Gerry Byrne says it makes perfect sense this be brought to shore in the Bay of Islands.
Fisheries, Forestry and Agriculture Minister Gerry Byrne says the Unit 1 redfish fishery here on the west coast is an enormous sustainable resource if it is harvested correctly. This resource is directly adjacent to NL shores and fishers. Byrne says it makes perfect sense this be brought to shore in the Bay of Islands. He says the federal government of Canada is preventing that from happening and this area has the only inshore fleet that can catch this. Earlier this year, DFO granted the vast majority of this fishery to the offshore factory freezer trawlers. Byrne says none of those vessels are even fishing it. For the past three years under an experimental based scientific fishery NL fishers collected information on this resource and were required to have 25 percent at sea observers on boats. Now there has to be 100 percent at sea observers and there aren’t enough on staff. Byrne says during that time there was no evidence of any bycatch of halibut or any other species. The provincial government recently invested $47,000 to develop a screen to further prevent any bycatch in their trawls. For the 2024-25 season, the Total Allowable Catch for Unit 1 Redfish is set at 60,000 tonnes.
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