A future in Mary's Harbour

Editor

It'd do your heart good to be at the wharf in Mary's Harbour in May or June.

Wet snow blowing out of a grey sky onto a tired old wharf and well worn fish plant dampened few spirits.

"No one minds the weather when there's work on the go," said Janice Suley, who works quality control with the Labrador Fisherman's Union Shrimp Company (LFUSC) plant.

She's right too - that old wharf and fish plant were beehives of activity.

Forklifts scooted between boat and building, boats were tied three deep with fishermen waiting to offload, a fuel truck ran its hose to thirsty marine diesels - it had been a long winter and crab means work and bills paid in Mary's Harbour.

Despite the sequential body blows of quota cuts and price decline which have sent the fishing industry reeling onto the ropes these past two seasons, Mary's Harbour has gotten some good news over recent weeks. First, the LFUSC, a co-operative managing a shrimp plant in Charlottetown and five crab plants on the Southern Labrador coast along with a 3,000 tonne shrimp quota, announced a new $4.5 million crab plant for Mary's Harbour. A big investment into the future of a community of some 400 residents.

According to documents registered with the Environment department, the new plant will utilize modern technology and work methods to produce high quality products, thus making it more profitable than the current operation.

The company plans to construct a pre-engineered steel building measuring 80 feet wide by 260 feet long on Crown land adjacent to the government/plant wharf on the south and the community road to the town centre on the east.

Construction will require the removal of a portion of an embankment and the filling in of about 450 square metres of the harbour.

It's expected that processing activity will take place each year from May to October, with the same volume of raw material currently processed at the existing plant.

The company expects to have a workforce of 65 to 80 employees who will be transferred from the existing plant.

But improvements in production could mean less hours of work for employees. The documents states that the current 12-hour shifts will be replaced with nine-hour shifts.

Then, last week, federal fisheries minister Gail Shea stopped by to allow the community to set up a harbour authority.

"There hasn't been much work done on our wharf in a while - it's a small wharf and a lot of fishing vessels tie up to it," said Mayor Larry Rumbolt. "Now we can tap into federal funding to upgrade the wharf that's there, maybe look at extensions. As for the fish plant announcement - it's wonderful news. Across the province you hear of plants closing, but the Labrador Fisherman's Union takes care of its workers and communities."

Understandably, Mayor Rumbolt had words of praise for Cartwright to L'Anse au Clair MHA Yvonne Jones and MP Todd Russell, but he gave particular credit to Alton Rumbolt - the president of the local fisherman's committee who's been campaigning for a harbour authority for near a decade.

Go back to the end of May, well before the announcements of shrimp quota cuts, new plant and harbour authority, and you'd find Dwight Russell waiting to have his crab offloaded from the 65 foot Miss McKenzie.

"There's a future here in the fishery, maybe on a smaller scale, but with the resource off this coast there is a future for some," said Mr. Russell, looking out from his bridge to men and women offloading boats in rubber clothes. "But it's not easy. If you're only fishing one quota there's no way to make it."

Mr. Russell started off fishing from speedboat with his uncles, he's a relatively young man who's thrown his lot in with the fishery.

"The bank owns her," he said of the modern dragger, endowed with a northern shrimp quota and two crab quotas with a partnership in a third. "We need 100,000 lbs of crab just to make overhead. You need to give your crew a good season to keep them. But right now, we're fishing this boat as much as we can. We're busy."

Southern Labrador is noticeable for being quiet - while protests, accusations and counter accusations between plant workers, the Fish, Food and Allied Workers Union, processing companies and the fisheries minister, have heralded spring on the island, Labrador is quiet.

Quiet because people are working.

The LFUSC is a fishermen run co-operative, created from a 3,000 tonne shrimp quota granted to the locally operated board over two decades ago. Two others have come since - St. Anthony Basin Resources Incorporated got one to be used toward economic development and the North of Fifty Thirty Association got one (and lost it with this year's quota cuts) to benefit small boat fishermen hurt by the cod moratorium.

When he's not fishing or spending time at home, Mr. Russell is also vice president of the LFUSC.

He explained that while they've managed to operate their plants, the LFUSC has been hit by the economic downturn too.

"The last few years the plants have been hard to operate," said Mr. Russell. "Our biggest problem is a lack of volume - a shrimp quota cut would seriously affect the viability of the Charlottetown plant."

Another problem he sees is mismanagement of the resource - too many fishermen he says were given access to the shellfish resources and now with quota cuts, there are many unviable enterprises.

"We're adjacent to the resource, so we shouldn't take the cuts," he said. "These towns can't survive without fish."

But like Mayor Rumbolt, Mr. Russell said the LFUSC won't be giving up.

"This is a good place to live and it's worth the struggles."