No need for alarm over flounder transfer: OCI president

A deal to transfer large amounts of Canadian flounder to the U.S. government will not hurt fisheries workers in southern Newfoundland, the president of a business directly affected by the quota swap says.

The Canadian government has agreed to trade about 1,500 tonnes of yellowtail flounder to the U.S. each year for the next 10 years.

In return, Canada gets access to a one-year quota of shrimp, as well as access to extra bycatch allowance for American plaice over two years.

Newfoundland and Labrador's acting fisheries minister, Trevor Taylor, this week called the deal "tragic" and said the livelihood of fisheries workers was at risk.

But Martin Sullivan, president of Ocean Choice International, told CBC News the deal is not a threat.

"On balance, I think Canada came out fairly well," said Sullivan, who observed a recent Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization meeting in Spain where the bilateral deal emerged.

The OCI plant in Marystown relies heavily on yellowtail flounder, but Sullivan said Canadian harvesters usually do not fish all of the species that is allocated each year.

"I thought, at the end of the day, it was a fair deal in terms of the things that are being exchanged," said Sullivan.

"You know, there's not much point in having a pile of quota if you can't fish it viably."

Meanwhile, Fisheries Minister Loyola Hearn issued a statement late Tuesday that said critics of the deal were misguided, and that Canadian workers will benefit from other species.

"Coupled with the additional shrimp allocations that we received from the U.S. and Japan, [this] clearly [shows] that this is a win for our industry and provides an increase in employment and returns in both the groundfish and shrimp sectors," the statement said.

"Recent commentary by those unfamiliar with the negotiations should be dismissed as uninformed rhetoric," Hearn said.