Baffin Fisheries sees big opportunities in Nunavut shrimp

The Baffin Fisheries Coalition wants to put more emphasis on Nunavut’s shrimp offshore fishery. (FILE PHOTO)

With Nunavut’s turbot quota largely sewn up, the Baffin Fisheries Coalition is looking to the other main fishery of Nunavut’s offshore waters: its shrimp.

Locally based fishing companies have quota for only 31 per cent of the shrimp in Nunavut’s offshore waters but even that is under-harvested, said the company’s CEO, Gerry Ward.

“Our focus is to now try and duplicate the success that we’ve had with turbot with the shrimp business in Nunavut’s adjacent waters,” Ward said.

Most of the shrimp quota for Nunavut’s offshore waters is licenced now to international operations, something Ward would like to change.

BFC has arranged an exploratory shrimp fishery to be conducted in Baffin Bay this summer.

Ward said there was little interest among Canadian boat owners in the south in shrimping off Nunavut because the shrimp fisheries off Newfoundland and Labrador are still productive.

Moreover, shrimp prices have declined due to a global oversupply mainly due to shrimp farming in developing nations.

So, a ship from the United Kingdom will conduct the exploration, with permission from the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans.

Meanwhile Nunavut’s share of its offshore turbot quota has never been stronger.

The 0A area – off Baffin Island from Kane Basin to just south of the Arctic Circle – is entirely licenced to companies based in Nunavut.

The 0B area – south of 0A as far south as Resolution Island – is still mainly fished from southern Canada.

But in November 2009 DFO increased the 0A quota by 2000 tones, the bulk of which went to Nunavut companies.

Between the 0A and 0B regions, Nunavut-based businesses hold the quota for 70 per cent of the annual catch off Baffin Island.

Niqitaq Fisheries – Baffin Fisheries’ arms-length operations arm – has two ships fishing turbot and a third just purchased, explained Niqitaq’s chairman, Johnny Mike.

That new ship is the first that Niqitaq owns entirely on its own, without international partners.

Ward emphasized the Niqitaq is an Inuit-owned company, compliant with the NNI policy and so entitled to a seven per cent advantage in pursuing contracts with the government of Nunavut.

The other two boats are Niqitaq-majority owned at 51 per cent.