Record crab and lobster prices drive value of N.L. landings past billion-dollar mark

Tony Doyle is not one to get excited, but the veteran Bay de Verde fisherman couldn't contain a smile when asked about the 2021 fishing season, which will likely go down in history as the best-ever.

"It was remarkable," Doyle says, referring to the $7.60 per pound — more than double last year's price — Doyle and his son Thomas received for the roughly 16,000 pounds of snow crab they landed with their under-40-foot vessel, Tango Delta, this year.

"In regard to prices, it's better than I've ever seen it," adds Doyle, adding that they also received record prices for their lobster landings.

It's not hard to hear upbeat language like that when talking to Newfoundland and Labrador fish harvesters this year, because their bank accounts were likely swollen by incomes of 40 to 50 per cent higher than past years.

"This year was phenomenal. It's the best year we ever had," notes Glen Winslow, owner of the Roberts' Sisters II, a 65-foot vessel based in St. John's. 

It's a scenario that has injected much-needed enthusiasm and financial flexibility into hundreds of coastal communities, and resulted in a windfall for the business sector as this newfound wealth filters its way into everything from shipyards and metal fabrication shops to car dealerships, home improvement stores and restaurants.

"We're not able to do that without the big increase this year," Doyle says of the engine work being done on the Tango Delta, which is high and dry at a shipyard in Harbour Grace.

The same is true for the Roberts' Sisters II, which is at the shipyard in Triton, where a new and expensive stabilization system is being installed on the 21-year-old vessel.

"It's the most amount of money we've spent on the vessel since we got her," says Winslow. "This year we'll spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on the boat, which we could never do before."

Doyle says the mood has changed in his area of the Avalon Peninsula.

"I don't hear so much grumbling now as we did other years because people ... they've been doing good. They've got some extra money to spend," he says.

Based on preliminary data compiled by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, which monitors fishing landings in the province, the amount of money paid to fishing enterprises in the inshore and offshore fleets this year is just over $1 billion, which is a new record.

The previous benchmark of roughly $850 million in landed value was recorded six years ago, but typically, landings are in the $800-million range.

"They've made big investments, and now they're paying off," says fisheries union president Keith Sullivan, who represents some 12,000 inshore harvesters in the province.