Seal boats coping with ice crisis

In a sudden squall, `they'd all go down, including the icebreakers,' sealer says

Apr 21, 2007 04:30 AM
Bill Taylor
Feature Writer, Toronto Star

JOE BATT'S ARM, Nfld.–Born and bred in this remote outport on Fogo Island off the northern coast of Newfoundland, Desmond Adams has the seal hunt in his blood.

Fogo Island, Newfoundland

So his bright-green boat, the Angela Chantell, was one of the first out last week when the annual hunt began. And one of the first back.

"We had a day out there," Adams said yesterday on the windswept dock where his boat was safely moored. "We saw the way the weather was going and the ice was moving and we beat a hasty retreat. We were on the western edge of the ice and the wind died for a little bit at exactly the right time so we were able to get back. We were the only one that did."

Between 300 and 400 other seal hunters on more than 100 "longliner" boats were not so lucky. Most of them remain stuck in a freak build-up of pack ice – the worst anyone here can remember – that trapped them a week ago as they headed home.

There was a little light at the end of the frigid tunnel as a persistent northeasterly gale veered slowly to the southwesterly wind that will move the ice floes away. The temperature rose a few degrees, too, which will help.

Two of the Coast Guard's three icebreakers also got stuck earlier this week trying to carve a path for some of the stricken longliners to follow them to open water. But they were back in action yesterday, joined by a fourth icebreaker from Quebec. Two sealers' boats were helped into open water in Bonavista Bay and were on their way back to safety, said Coast Guard Captain Brian Penney.

"It's a little bit of relief," he said. "But I think it'll be Tuesday at the earliest before most of the longliners are out."

Penney said that before the rescue, several of the boats had radio-telephoned food orders to a general store in Bonavista and the Coast Guard had delivered the groceries by helicopter.

While the freeze-up has made headlines around the world, Newfoundlanders are treating it almost casually. Some radio stations didn't even make it their top news story yesterday, going instead with a new strategic plan for Labrador. One Gander station put it ahead of a blood donor recruitment story but didn't give it as much time.

The general feeling is that the situation is annoying – some stranded sealers reached by satellite phone say their biggest problem is boredom – but more a threat to livelihood than life. It's a sentiment that makes Adams angry.

"Very few will admit it, but what's happening is extremely dangerous," he said. "They act like clowns about it; they just shrug it off. And I think they'll get away with it this time. But if there were sustained very strong winds, which can happen with very little warning here, then you'd have a major catastrophe. They'd all go down, including the icebreakers, with all hands lost."

Though he admits that he's as bad as anyone, "and we all go out for the love of it rather than the money, which isn't there anymore," Adams would like to see the hunt in its current form stopped. First, bigger boats go out and take their share of annual quota and then small boats go to cull the rest of the harp seal pups. Frank Pinhorn estimates there are about 60,000 of this year's quota of 270,000 still to be killed.

"So the big boats are out now trying to get themselves free of the ice and the hunt is at a standstill," Adams said.

"But once this mess is cleared up, then they'll let the small boats go out. And this ice could come back. It could happen again.

"None of these boats, big or small, is registered for ice and some insurance companies won't cover you for the seal hunt. Others, the ice-damage deductible is so high, no one ever reports damage. We just fix it ourselves. But these little boats are eggshells; they're that fragile. You could crush them like that."

Adams held up his clenched fist. Coast Guard helicopters have taken the crews off about 10 of the bigger boats, mostly near the Grey Islands off Labrador because the pressure of the ice was threatening to crush them.

"No one's going to stop hunting if they don't have to. We need someone to tell us, `No, this is too dangerous. You can't do it.' Newfoundlanders are good at following orders. They've told us we can't fish and we can't do this or that. And we don't."

No one's getting rich from the seal hunt, he said, "at least not among the hunters. The price of pelts is down to about $55, about half what it used to be."

Not only that, the ice crisis means the sealers will be delayed in getting back to their main livelihood – crab fishing and shrimping. "The later you take a crab, the worse the quality. We're getting hurt."

Coast Guard helicopters continued to fly food and water to longliners that are running short of supplies. There's also a fuel crisis as they keep their engines running to power generators for food and warmth.

Not all the boats are being threatened by ice pressure. Some are in open water, surrounded by floes.

