Return to scallops could ramp up fishery in Nunatsiavut

The Torngat Fish Producers Co-operative wants to buy scallops from fish harvesters, more than a decade after interest in the fishery dried up.

The group conducted a survey in the fall to show potential harvesters the stock is still off the coast of Nain and Makkovikand remains healthy.

Co-operative general manager Keith Wattsbelieves scallopsstrengthen the overall fishery in Nunatsiavut and they wish people had never stopped taking them from the sea.

"We've never given up on the scallop," he said."It's just that people didn't want to fish it."

Before the survey took 800 pounds of Icelandlic scallops from the water, the species hadn't been fished since 2006.

The inshore shrimp and crab fishery was more stable at the time, he said, and people didn't have a need to move up north to fish for a living.

With only two or three commercialboatslocated in Nunatsiavut, it created a major problem for the co-operative.

"The capacity for fishers with vessels is almost nil on the north coast," Watts said.

Lower grade of scallop, still valuable

Icelandic scallops are also less valuablethan sea scallops, which are typically only fished as far north as the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Watts doesn't blame the fish harvesters for ditching the practice when something more valuable came along.

"We weren't able to pay what they thought we should be paying," he said."But we can only pay what the market dictates."

Watts said the product is still valuable, and estimates it would sell for about $16 a pound.

Now that quotas for shrimp and crab have become more and more restrictive, Watts hopes harvesters from the south coast of Labrador and the Northern Peninsula of Newfoundland will once again return to scallops.

"We'll be open to purchase scallop and process scallop next year, as we have been in the past, but we're hopeful that we may be able to restart the scallop fishery in Nain," he said.

Fishing boats from outside Nunatsiavut are required to have a designate from the local area on board to fish the quota of the Nunatsiavutgovernment.

Watts believes it will be a stabilizing boostto the local plant workers, as well as everyone on the water.

"It will be economically beneficial to those people and of course to the designates who fish on those vessels as well."

Read more from CBC Newfoundland and Labrador