Falling turbot prices hurt Pangnirtung Fisheries

DWANE WILKIN
Nunatsiaq News

IQALUIT — Pangnirtung fish plant workers finished processing the winter’s offshore turbot catch last week as faltering world prices dampened the company’s profit outlook.

Peter Kilabuk, chairman of the board at Pangirtung Fisheries, reported a “very good” season, despite turbulent market conditions triggered by a currency crisis in Asia.

Now, concerns about the effect of unstable prices on the plant’s future operations are emerging as planning for the 1998-99 season gets underway.

“It certainly puts a scare into the whole picture,” Kilabuk said. “If they stay the way they are, we’re certainly going to have to do a little adjusting here and there.”

What those market conditions will look like in six months or a year’s time will depend largely on what happens half-way around the world in turbot-eating counties like Japan, China, Korea and Taiwan, Kilabuk said.

The recent collapse in the value of Asian currencies stifled demand for foreign-fished turbot this winter.

As Asia lost its appetite, the small east Baffin fishery faced stiff competition in its U.S. market from large southern companies eager to find alternative buyers.

“A lot of the companies were pretty much dumping it into the market at incredibly low prices just to get rid of their fish,” Kilabuk said.

This year’s offshore fishery was still worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in direct wages to employees, though. Offshore fish accounts for the bulk of activity at the plant, which is 49 per cent owned by the community-based Cumberland Sound Fisheries.

The NWT Development Corporation holds the other 51 per cent share.

Under contract with Davis Strait Fisheries of Halifax for the third year in a row, the deep sea trawler MV Fame landed 212 metric tonnes of turbot for processing at the Pangnirtung plant last November.

The catch kept between 40 and 50 plant workers busy every day until last week, processing fish for shipment to the company’s Boston-based distributor.

“In the couple of years we’ve done offshore fish, we’ve certainly learned a lot,” Kilabuk said, “and we’re taking steps this year to increase and improve the overall fisheries.”

Prospects for this year’s inshore fishery aren’t as bright, as ice conditions keep long-line fishers from reaching Cumberland Sound’s richest turbot grounds.

A month into the inshore season, the plant has taken in just 5,000 lbs of fish.

“When it was going really well a few year’s back, at this time we probably would have had a couple hundred pounds of fish already. So the ice has certainly played a big role,” Kilabuk said.

Cumberland Sound Fisheries manages Pangnirtung’s annual turbot quota of 600 metric tonnes — a little more than a third of the 1,500 tonnes allocated to Nunavut communities by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans last year.

“We’ll be keeping our fingers crossed that the fishermen can make some money and keep some employees going on the plant for a couple months more.”