Another battle for favorable underage fishing lands in court

A group of companies with fishing licenses for very profitable juvenile acne along the marine rivers again appealed to the courts on Friday in their bitter dispute with the Federal Fisheries and Oceans Department of Fisheries He made in fishing.

The latter case concerns the unwillingness of the department to raise a total allowable fishing from 960 kilograms, a figure that remains unchanged for two decades and claiming that license owners may be increased.

The lawyer of the Prosecutor General of Canada and the lawyer of the group representing a number of license owners made his arguments on Friday in the Federal Court. The judge in the case stated that he would soon make a decision.

The industry has undergone several years of chaos along the rivers of New Scotland and New Bransvik due to unauthorized fishing, caused by rising prices in Asia, where young acne is raised to adulthood after its export from Canada.

Mitchell Figenbaum, the president of the South Shore License License, said in an interview that increasing the overall permissible catch would encourage fraudsters fishing without federal permission to work in the system.

He said there is a science that would support the increase, including the work of DFO, which studies the watersheds and their ability to support fishing.

“We believe that the department is very despised by our problems, our ideas, and in fact does not even want to communicate with us on these topics and … already made a solution and just uses a paper process to make them a decision to look good,” – well, “” he said.

The Battle comes when the Department cuts fishing for a real way, removing most of the ancient owners of licenses of most of their quota before the coming season, which will begin for weeks, and passes it on the first peoples.

The court review is one of the series that Elver licenses have started in the Federal Court for DFO decisions, including quotas distribution and orders that closed the fishing early through chaos related to unauthorized harvesting.

While the Friday case is considering the Department’s decision on the general catch since last year, the SESON, which ultimately canceled the officials this week informed the license owners that this year there will be a license that 9,960 kilograms will remain on place.

“Precautions”

The DFO Secretary has stated that the Department is using a “precaution”, partly, since unauthorized fishing is a source of “scientific uncertainty”.

The monitoring research on the River out of Halifax has shown that the number of Elvers exceeds the “long -term median”, although the department notes that the work has been suspended by two of the last five years due to security problems.

“Observations after changes in fishing, which are being implemented for the 2025 season, including the level of unauthorized fishing, and any new scientific consultations will be considered in the development of management for fishing season 2026”, spokeswoman for the Debbie Boott– said- said Matsson in an email.

Suzanne Fuller, Vice President of Nature Protection with the Group Ocean North, which was not part of a court case on Friday, said there was no scientific evidence to increase the quota.

DFO introduces new rules aimed at attracting fishing under more control control, and Fuller said that the department should wait to see how they work before considering the changes how many people are allowed to catch.

Another main question is that in 2012, the Advisory Board recommended American caror to be listed as a threat, but the federal government has not yet decided whether to list it as a type of risk.

Fuller said it was difficult to manage fishing with such an limb status, and she called on the department to make a decision in one way or another.

According to her, eel populations have decreased in places such as Ontario due to obstacles such as dams, and DFO is under pressure from conservation groups and some of the first nations in these areas to list eel as a risk of risk.

But it is also important, according to her, how important is fishing for communities in New Scotland and New Bransvik.

“When the status of stocks is good and we know that it can contribute, for example, the health of coastal communities and life, let’s increase the quota and make sure people are fishing,” she said. “I just don’t think the American eel is now in this situation.”