Aging Lobster Fishers Fight 45-Year-Old Rule That Will Rob Families Of Their Licenses
HALIFAX — A group of aging lobster fishers is calling on the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) to change a decades-old rule they say will rob their families of financial support once they’re gone.
There are only 82 Class B lobster fishers left in the Maritimes. After decades of being dismissed by the DFO, some of them have hired lawyers and a public relations firm to try and finally change the department’s mind.
The Moonlighters
In 1976, the federal government was worried about conservation and wanted fewer people fishing lobster.
As it was paring down the number of fishers, it created a “moonlighter policy” for people that worked in the industry but had other jobs.
The lobster fishery of 1976 wasn’t as lucrative as it is today, and many fishers worked to bolster their fishing income. The government’s new “Class B” licenses allowed these fishers to stay in the industry but came with several caveats.
Class B licenses are only allowed 30 percent as many traps as Class A licenses. They also expire when the license holder dies. That means they can’t be sold or passed down to family members.
Today, 45 years after the policy was created, a dwindling group of aging Class B fishers is pleading with DFO to change the rule.
They argue the 1976 conservation concerns don’t make sense in 2021 and say the policy will rob fishers’ families of financial support once they’re gone.
Some have been fighting to have the rule changed for decades but say the DFO has never appeared to take their concerns seriously.
Giving His Family A Better Life
Donald Publicover is one of the 82 remaining Class B fishers. At 68, is he is one of the youngest.
He’s been fishing for close to 60 years (he started, he says, throwing a few traps from a boat under the watchful eye of his parents) and still remembers having a Class B license foisted on him.
“It was a short-handed thing that the government did to us. I don’t think they realized what they were doing at the time, but they were hurting a lot of fishermen who were putting into the economy,” he says.
Publicover feels like the DFO has spurned him throughout his career as a fisher. But the refusal to let him sell his license to support his family is the ultimate insult.
Publicover has two special needs adults at home with him and says, if he could, he would sell his license and use the money to set them up to be supported once he’s gone.
“I want to provide an opportunity to them that they can live in their own house if I go… That’s a big issue for me,” he says. “To me, it is really personal because I want to provide for my family; I want to give them an opportunity.”
The End Of A Family Enterprise
Cyril Dicks is the son of George Dicks, another Class B lobster license holder. Dicks says he fished with his father all his life and that three generations of his family have been a part of the business.
At one time or another, he’s fished with his brothers, sister, nieces, nephews, and children. This Halloween, his six-month-old grandson dressed up as a lobster in a pot.
Lobster fishing, he says, is a family enterprise. And losing that enterprise would be “devastating.”
“It’s gonna be hurtful. It’s gonna be hurtful financially. It’s gonna hurt; It’s gonna hurt,” he says. “The bond that can be created in families that remain in this industry [is huge]. I fish with my brothers. I fish with my father. I fished with my father all my life, people thought we were brothers,” he says.
Dicks’ father is in his 80 and has dementia so can’t use his license himself, but Dicks still fishes under it. He says using a license that could be ripped away at any minute is tough.
“When I go fishing, I’m compromised all around,” he says.
Dicks would like to buy a whole new fleet of traps, which would cost him about $10,000. He’s also stuck using a decades-old boat and outdated gear and technology.
Class B fishers must also pay the same as Class A fishers for wharfage fees, storage fees, and other costs.
But he can’t justify making any major investments in the family enterprise because he doesn’t know if their license will exist next season.
When his dad is gone, it probably means the end of lobster fishing for Dicks and his family.
He says they could buy their own Class A license, but that would likely mean spending at least $500,000 “for a license we shouldn’t even have to buy.”
Change Would Cost Nothing
Michel Samson is a lawyer with Cox and Plamer, the firm representing some of the Class B fishers. He argues there’s a simple solution for fishers like Dicks and Publicover.
“All we need DFO to say is look, there’s only 80 of these guys left between Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. If we simply change the policy, at zero cost, they can either pass down the license to a family member, they can sell it to someone, or they could potentially take a buyout from DFO,” he says.
“This policy change would not put any added pressure on the industry; it would not introduce any new traps to the fishery; it would simply allow these guys to get some value out of these licenses they’ve spent decades fishing.”
And while a policy change wouldn’t cost the government anything, or add new traps to the fishery, Publicover argues the impact of keeping a handful of Class B licenses around would have virtually no effect on lobster stocks.
“The stock’s not really going down at all,” Publicover says. “Fishers are all saying the stock is healthy.”
Gauging the health of the Maritimes’ lobster population is tricky and can be contentious. However, the CBC reported in 2020 there were 2,945 lobster licenses active in the Maritimes.
In the shadow of those nearly 3,000 licenses, Publicover says the 80 Class B license, which can only catch 30 percent of a normal license, are just “a drop in the bucket.”
The DFO did not agree to an interview for this story but did provide an email statement.
Lauren Sankey, a DFO media relations representative, wrote that “there are no plans to revisit” the Maritimes Region Commercial Fisheries Licensing Policy nor the Commercial Fisheries Licensing Policy for the Gulf Region in relation to Category B lobster licenses.”
She said the licenses allow for modest levels of harvesting and were given to fishers with a historic attachment to the fishery but aren’t dependent on the lobster fishery for income.
She said the objective of the licenses is to allow fishers to keep their connection to the industry and “not economic outcomes.”
“This approach both enables access to the fishery to those with historic ties… and contributes to DFO’s conservation, social, cultural and economic objectives including the long-term sustainability of the lobster populations.”
Samson believes the DFO’s conservation argument rings hollow, especially since the lobster industry has changed so much since the policy was created.
“Fifty years later we have to ask ourselves, how important is it to retire those licenses? Is there a conservation issue? Is there a pressure on the resource issue that we need to address?” he says. “I would submit to you there isn’t. There probably was 50 years ago but 50 years later no one’s complaining about catches, no one’s complaining about the price of lobster. And so there isn’t that rationale that used to exist.”
‘They’re All Going To Be Dead’
As Samson pressures the federal government to change its Class B lobster license rules, the group of license holders gets steadily smaller.
Dicks claims that, in 2004, there were more than 220 Class B lobster licenses holders left. Today, there are only 80.
“The big thing is that time is not on our side…We’re losing these license holders by the month, just based on their age and everything else, so there’s a chance for DFO here to do the right thing,” Samson says.
Dicks is less charitable.
“That’s the other thing that DFO is banking on: give them another decade and the B license, probably, is gone because they’re all going to be dead,” he says.
Samson says Cox and Palmer have been sending official letters to the DFO and trying to arrange a meeting to talk about the issue. The firm isn’t taking any legal action but Samson says doing so “is always an option.”
“We think, right now, that DFO has the opportunity to do the right thing here without any need for legal action,” he says.
“We’re not going in with the sledgehammer of saying, ‘Hey, we’re taking you to court and everything else.’ Instead, we’re saying, look, let’s sit down and talk.”
So far, he says, it’s been radio silence.
Trevor Nichols is Huddle’s associate editor, based in Halifax. Send him your feedback and story ideas: [email protected].