SNOW CRAB ZONE 12

Offering  sustainable seafood to the consumer is important for us and to do so, our fishermen and processors made possible to  achieve MSC certification in 2012.  

In 2018 and 2019, the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) certification of the Gulf of St. Lawrence Canadian snow crab trap fishery is suspended due to NARW mortalities.

We take what happens to the Right Whale seriously. Already in 2017,  a dedicated group made of our fisherman, scientist, engineers and others  are actively and urgently trying to find solutions to this emergent problem mainly caused by climate change.  

We rapidly understood that our snow crab fishery  and industry now depends on avoiding entanglements of any species,  but specifically NARW and to do so, fishery management reforms and alternative gear  is  the key. 

Along with the fishery management reforms aligned by the Canadian Government, we have put in place several trials of  different type of weak  link and ropeless gear in the last years as we consider urgent to  see ropeless commercial fishing going on here in Canada in the close future.

We took the opportunity to be a leader  in getting this type of gear off the shelf and into the water.  Our success could set the precedent for other fisheries grappling with whale  (and other species) entanglement problems.

We realize that our fisheries's pro activity  is in fact the basis of what is called a Fishery Improvement Project  (FIP) and our primary goal is to make a difference in being an active leader toward sustainable fisheries in this climate change era .

Through  this ordeal, an incredible collaboration is taking place between the different fisherman associations and processors  from Quebec and New Brunswick. 

We are confident that our unified and combined effort is the key to improvements to endangered, threatened, and protected (ETP) species impacts in the Gulf of St. Lawrence snow crab fishery and effective work to reduce risk to NARW.

That is what our Fishery Improvement Project is  all about, welcome.