit of halibut, a valuable winter catch.
On deck that night were Billy Jack Hatfield, a recently engaged 33-year-old; Cole Nickerson, 28, a burly and strong former junior hockey player; Joel Hopkins, a 27-year-old father of two who loved the thrill of fishing; and Tyson Townsend, 25, a gifted athlete with a seven-month-old daughter.
At the wheel, piloting the boat into darkness, was Katlin Nickerson, Miss Ally’s 21-year-old captain and owner. Two years earlier, Nickerson — from nearby Woods Harbour — paid roughly $700,000 for his boat, gear and a lobster licence.
Only three years out of high school, Katlin Nickerson, the grandson of one of Woods Harbour’s top fishermen, had his own boat and an experienced crew. But Nickerson was struggling financially, especially following two years of poor prices in the lobster fishery.
During the most recent lobster season, 2012-13, Nickerson wasn’t making any money, yet he still had large payments to make. “The boy was in debt to his eyeballs, let’s face it,” said John Symonds, a fellow Woods Harbour captain and friend of Nickerson.
That financial pressure contributed to Nickerson’s aggressive and sometimes questionable decisions on the water.
“He knew he was, so to speak, playing with fire,” Symonds said during interviews for a recent book about the Miss Ally sinking, The Sea Was in Their Blood.
“He knew he was pushing it to the limit. But he had to, because he had these big bills.”
Commercial fishing is a dangerous occupation. An average of five to six fishing-related deaths occur each year in Nova Scotia alone. According to the Transportation Safety Board (TSB), 55 deaths occurred on Canadian fishing vessels between 1999 and August 2015 simply due to people falling overboard. It’s also an industry of huge costs.
Boats for lobstering and longlining for ground fish can easily cost more than $500,000. Licences cost tens and even hundreds of thousands of dollars. In Nova Scotia, a trio of licences — lobster, mackerel and herring — was recently listed for sale at $450,000. Lobster and crab licences, depending on recent landings, can go for more than $1 million. Many fishermen view their licences as retirement investments — something to sell for a good price at the end of their careers.
In a July speech in Western Shore, N.S., Fisheries Minister Dominic LeBlanc said licences are “over-valued” and added he wanted to make the “licensing process fairer,” while calling on the industry to help him fix the situation.
“Fishing licences have become over-valued in recent years, especially here in southwest Nova Scotia. This makes it extremely difficult for young fishermen to access the fishery, and more often than not prevents new entrants altogether,” he said in the text of the speech. “A system where access to a fishing licence is determined by who you’re related to or how many hundreds of thousands of dollars you have, or how much debt you are willing to take on, seems unfair.”
Melanie Sonnenberg, president of the Canadian Independent Fish Harvesters’ Federation, said most Canadians don’t understand the costs and financial risk associated with commercial fishing.
“It’s not just the boats and gear. There’s rules and regulations that have costs to them,” said Sonnenberg, whose Shédiac, N.B.-based group represents thousands of fishermen on both coasts. She points to expensive equipment, much of it mandatory, such as life rafts, survival suits and Emergency Position-Indicating Radio Beacons (EPIRBs).
Does Sonnenberg believe financial pressures are causing fishermen to make risky decisions on the water? “I would hope that that’s not the case,” she said in a recent interview from Grand Manan Island, N.B. Though she admitted: “It’s a big coastline”.
LeBlanc offered a similar response. “We should never create circumstances where fishers, because of economic pressure, take risks,” he said in an interview.
In Nickerson’s case, he financed his purchase through the Nova Scotia Vessel Loan Program, a provincial program that provides loans to fishermen building and buying boats.
February is a dangerous month to fish offshore, particularly in a 40-foot Cape Islander. But that’s when the price of halibut is best, rising 25 to 50 per cent because the supply is low. Fewer fishermen are willing to go after halibut in winter so suppliers pay more for it.
Nickerson and his crew sought their catch of halibut south of LaHave Bank, nearly 200 kilometres from Halifax, close to where the continental shelf drops off to deeper water. In February 2013, halibut was fetching $7 to $10 a pound, causing what was described then as an “explosion” in the halibut fishery.
Nickerson still had numerous expenses, as many fishing boat owners do. Symonds lists some: loan payments, an insurance bill of roughly $4,000, and annual maintenance costs in the $15,000-to$20,000 range.
“When you start out with a second-hand boat and garbage for gear, and you’re $700,000 or $800,000 or more in the red, I’m gonna tell you what: you want to get out of bed in the morning. You don’t want to be snoozing,” Symonds said. “Because when you get behind, you’re done.”
It’s a point echoed by Nickerson’s father, Todd, also a fisherman: “He got himself in quite the hole.”
Nickerson was more than eager to pursue well-priced halibut in the winter of 2013. On Feb. 17, after five days on the water, Nickerson and his crew had a solid catch on ice in the hold: between 15,000 and 20,000 pounds, worth up to $160,000. But Nickerson still had to guide that haul, his crew and the Miss Ally through a massive winter storm. Environment Canada had for two days been warning that a major storm was approaching from Cape Hatteras.
The dire forecast prompted other local captains to haul in their longlining gear and steam for shore. Aboard the Miss Ally, a broken spotlight prevented the crew from finding their gear in the dark. Nickerson decided to stay overnight, haul the gear in the morning light, and then head for home. They eventually secured the gear, but didn’t start for shore until late afternoon.
Within hours of departing, the fishing grounds the Miss Ally was on were being thrashed by large waves, many of them more than 10 metres tall. One wave, recorded by a nearby weather buoy, measured 18.6 metres, making it equal in size to the largest waves recorded off Halifax during hurricane Juan in 2003. At least one wave landed on deck, damaging the boat. Equally startling, Nickerson reported hurricane-force winds of 80 knots (150 kilometres an hour).
On shore, family members and search and rescue personnel — including the Coast Guard — knew the men were in peril, caught in a vice of wicked winter weather.
Shortly after 11 p.m., Nickerson’s EPIRB was detected by satellite, signalling that something disastrous had occurred aboard the boat.
A search and rescue effort was launched with two Coast Guard vessels. The storm was so severe that no search and rescue aircraft could take off from Nova Scotia during the initial hours of the search; the American Coast Guard sent the first plane.
Despite a two-day search, the men aboard the Miss Ally were never found.
Financial Post Quentin Casey is the author of The Sea Was in Their Blood, published in April 2017, about the Miss Ally sinking.