The Atlantic Groundfish Council says misleading information is muddying the waters over catch allocations for a commercial cod fishery—the first since the moratorium in 1992.
The council held a briefing this morning regarding DFO’s decision to distribute 18,000 tonnes of northern cod to both inshore and offshore fleets this year.
The FFAW has slammed the move, insisting anything under 115,000 tonnes should only be fished by inshore harvesters, in order to protect the stock as it tries to grow.
But during this morning’s briefing, president of the groundfish council, Sylvie Lapointe, took issue with that position.
“There continues to be a lot of misleading information in the public domain, and I would just emphasize that the 115,000 tonnes that is talked about a lot in terms of a cap for the inshore, was actually due to poor quality, landing gluts and poor market returns,” she said, adding “it was always meant to provide priority access to the inshore, not exclusive access to the northern cod fishery by the inshore.”
It was also noted that just 5,000 tonnes of cod for one plant can translate to about $15 million for the local community.