The fishery affects me in my everyday life, and has for as long as I can remember.
My father is a fisherman, his father was a fisherman, and so on. And my big brother is a fisherman. Every year, they put pots, nets, traps in the water in a valiant attempt to earn a decent living.
Some fishermen (or fisherpeople, if you want to be politically correct - which I usually don't care overmuch about) DO earn a decent living. These are the ones that fish off of the boats that are owned by the plants.
My point isn't this. I'm talking about the fishermen who own small enterprises, or the inshore fishery. Fishermen like my father.
Fishermen have to buy licenses, in order to legally catch the fish...otherwise, they would be poaching, and run the risk of losing everything. And they have a set amount that they are allowed to catch. They have to buy tags for their gear. They have have dockside monitors (which they have to pay for), which they often have to wait for, before they can unload their catch.
They have to pay for fuel (I don't know about anywhere else, but fuel prices are ridiculous here!), they have to pay for bait (which the plants set the prices for).
My point? Every time a fisherman turns around, there is another expense. I don't think that there's another primary industry like that.
This year's crab season opened Friday past. No one is on the water fishing. All the boats are tied up to the wharves in protest of the slap in the face that the plant owners have termed a fair price. Less than $2 a pound - which makes it completely unfeasible financially to catch anything.
This is the second time in the past 10 years that this has happened.
The fishery is a multi-billion dollar industry, mostly in favor of the plant owners. They claim that they can't afford to pay anymore for the product. But they expect the fishermen to catch it for next to nothing.
Sir William Coaker fought long and hard for the rights of fishermen, and in fact, established the first Fishermen's Unions.
*If you're ever on the East Coast of Newfoundland, and going out towards Bonavista, stop in Port Union - Coaker House is there, which is the birthplace of the aforementioned union.*
The purpose of the union was to end the 'merchant system', whereby the fishermen would be forever in debt to their buyers for everything. They would 'buy' the catch, in exchange for household items, foodstuffs, clothing, and so on. Most years, there would never be enough catch, so the fishermen would start the next season in debt. It was rare indeed for the fishermen to actually see any money. That was the merchant system of my great-grandparents days.
The merchant system is alive and well today. Only now, it has the full support of the government. While the fishermen no longer receive everything they need from they buyers, the buyers still have absolute control over fishermen. In that they can set these insulting prices, that won't give the fishermen enough to live on throughout the season, let alone earn enough to get through the winter.
I don't know what's going on. Newfoundland has seen some prosperity in the last decade, but precious little has made it's way to rural Newfoundland. In fact, it seems that our current government would like nothing better than to see rural Newfoundland wither and die.
If you ever come to Newfoundland, skip the cities, and visit rural Newfoundland. Check out what the government wants to disappear.
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This is my rant for today. Told you some days would be a little more contentious.
~CT
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