Summer turbot fishery looks good: Pang Fisheries
Start of Nunavut fishing season yields splendid turbot catch

Crew members of the 48-foot L’Anse Amour Venture unload more than 10,000 lbs of turbot directly onto Pangnirtung’s wharf on Aug. 15. The week before, Venture was the first boat that large ever to unload its catch directly without having to ferry it to shore on smaller boats, said Don Cunningham, the general manager of Pangnirtung Fisheries. (PHOTO COURTESY OF THE DEPARTMENT OF ENVIRONMENT)
Experimental fishing in Cumberland Sound suggests that the economic potential for a Pangnirtung-based summer turbot-fishing industry looks good, says a spokesman for Pangnirtung Fisheries.
“It looks like it’s doable right now,” said Donald Cunningham, the company’s general manager. “We are learning to do things every year:”
With support from Government of Nunavut and federal agencies, Pangnirtung Fisheries has hired the 48-foot L’Anse Amour Venture out of Labrador to fish the turbot of Cumberland Sound.
On Aug. 15, the Venture docked and unloaded directly onto Pangnirtung’s small wharf, so far the only ship that large to ever do so.
The Venture unloaded over 10,000 pounds of turbot fished over four days during its second trip out of Pangnirtung.
The Venture can hold about 35,000 to 40,000 pounds, but without a refrigerator, it must unload frequently to get the catch to Pangnirtung Fisheries’s cold storage before the fish spoil.
That capacity limits its time at sea and, at best, the boat probably can unload no more than 20,000 pounds at a time, Cunningham said.
But Cumberland Sound’s turbot-filled waters lie only three to four hours away from Pangnirtung, so it’s a far more efficient fishery than some others, where boats must spend days at sea before dropping their longlines.
The Venture is the type of vessel that would be affordable for Inuit fishermen who want to go into the summer turbot-fishing business, Cunningham said.
But to earn money an owner should be able to earn a gross income equivalent to the cost of the boat over one season.
So over the three-month fishing season, a ship like the Venture would have to net 200,000 pounds in total, that is about 15,000 pounds a week, and sell them to Pangnirtung Fisheries at $1 a pound to be profitable.
And if two or three such boats plied the waters of Cumberland Sound, then each might be its own little business, Cunningham added.
The Venture‘s next catch may be better, as a lot of equipment to Greenland sharks, which attacked the hooked turbot, he said, although, according to the last two summer’s experience, these sharks are only a problem at the start of the summer fishing season.
The Venture’s first trip out brought on only 600 pounds of turbot as a result of the sharks.
Cunningham hopes to arrange a weekly schedule for the Venture so that it doesn’t have to land on the weekend when it’s hard to staff the fish plant to process the catch.
All told, this summer the Venture will likely have fished 60,000 to 70,000 tonnes by season’s end in mid-to late October.
The terms of the Venture’s charter guarantees its owner will get paid for a catch of 20,000 pounds a week even if it doesn’t bring that much.
Cumberland Sound has a special inshore annual turbot quota of 500 tonnes, which includes both summer fishing and winter.
Last winter’s fishery drew little participation, and only 20 tonnes came out of the water. That’s less than 160 tonnes the previous winter.
A summer fishery could allow Pangnirtung Fisheries to ship out its product at the end of the fishing season in October, either by back-freight sealift or by chartered refrigerator vessel.
Pangnirtung’s winter fishery can only move the fish out by air, at a far greater expense.
The Venture’s presence in Cumberland Sound is the third summer of an experiment by Pangnirtung Fisheries to develop a summer turbot industry.
In the summer of 2008, small, 26-foot local boats went out for turbot, only to discover they were too small to carry the catch or keep enough rope on board to drop longlines to reach the turbot, often more than a kilometre down.
In 2009, the 84-foot Stelie II out of Newfoundland explored the turbot of Cumberland Sound, and its maps have helped direct the Venture.
But Stelie II’s captain was so impressed with the potential of Cumberland Sound that he brought his boat back this year with no economic support except research funding to tag and release turbot and sharks at the same time.
Stelie II has been fishing the waters in zone OA, outside Cumberland Sound, and landing its catch in Pangnirtung.
Unlike the smaller Venture, it can’t dock at Pangnirtung’s small wharf so small boats must ferry its catch in 15-pound palettes.
The Cumberland Sound Fisheries, which owns 49 per cent of Pangnirtung Fisheries, now wants to buy Stelie II for $400,000.
If that happens, it will fish off Pangnirtung in the summer and then fish in the winter farther south.
The Venture, meanwhile, is small enough to haul out of the water at season’s end and over-winter on Pangnirtung’s beach.
The two boats show what could be possible if Pangnirtung gets the small craft harbour, announced by the federal government in 2009.
The harbour is to be designed for ships up to 90 feet long — large enough for Stelie II to dock even at low tide — and is slated for completion in 2012.
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