With crab and lobster season about to open, Quebec fishermen worry over cramped working conditions.
Leon Keats is set to go out to sea on April 20 to harvest crab in Zone 16A, off Anticosti Island.
But the fishing captain wonders how he can do his job while respecting public health guidelines to limit the spread of the coronavirus, and without endangering residents of Kegaska, the village on the Lower North Shore, where he docks his boat during the 14-week period.
“It’s unsanitary, and it’s impossible for us to live by the guidelines that Health Canada is asking us to respect right now,” said Keats. “It’s utterly impossible.”
Keats and other fishermen in Eastern Quebec are asking Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) to postpone the fishing season to ensure workers and residents of small fishing towns aren’t unnecessarily exposed to COVID-19.
Kegaska, 425 kilometres east of Sept-Îles, is home to 100 full-time residents.
During crab season, the population of the town doubles, with fishermen setting up shop at the local wharf and unloading their catches at the fish-processing plant at the end of the day.
“Having an influx of a hundred or more fishermen in one little confined marina, you cannot practise safe distancing,” said Keats.
He is also concerned for the health of fishermen, who are, on average, over the age of 50 and won’t have an isolated place to clean up and rest.
“They are more susceptible to COVID-19, and it could be more serious,” he said.
Across the Gulf of St. Lawrence, on the southern Gaspé coast, O’Neil Cloutier echoes Keats concerns.
Cloutier is the general manager of the Regroupement des pêcheurs du sud de la Gaspésie.
He would like to see the lobster season postponed by another two weeks.
“It’s our social responsibility,” he said.
Lobster boats are even smaller than crab boats, Cloutier said, making it impossible for the 160 Gaspé fishermen to keep a two-metre distance from one another.
“There is a reason why we’re scared,” said Cloutier, who reiterated his request to DFO on Tuesday morning.
Delaying by two weeks would also leave some breathing room for fish processing plants, he said, that are also trying to cope with the pandemic.
Over the week-end, one of Quebec’s largest fish plants in Sainte-Thérèse-de-Gaspé had to shut down its operations because a worker contracted COVID-19.
On Tuesday, public health officials in the Gaspé confirmed two more employees at E. Gagnon et Fils plant tested positive for COVID-19, as did a fisherman who works for the company.
Vice-president Bill Sheehan said the plant will remain closed until it gets the all-clear from public health officials.
“I just hope it’s going to be the last time we have to deal with this problem this year,” Sheehan said.
Sheehan said having to shut down at the beginning of the season, when the plant was only operating at around 10 per cent capacity, is a lesser evil.
At the height of the season, the company employs nearly 600 workers, with 350 to 400 working in the processing plant.
In the meantime, crab fishermen in Zone 17, near Rimouski, are sending their products to other transformation plants in the region.
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