“You have other regions that have supply, you have consumers changing in behaviour, you have currency risk and so it’s not good or bad it is a high risk business to be in, there is no getting around it.”
While the jump in US selling price is good news for some, the settled price of $1.35 for harvesters still makes life tough - especially when you are not catching your quota.
“We knew the market was looking good for this year and it was only going to go upwards,” Mr Broderick said.
“The companies were in panic mode that the price was going to go down, we couldn’t figure out where they were getting that from.
“The finished product is upwards of $4 but when we were negotiating in the spring the price was $3.40 to $3.50 a pound.
“We probably would have ended up with a higher price if we had known where the market was going to go where it went but that’s the wise man having his afterthought beforehand.
“You can’t predict that, if you could you’d be a rich man.”
The biggest question is what happened to the crab?
“It’s either the crab gives up eatin’, the water got cold, I don’t know what happened to it,” Mr Fitzpatrick said.
“Now this is all speculation and I don’t know myself but some scientists have said that when the liver in the crab is small then the crab is not eatin’ and this year the liver in the crab is smaller than normal.
“I’m only going with what the scientists are saying but some of them have been at this crab for 25 or 30 years.”
As Mr Fitzpatrick looked back out through the headlands of Goose Cove, the last of his snow crab heading for the weighing station, he pondered the last question — what about next year?
“You’ve got to take it as it comes,” he said leaping down from the pan of his truck.
“You can’t go thinking about it you just got to keep on doing what you got to do.
“There’s not a lot of money in this racket, at times you can spend more than you make so when the crab is slow, it’s hard times.
“It’s a rough game.”
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