Moncton, New Brunswick - With the longest coastline in the world, Canada's coastal communities rely on the fish and seafood industry as an integral contributor to local and regional economies. This is why the Government of Canada and the Province of New Brunswick today announced funding support to the Association des Crabiers Acadiens Inc. (ACA) through the Atlantic Fisheries Fund (AFF).
The funding-with a total value of $2,823,946-will help carry out extensive testing of whale safe snow crab fishing using alternative gear and acoustic technologies. The total project cost is $3,852,950 and is a scale-up of the successful technologies tested in the first AFF funded project (2018-2020), which focused on the co-existence of North Atlantic right whales (NARW) and snow crab harvesters.
Spanning three years, this project has three separate activities:
- testing of on demand technology (a buoy that rises to the surface on electronic demand) in closed areas of the Gulf of St. Lawrence with trawls of traps;
- testing of fishing with low breaking strength gear (a weaker rope that breaks more easily than current ones) in open areas of the Gulf of St. Lawrence; and
- tracking of whales and vessel activity using hydrophones.
L'Association des Crabiers Acadiens Inc. is a mid-shore snow crab harvesters association with 45 members fishing in Crab Fishing Area (CFA) 12. The project will be done in partnership with the Association des Pêcheurs Professionnels Crabiers Acadiens; together they represent the whole of the mid-shore snow crab fishery of CFA 12.
The contribution is from the $400-million AFF, funded by the federal and provincial governments. The AFF focuses on increasing opportunities and market value for sustainably sourced, high-quality fish and seafood products from Atlantic Canada.
Introduced in 2017, the AFF will continue to invest in projects over its seven-year life. The commercial fisheries and aquaculture industry, Indigenous groups, universities and academia, and industry associations and organizations, including research institutions, may apply.
