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Commercial Fisheries News
Volume 33 Number 11
July 2006
Midwater trawlers to deliver herring to Stinson operation
PROSPECT HARBOR, ME - A new undertaking that will have midwater trawlers landing herring in Downeast Maine could mean smart business for everyone involved.
The deal brings together the harvesting capacity of the Gloucester-based Western Sea Fishing Company (WSF) with the herring demand of Stinson Seafoods and the area’s lobster bait dealers.
Those principals have long been buying and selling fish with each other. But the change and huge advantages of the new arrangement are the elimination of trucking and reduction of delivery time crucial to fish quality.
“It makes good business sense to land here,” said Al West, who’s in charge of acquiring fish for the Stinson canning operation. “We’ll have a steady supply and (will have) improved the quality of the fish tremendously.”
In previous summers, the midwater trawlers have taken out their herring catch at Cape Seafoods Inc. on the Jodrey State Fish Pier in Gloucester. The herring, which are mostly caught on Georges Bank, would be pumped into trucks for the six-hour ride to Prospect Harbor. They’d be pumped again and finally make their way onto processing lines, which sometimes ended up being as much as 90 hours after they were caught.
“The timing had to be correct for us to do this out of Gloucester,” West said.
Any delay and Stinson ended up with substandard product that couldn’t be packed out.
But now, the boats will steam to Stinson’s pier. The fish will be pumped once and delivered into the plant.
The partnering venture joins processor Cape Seafoods and WSF, which have mutual ownership, with Stinson Seafood, which is owned by Bumble Bee Foods LLC, a subsidiary of Connors Bros.
The WSF vessels include the 149' Challenger and Endeavour, which fish as a pair, and the 140' Voyager, according to Gerry O’Neill, the operation’s general manager. Voyager will be paired with the 110' Enterprise, owned by Lund’s Fisheries Inc. of Cape May, NJ, he said.
One potential snag arose when Downeast lobstermen got wind of the arrangement. They were concerned about damage to lobster traps from the trawlers’ coming and going off the Gouldsboro peninsula.
At a meeting in Gouldsboro, lobstermen presented a chart with a selected route laid out on it. They’d keep gear out of the 100' wide channel if the boats stayed on the course.
There was agreement all around, according to West, and the midwater trawler captains were given the course coordinates to put into their plotters.
“The lobstermen were very amenable,” West said. “Everyone understands what we are trying to do here.”
How it works
If the operation works as planned, one set of pair trawlers will be fishing as the second set is offloading. The boats, which expect to start around mid-July, will work on Georges because herring from the offshore area better meet the size requirements of the plants.
Cape Seafoods packs and freezes whole fish. Stinson needs 8"-12" fish for its canning equipment.
When each of the pair trawlers has herring onboard, they’ll separate and one boat will head to Gloucester, as has been the practice in the past. The other, which could be carrying up to 400 tons of fish, will steam into Prospect Harbor.
Stinson has first refusal on the catch and would take up to half of a full load, West said. O’Neill’s operation will sell the rest of the herring to its lobster bait customers, who will load their trucks at the Stinson pier.
“The key is turning the vessels around, getting them in, offloaded, and out again,” West said.
He is looking forward to the consistent and good quality supply of fish this venture promises to make available. Stinson Seafoods employs 150-200 people who rely on predictable, steady work.
“The O’Neills are going to be great to partner with,” West said. “I’m very excited about working with them.”
Susan Jones
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