When he was in high school, Ethan Blake drove from Gander Bay to Stoneville to earn some extra cash.
He mostly cleaned and did odd jobs at the urchin fish plant owned by Hodder’s Shellfish. In addition to his earnings, it also got Blake thinking about his career choices.
“I like being on the water every day, and I also like being in the water,” he said.
Blake now owns his own fishing enterprise. It’s a passion that keeps him at home in central Newfoundland.
His idyllic future may be in jeopardy, however, if he is not permitted to fish in other bays where the urchin stock remains untouched.
“This year is probably the worst year we’ve had since I started,” Blake said. “We’re not getting so good a roe.”
Sea urchins are harvested when commercial divers team up with license holders to collect urchins from the ocean’s floor. They are taken for their roe — or uni — and sold worldwide. It’s a delicacy in Japan, and in Canada it’s an industry worth about $6 million.
The urchin fishery does not have maximum weight landings for harvesters, called total allowable catch. It’s instead controlled by established seasons, number of licenses and restricting fishing areas.
‘That confines us’
Urchin-fishing areas are aligned with lobster-fishing areas. Like lobster, licenses are valid only within the fishing area associated with the harvester’s home port.
Unlike lobster, however, there are only 52 commercial licenses issued throughout the province for urchins.
Of those, only 13 have had urchin landings this season.
“Seventy-five per cent of our shorelines, there’s not ever been [urchins] harvested,” said Jerry Hodder, owner of Hodder’s Shellfish.
“That confines us to just fish in those areas, and not explore the rest of the island. And, you know, it’s very frustrating as a diver looking at where you can actually fish.”
They are considered a delicacy by many, but the number of sea urchins is declining in Newfoundland and Labrador. Advocates say the federal fisheries department is ignoring the issue, and that the consequences will be far-reaching. The CBC’s Troy Turner reports.
Hodder’s Shellfish wants Fisheries and Oceans Canada to consider offering exploratory, or temporary, licenses to the harvesters actually involved in the fishery to go into bays where the urchins sit untouched on the ocean’s floor.
Hodder says it’s about gaining access to a better quality product, with a higher percentage of quality roe.
“Everybody knows they got sea urchins, but we’re looking for a certain yield, and without the quality, these urchins have no value at all,” he said.
Rather than see those higher-quality urchins left untouched and unharvested, he says offering exploratory licenses is the road to proper resource management.
It’s a fight Hodder’s been having since before he became a plant owner.
“If this was your big crab quotas and whatever, and crab plants, and all these big unionized plants, this would not even get off the floor,” he said. “We fish capelin, and if there’s overrun left from, say, Conception Bay… I got new conditions [from DFO] in 24 hours. This is 11 years [for urchins].”
DFO would not do an interview. In a prepared statement, the department said landings of urchins have been low for several years.
It said in 2016, exploratory access was made available in areas with fewer than five commercial licenses. Only one applicant applied for an exploratory license.
The department’s sea urchin advisory committee met to discuss management measures for the fishery in September.
“After consultation, there was no broad or significant support for changes to current management measures, including with respect to fishing access,” the statement said.
DFO would not clarify details on what support was needed to make changes, or who supported leaving the fishery status quo.
The department did say it was open to considering changes to temporary licenses before the 2026 season.
‘Making value out of something’
That’s too late for Hodder’s Shellfish, who recommended exploratory licensing at the committee level.
Hodder’s Shellfish has received letters of support from MP Clifford Small and MHA Jim McKenna, as well as a former sea urchin plant owner, plant workers and harvesters.
“If I start doing codfish tomorrow, I’m taking from somebody else. Whereas the urchin, I’m not taking from nobody … I’m making value out of something that no one’s — no one’s — doing,” said Hodder.
Hodder’s wife, Alisha Hodder, is the plant manager. She said the value is also shown in employment at the plant.
In good years, the plant — one of the only ones of its kind in the province — employs more than 30 people with full-time hours seasonally. Because of lower-quality yields this season, that number has dropped to about 25.
“We have a lot of people from Stoneville, people from Boyd’s Cove and Birchy Bay, Gander Bay,” Alisha Hodder said.
“I don’t know where else they would have went. They would have gone a lot farther [away from their homes], I would imagine, to get employment … My heart breaks for them, because this is rural Newfoundland.”
She wants to see a future in the fishery for her three sons, and for the young people who want to stay at home.
“If things don’t change, the urchin fishery will have nothing in store for anybody,” she said. “It’ll just go. It just won’t be there. Things have to change.”
Blake agrees.
“It’s pretty important to me. Without that, I don’t have a life to live,” he said. “I got big payments I’m making on an enterprise I just bought, and without urchins all winter, I can barely do it to make payments.
“Being 23 years old, and going to school, and putting a lot of time and effort into learning how to dive for sea urchins, it would be pretty devastating.”
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