One or two are tantalizingly close to the shore. There was a report yesterday that a snowmobile managed to get out across the ice to one longliner to deliver food.

Adams said on a clear night, lights can be seen from Joe Batt's Arm, a community of about 800 with white "saltbox" houses straggling along the shoreline of the ice-clogged bay.

Hundreds of seal hunters trapped in ice

From Times Online
April 19, 2007

Canadian coastguard icebreakers are battling to free about 100 sealing vessels stuck in ice off Newfoundland's northeast coast during the country's controversial annual seal hunt.

A coastguard helicopter lands on the ice by two stranded sealing vessels (Aaron Beswick/AP)

Department of Fisheries and Oceans spokesman Phil Jenkins said that the ice was close to piercing the hulls of about 15 boats. One crew had already abandoned their vessel.

Harp seals use the ice floes off Newfoundland and in the Gulf of St Lawrence to give birth to their young. This year unusually strong winds have pressed the ice floes towards the coast, trapping the boats.

Brian Penney, a superintendent with the coastguard in Newfoundland and Labrador, said that helicopters could be called in to rescue stranded crews if the wind continues to jam the ice floes together.

"There’s vessels disabled, there’s vessels damaged. There’s crews that are out on the ice because there’s quite a possibility that their vessels may sink or the vessels are out on their sides," Mr Penney said.

The hunters have been set a total quota this year of up to 270,000 young harp seals, down from 335,000 last year. They sell the pelts, mostly for the fashion industry in Norway, Russia and China, as well as blubber for oil.

One of the seal hunters, Gill Cadwell, told CBC television that the ice floes had pushed his boat high out of the water for a time. "I’ve never, ever experienced nothing like this,” he said.

Although Canadian authorities have banned the hunting of newborn "whitecoats" after a global campaign by animal welfare groups, the campaign continues to to end the annual hunt of young seals.

Ships stuck in N.L. ice

Alisha Morrissey
CanWest News Service
Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Coast guard ice breaker helps sealing boats stuck in ice. Stock photo from 4/01 CBC

ST. JOHN'S, N.L. — More than 100 fishing and sealing vessels are stuck in ice off the coast of Newfoundland, forcing a number of them to evacuate their crews, Department of Fisheries officials said Wednesday.

Six Coast Guard ships and three helicopters are involved in 10 search and rescue operations in the region, with the priority given to an area around Fogo Island in the north. Conditions are so bad, one of the Coast Guard vessels became stuck, a fisheries official told CanWest News Service.

In St. John's, Brad Watkins, 35, and his crew have been sitting, bored, in the wheelhouse of the Cape Alcolzac this week waiting for the ice to dissipate so they can go fishing.

"We're stalled now till these ice conditions are straightened out. Mother Nature's taking its course," he says.

The crew had a difficult time, but made short work of meeting their seal quota last week because of some of the worst ice Watkins has seen in his 10 years of sealing.

Watkins, who started fishing during the summers when he was just 13, says the coast is iced in from St. Anthony to Harbour Grace, and that it was hard to reach any herds when sealing.

Although he got his allotted 500 seals in 17 hours over eight days, he says the crew was basically hunting the stragglers on the edges of the ice.

"The first evening when we finished up the hunt ... the seals were all around us. There were thousands, but we had to stop hunting so, that was a hard thing to do," he says with a laugh.

Now, stuck in St. John's harbour, Watkins says he just wants to see the ice off the northeast coast melt before it destroys fishermen's chances at a good crab season.

The crab fishery opened April 4, but few fishermen have been able to get out on the north coast because of thick ice.

That's going to cause major problems on the water, in the plants and eventually the markets, Watkins says.

With 10 weeks this season - and no extension planned as yet - he says it will be a dangerous situation when all the north coast fishermen get a few good days out on the water.

Now, ice conditions may take a toll.

"We're kind of used to that because we've got to work with Mother Nature. It's not new to us."

Meanwhile, ice may not be such a big problem in the coming years as the federal government has announced that two heavy icebreakers will move from Halifax to the Newfoundland region in the next two years.

The federal government has committed to redeploying the Terry Fox and the Louis S. St-Laurent to Newfoundland ports.

The Terry Fox will be deployed in this province April 1, 2008 and the Louis S. St-Laurent will return April 1, 2009.