Food fishery needs revamping

There are usually half a dozen boats just beyond the mouth of the cove most days during the summer food fishery. This week … none. A few boats were there briefly, but then either came in or went elsewhere.

It’s due to the wretched weather, of course. Wind, rain and cold have a way of encouraging most boats to stay tied to the wharf.

At least this year — knock on a wooden gunwale — there haven’t been any deaths. Last year, bad weather also greeted the opening of the summer food fishery, but some eager people went out anyway. A man was killed when the boat he was in overturned.

The Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) owes it to the people of this province to change the dates of the summer food fishery. Instead of being confined to a mere three weeks, the food fishery should take place all summer — all of July and all of August.

By extension, the fall food fishery, rather than being confined to one week in September, should take place for the full month.

The main, most important benefit of such a change would be to increase the safety of people who participate in the food fishery.

With a mere three-week window to fish, people are tempted to go out on the water when it is inadvisable, risky or outright dangerous.

With a nine-week food fishery, participants would have time to pick and choose good days to go out, and ignore days when there is wind and/or swells.

A full-month fall food fishery would have equal benefit. A one-week opening during the third week of September is preposterous. This year’s dates are Sept. 19-27. Recall that hurricane Igor hit the province on Sept. 21, 2010 — in the midst of the fall food fishery. A one-week opening at that time of year is bureaucratic lunacy. Stormy weather, and thus danger, is a given.

Landlubbers and armchair environmentalists will predictably wail that tripling the length of the food fishery will triple the amount of cod taken and further deplete an already horrifically low stock.

No, it won’t. Tripling the length of the food fishery will not mean people will go fishing three times as often, nor that they will catch three times as much fish.

What it will mean is that people will be able to select the best days to go fishing. Water too rough? Skip today and go tomorrow.

Also, on weekdays people wouldn’t have to dash to the wharf right after work to get in a few hours of fishing. They could fish on weekends, which most people prefer, for obvious reasons.

Changing the summer food fishery from three weeks to nine weeks wouldn’t necessarily mean a lot more trips are taken and a lot more fish are caught. Rather, it would mean people could choose to go out in fine weather and avoid the temptation to go out in bad weather.

It is ironic that the imposition of the cod moratorium in 1992 made national headlines — as it should have — but the end of the moratorium didn’t even make the news.

In 2014, the commercial fishery in Newfoundland took 11,273 metric tonnes of cod. This year, the commercial fishery’s quota for cod is 12,369 metric tonnes, according to DFO’s website.

DFO commissioned a study in 2007 to determine how much cod was being caught during the food fishery (which the department insists on calling the “recreational fishery”). Across the province, participants in the summer and fall food fisheries took a total of 2,438 metric tonnes of cod.

DFO’s time-limited food fishery is illogical, and cannot be defended either in terms of conservation nor, especially, in terms of safety.